Travel Day

The travel day started very early, 4:15 to be exact. Groggily, unable to get out of bed, we dragged ourselves to our different airports. After saying goodbye to our family, pets, and ice (we can't have it here), we deaprted on our flights to Houston. Alexandra came first at 8 AM, where she read, and waited with much anticipation in Terminal B. Jen came in at about 10:40, with Arielle coming in about ten minutes before that. Jen and Alexandra met in Terminal B , and hitched a ride with the air train to Terminal C, where Arielle sat impatiently, with her large red backpack, which stuck out like a sore thumb. After Jen and Alexandra waved for a bit, Arielle finally realized that they were not just sketchy travelers. After we had our first face to face meeting, we quickly ran to Terminal E to board our flight to Mexico City. We arrived at our gate with about 20 minutes to spare- perfect time for us to find out everything (literally) about each other. We boarded the plane, and talked to each other for the entire two hour flight. As we proceeded closer and closer to Mexico, we stared outside of the plane window and saw the rough, red roofs of the stucco buildings glittering with sunlight back at us. We arrived in the Mexico City airport with overflowing excitement, and immediately went through Immigration and Customs. After that, we started meeting people on our mission's team. We met Devon, our mission's photographer, and Marisa, a recovery room nurse. After an hour, we headed onboard a very small bus with fifteen other members of our mission, and started our two hour journey to the beautiful historic city of Tlaxcala. The differences between our own home towns and the suburbs of Mexico City were definitely striking. As we sped past dilapidated buildings, we thought about how lucky we are with our current standard of living, and became even more anxious to give back to our Mexican Community. After our two hour bus ride, we entered the city of Tlaxcala. The city was sprawling with colorful houses and the area was more populated than we had expected. After a few minutes, we came to our old but beautiful Hotel Mission, which was just begging for us to take photographs of its interior. After dropping our suitcases in our room, we joined Erin, the Mission Coordinator, Marisa and Sue, two nurses, and Emily, the head of Medical Records, for a quick downing of deliciously creamy spinach soup. A little later, we had a team meeting and discussed the schedule for the next week. Following that, we had a delicious Italian dinner in the hotel, and then, after dividing our copious amounts of toys and toothbrushes in our room, we promptly fell asleep.

With love,
Alexandra Spiegel and Arielle Sasson