Day 2: On the Plane

May 16th

At this point, I can barely remember what day it is. The days on this trip are long and filled with a lot of great fellowship. I spent a lovely day in Denver on the 14th hanging out with the Cotter's. I enjoy their family so much and had some beautiful conversations with them especially about emotional chastity. I love how passionate they are about emotional chastity. Tyler picked me up from the airport and then took me to the hotel the next day to meet the group that I'm going to El Salvador with.

Over the past 24 hours I've really learned a lot about the 13 people who are traveling with me. We range from Nevada to Florida and numerous states in between. Two people on our trip are fluent in Spanish and two have been on the trip to El Salv before. We also have one non-catholic on the trip. Today we had to be at the airport at 8 AM after an awesome continental breakfast that featured waffles, omelets and breakfast burritos!

We flew from Denver to Houston in the early afternoon. The Houston airport is huge! It has five ridiculously long terminals. We ate at a place called "real food" (not a good name for something when you walk by other places and say: "Let's go get some real food" *cough cough--> Allie).  I had a margherita pizza and a Mr. Pibb.... that somehow ended up being Diet Coke. We took photos and talked about different state accents. We left the U.S. at 4:45 PM. So now we're sitting on the plane flying over the gulf. I'm sitting next to Allie who is from Columbus Ohio but goes to Pitt. She's majoring in chemical engineering and is a vegetarian as well! It's always fun to meet another vegetarian. We were just served cheeseburgers on the plane. Allie and I have both forgone our vegetarianism for this trip but she's definitely a lot braver than I am. Red meat and I will never be friends but Allie is trying the cheeseburger. Her first meat encounter in 4 years was a Five Guys hamburger and she's been eating meat since Easter. I ate chicken for three days and fish for two. Either way I'm glad I gave my cheeseburger to our team director, Justin.


I am anticipating our arrival in El Salvador very much. Here's what I'm most excited for:
1. To sacrifice myself and the comforts I've experienced my whole life. I'm trying to find my inner Mother Teresa.
2. To grow closer to God and the people on my trip
3. To see the Bishop Romero sites including the chapel he was assassinated in
4. To 'moose' the people on my trip.

To 'moose' someone you just wait until someone falls asleep during the trip and then you stick a picture of a moose next to them and take a photo as shown below: