February 17th-18th... half way there

Everyone's exhausted.  Literally.  We're sitting in Dubai, and we're whipped.  All this after flying for 12 hours and doing nothing.  You wouldn't think we'd be so tired, but we are.

Nancy, Dave, Holly and DJ along with Sue and her son Ryan are wandering around the Dubai airport; taking in the scenes and looking in shops.  The McDonalds and Starbucks were a  bit out of place, but they were the busiest places.

Andrea, Katie, Karen, Richie, Amie, Fr John and I are sitting in the Emirates Lounge trying to muster up the strength to chew... on sliced cant elope and pineapple.  It's official, we're pathetic.  The flight here was relatively uneventful.  Andrea's TV screen had no picture, and Amie's had no sound.  Emirates is very accommodating, so they tried to reset both tvs.
No luck.
Next, they had to reset all the TVs in 1st class and business class.
Nothing.
Last resort... reset every TV on the plane...
Still nothing.
After a litany of apologies, they stopped trying to fix it and went about their business.  Amie managed to get closed captioning turned on, so she was able to watch movies via subtitles.  Andrea's stayed blank.  That also meant that she couldn't move here seat into a position where it was comfortable AND she wasn't able to watch movies or tv.  She never complained once.  We plugged both our headphones into my jack and watched The Way together.  First of all, great movie.  I was a puddle when it ended, and continued have tears flowing until about 15 minutes after the movie was over.  It struck pretty close to home, and the timing was pretty uncanny.  It reminded me of the last time I was here with my family to spread Jim's ashes.  I sat and watched the movie loving every minute, but the last 10 minutes really snuck up on me. I should have seen it coming.  Fortunately, we had visene and tissues... no worries.

After the movie ended, the flight attendant returned with another apology.  This time he came bearing gifts.   He was so distraught, that he brought us a bottle of Dom Perignon and a bottle of some French Red.  The second bag he handed over had a bunch of swag he got from the first class cabin.  Playing cards, pens, mirrors, shaving kits... it was all very nice.  We accepted it graciously before realizing that there was no way were going to get this all the way to Kisumu, not to mention the fact that there's something very wrong about drinking Dom Perignon while we tending to impoverished kids.  As he emerged from the first class cabin again carrying another bottle of Dom for Amie, I gently signaled him to move back into the galley so I could talk to him.  I expained our situation, and he again was very apologetic.  He seemed moved by the work we do in Kenya and came back one more time to offer us all the coloring books we could carry.  He's lucky we didn't have any space in our backpacks.  Fortunately, we already have those mixed in with the other school supplies we're carrying... along with three 4' duffle bags filled with sanitary napkins.  That story will wait for another time - probably tonight.  Yes, it's a funny one.
Our next flight leaves in another hour.  This is all I have so far. I'll fill you in on more tonight after we arrive in Maseno.
Thanks for all the well wishes, prayers and support.  You're all with us.