This is a copy of my journal I took with me on my 8 day mission trip to XXXXX, North Africa. I was invited to come along on this trip by “B”, my friend, who lived in XXXX and other places in North Africa while he was a working there. He needed to take this trip so that he could finish vacating/packing up his apartment as he and his family had recently moved back to Virginia. I traveled with B, Cam, and Ryan, all from our church.

Ok, here starts my journal: for real this time.

12:50 am (or is it 6:50 am)? The sun has just risen and we’re somewhere over France I assume, Lione (Lyon?) by the Italian map on the screen. We all know Rome is pronounced like it’s spelled, so why do the Italians spell it Roma? We all know that’s a kind of tomato… who do they think they’re fooling? Anyhow, I’m tired but excited, only got a couple power naps in during the night (despite the Tylenol PM, Sleeping mask, and earplugs) because there’s only so long you can sit in a seat before you can’t stand it. In the middle of the night, after 6 hours of sitting in the seat, I think that magic amount of comfortable time that you might be able to sleep is around 15 minutes. Short night. Good food. Cam really likes the food, and we’re all about to discover how off-the-wall wacky this guy is. Here he is pretending to barf into the bag.

Italy is beautiful, I tell you, beautiful. Although we technically weren’t in Italy since we never left the international concourse (as we all know from The Terminal), I managed to snap this quick photo out the window as we were landing in Milan. Yup, that’s pretty much what I thought Italy would look like.

We had a short layover, long enough for some cappucino and a bathroom break, then we boarded the plane for North Africa.