My journey to England....

So the morning started out normal ... Kelly, mom, Sissy, and I were all piled on the bed. I got up at 9am and thus my adventure began. After MANY tears I was onto the airplane and leaving my old life behind to welcome the new one. Things started going wrong right away OF COURSE. We sat on the airplane in Salt Lake forever... knowing we only had a 50 minute layover in Chicago and we had already sat on the plane in Salt Lake for an hour waiting to go, I knew we were going to be in trouble. We got off the airplane in Chicago and ran (well you know the run of a pregnant woman) to our gate. Ahhh luck, the plane was still attached to the gate!! The guy at the gate told us to hurry and let us on the plane. Right as we boarded they sealed the door closed. We were literally the last people to get on the plane. Ahhh don't you just love the stares of a hundred people looking at you as you find your seat? Well our next thought was that there was no way our luggage was going to make it, but by some mirable the pilot (ah the blessed pilot) announced we were going to wait for some last minute luggage!!! Halleluja!

Initially I had been dreading the 8 hour flight to England but it turned out much better than I expected. They have a monitor built into the headrest in front of you and you have your choice of 5 movies to watch that play continuously the whole flight. I watched two movies and took a nap and we were basically there. Well if the flight was nice, the part after was a nightmare....

So our lovely sponsor decided she didn't want to pick us up from the airport, so after a total of 11 hours on airplanes we had to take a 2 1/2 hour BUS RIDE to base. Now I thought the 3 hour wait for the bus to arrive was going to be the worse part.. turns out trying to FIND the bus was the worse part. So the directions our sponsor gave us to find the bus was hideous and made no sense. To put things into perspective we had 3 hours until the bus arrived and we ended up finding the spot where the bus would come, only TEN MINUTES before it arrived. We circled that whole airport at least 3 times. The worse part is we were both trying to haul 2 suitcases each and we went down this huge ramp thing and I thought.. boy I bet this is hideous to go back up.... turns out I didn't have to imagine what it would be like for too long because we ended up going back up it lol. Well after our 2 hour and 50 minute march around the airport we finally located the spot. Which actually was about 5 minutes from where we got off the plane and collected our luggage. All that walking for nothing!!

Anyway, I was pretty depressed on the bus ride to base. My ankles were the size of watermelons. (The first time they had swelled up since I'd been pregnant) and I was starving as we hadn't been able to eat since the plane gave us this litte 2 oz banana bread loaf. Now I don't know if you understand but I was use to eating like every 2 hours. Not even joking. I get hungry a lot being pregnant and the fact that I couldn't eat or have water was making me panick. Anyway back to the bus. So I'm crying on this bus thinking how bad I have it right.... luckily the bus ride went by fast mostly because I was amazed at the driving. It was so weird to be driving on the wrong side of the road, and really weird to peek into the cars we passed to see the driver on the right side of the car where the passenger should be.

So we're cruising along, and I do mean cruising.. that guy had a serious lead foot and we make it to the first stop. RAF Mildenhall. It was kinda funny... so the bus actually drives onto the first base right and the military cop comes on base with his big gun to check for our military id's. I've worked on a military base for 10 years but this seemed really intimidating for some reason. So anyway we drop off a handful of people at Mildenhall and we're off to our base which is Lakenheath. So we get on base and........ our BUS DIES!! Not even joking. So the guy gets out and does something gets back on..... we go a few feet and it dies AGAIN. He gets back out does something... we drive a few more feet and for the third time it dies but this time there is no resurrecting it. It is completely dead... and the worse part is the guy kicks us off the bus and tells us it won't go any farther.

So we all get off the bus, collect our lugguage and are left standing there literally not knowing what to do or where to go for that matter. I look at Keri and he actually says to me your guess is as good as mine....so I realize I have to make a decision what to do. Here I am 5 months pregnant stranded on the side of the road in a foreign country. Mind you our phones didn't work so it wasnt like we could call someone, even if we knew someone to call which we didn't. So everyone starts walking so we decide to. Mind you we have NO idea where we are going. We knew we were staying at the Liberty Lodge but we had no idea where that was on base. I felt really bad for this young kid though. He had 5 pieces of luggage and just himself to drag it. He kept up with us for a little bit but eventually he just sat on top of one of his suitcases and stayed there. I have no idea what happened to him but it broke my heart. I wished I could have helped him out but I had 2 suitcases myself to handle.

So we are walking along in no particular direction and by chance this girl pops out of a building and asks us if we had just arrived. We told her our bus broke down and we had no idea what we were doing. This girl must have been sent my an angel because she told us she had a car and she would take us to our lodging!!! Seriously I wanted to cry again.... well actually I was probably still already crying. So she gets her car and we load up our luggage. Well you can imagine 4 big suitcases filled her big car so Keri ended up still having to walk to the lodge. But it turns out we weren't too far from it at this point. So this girl drives me to the lodge and I am able to check in. Turns out she had been here 3 months with her husband and she was a great deal of help. She told us a lot of good information about living on Lakenheath.

Well we got to our room which really isn't bad and the next problem was food. I think my husband doesn't realize I am carrying a person inside of me and not only do I have to eat but so does my baby. I ended up walking to the BX which was luckily right across the street to get some food. Came back, propped up my swollen feet and actually feel asleep. I just woke up a minute ago and it was 8:30. I had no idea if it was AM or PM. It is so confusing with the 7 hour time change and apparently it gets so dark here early, so that was weird. We opened the blinds and it was pitch dark outside. Like a scary Alaska dark. lol! Anyway, that is the first page of my adventures in England. I'm thinking it only goes up from here....