Day 1

The trip has not started out as smoothly as we would have hoped, but we're doing fine. We woke up this morning at 2:30 am and a gracious friend took us to the airport around 4:30 am. By the time we cleared security, our flight was 10 min. delayed - set to fly out at 6:10 am. Then it was 7:10 am. Then they started putting people on other flights. All in all, our plane was delayed over 5hrs., but was still the first available flight to JFK, New York, with Delta Airlines. We missed our connecting flight, which only flies once a day, so we'll arrive in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania 24hrs. late. While waiting for our flight out of Detroit, we amused ourselves by watching the three House Sparrows trapped in the terminal (we sympathized) and listening to the interesting conversations amongst Delta representatives. Here are some quotes that instilled great confidence in this airline: "Are you the flight attendant?" (to a passenger), "What happened to the flight crew?" "Welcome to a Canadair jet" (on a Comair plane) and, best of all, "Is he the one supposed to be flying the plane?" These are all verbatim! Now, some useful statistics. In our first 24hrs of travel: 2 hrs. of packing and getting out of the house, 9 hrs. in airports (2 hrs. spent waiting for Delta to confirm our identity and figure out what planes we were supposed to be on), 12 hrs. in a hotel, and 1 hr. in a plane. Hopefully tomorrow is more sucessful; we'll do our best to leave the country this time! Especially since Tony didn't bring a coat, not predicting we'd have to walk through snow and wind in New York...!