Wow. After traveling for 36 hours, it's nice to be in India. We're staying in the guest rooms at the Ibramhimpatnum School, which is a 4 hour bus ride from Hyderabad. Google it. ;)
While we had free wifi in Boston, we had no accent to it from then on... Until now. There's wifi in the building were staying in, very slow, but we're not complaining.
Our first flight was great. Not too long and everyone still had energy. I Watched a few movies, listened to music and tried to sleep. Unfortunately, sleeping on long plane flights isn't my thing.
We arrived in London at around 7am (their time.) It was only a two hour layover, so with going through security and all, we didn't have too much time to look around.
This next flight took forever! Actually, we had a nice tailwind, so get arrived an hour or so, earlier. Thankfully, the plane had better movies, so some of us chilled and watched movies the whole time; I did. The others were blessed with the ability to sleep on a plane.
Our arrival in Mumbai was, well, interesting. It wasn't that well kept (as far as clean) and in our case, pure chaos. No one knew where we were supposed to go, so we were sent from one end of the terminal to the other. When we finally got ourselves and all our luggage to the bus, we found that there were, in fact, quite nicer buildings to this airport. We were delivered to a quite nicer terminal, which was basically empty. So, while we waited for our flight, the guys took the opportunity to play football. :) We then checked our bags and grabbed some breakfast, as we had arrived at midnight (local time) and our flight was at 6am.
This airplane was quite smaller then the other two. It was only an hour flight from Mumbai to Hyderabad. Thankfully, I was able to sleep the entire time. After 30+ hours of constant rush, my body decided I could sleep anywhere I wanted to.
We were pleasantly surprised at the Hyderabad airport. It was modern and quite beautiful. (But no wifi.) We had to wait a while for the pastors to arrive, so we got to walk around a little. I wish I could upload some pictures better then just iPod quality, but that's all have right now.... Though I might connect my camera to someone's laptop and upload some better pics.
We fit 14 people in the van, still plenty of room. We had a 40 minute ride to where we met the bus. We did do a small detour to a sort of Bollywood, where we were kinda treated as celebrities. People wanted to take pictures with us, but once a small crowd started to gather, we (Shaina, Shankar, Kumar and myself) moved away... The same thing with the students here at the school. They can't get enough of our cameras. Everyone wants their picture taken, then they love seeing the result on the screen.
Anyhow, we're settled in at the guest rooms. Rebecca, Shaina and I are sharing a room, with Paula and James Davidson right next door. Down past the bathrooms, is the boys' room and the Sabnani's. There's a central garden in the building, which I believe is the conference office, of sorts. Us kids have spent time up on the roof, where there's a breeze and a beautiful view. We have two bathrooms and two showers, so we're gonna work out a schedule for shower rotations.
Yes, I know it's 2:30am here, but I went to bed early, so when we girls all awoke at 1:15 I wasn't tired. (There's a 10 1/2 hour time difference.)
Please pray for Pastor Harry, who is in bed with the Flu. We are all keeping our distance and making sure to always use the hand sanitizer.
Thank you all for the many prayers; I'll try to update every few days.
We love and miss everyone!!
-Autumn Story Mott
