Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Day One: Florida Sun!

I'm going to post about our trip in different parts so that I can process it all and so you can skip the days you are not interested in! We arrived last Tuesday evening after a short, yet unfortunate flight for me. I became ill in flight, saw my share of the inside of that tiny airplane restroom and had a bit of a deja vu experience from our trip two years ago, when I had to fly with the stomach flu. Lucky for me, this particular ailment was shortlived!

We began our journey with T checking in our bags at the BWI skycab, where a middle eastern man tried to leave his bags outside with T - no kidding!! Can you just picture my husband exclaiming very loudly, "NO, YOU MUST TAKE YOUR LUGGAGE WITH YOU!!!" all the while with the loudspeakers stating clearly, "Do not leave your baggage unattended or accept baggage from someone you do not know." I'm cracking up just remembering the incident.

Once we arrived and met up with L, we ran off to collect our rental car. When we were almost there, we realized that we had left one of OUR bags in the airport! No kidding!! T scrambled to retrieve it while Em kept asking, "What does that mean, blow up our bags?" It was quite a scene. We had to begin our vacation with some kind of paradoxical adventure!

We left from the airport on our way to our friend's house, K & M. K was my roommate in college and she met her husband, M, in England while on exchange. It's a wonder that God used our time at Gordon to build a bridge between these two men, our husbands, who we've managed to join at the hip for a great spiritual journey in friendship and passion towards the pursuit of God's will. Anyway, K I know from living with her is extremely thorough, detailed and I knew she made certain that we could get from point A, the airport, to point B, her house, before we arrived via email. That email was dismissed by my husband, who assured me he knew the way. The conversation as we pulled out of Orlando International Airport went something like this:

T: I think I just take the Beeline to 50 and we're there! Do you have those directions?

D: No. You told me you knew the way, not to bother printing them.

T: Hmm... Maybe I ought to call.

(Calls the Ms)

T: Hi, we're here. Do I just take the Beeline to 50?

K: I sent D directions. DO YOU NOT HAVE THEM?

T: Uh, no.

I'll stop right there, because of course I had to fill in the blank when we finally arrived, you know, the part about where he told me not to print them. We had a good laugh about it, but that was the start of our wonderful trip.

Our first day we awoke to a beautiful sunshiny day. The girls and I were home alone so we decided to take a walk in that beautiful sun, down to the park. It was perfect shorts and T-shirt weather, I even broke out my sunglasses. What fun!

There we were, sitting at the park, feeling like it was a nice summer day, when a jogger ran by. She was wearing the following: a hat, long Spandex pants, a long sleeved mock turtle neck sporty shirt and a fleece vest. Did I mention that she was running? I began to feel a bit self-conscious. Were we just warm because it was 13 degrees when we left MD and now it was about 72? Did I miss the cold weather approaching memo?? Anyway, I'm sure we glowed out there, our winter legs having not been exposed for months! It was clear, we were not from Florida!

Our first day was quite relaxing, we returned, had a bit of lunch, hung out with K for the afternoon, even walked down to her pool - no swimming. It was a really nice first day in Florida. Now, if I can just get T to load the pictures on here for me! Here are some he has posted - I guess he wants all the glory!

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