Travels and first day of Vienna!

Ok... I am finally here to write about the amazing time that I had for my missions trip with my choir in Vienna, Austria. Now that I am home from a fabulous experience I want to share about my life changing trip. I hope you will enjoy reading and I hope this will be a blessing to you.

September 6th and 7th! Travels and first day of Vienna!

My family and I left at 2:30 am from our house to pick up my friend Emma and her mom. We all headed to the airport and joined my friends Kira and Abby at the United check in. We checked in and headed down to security. This is where I had to say farewell to my wonderful loving family. It was really hard to see goodbye because it was my first international trip and without my parents. I was expecting to be super nervous, just knowing myself. But the Lord helped me through it and gave me strength and shalom (peace.) Thank goodness! I couldn't have done it without Him! It says in the Bible, "I can do ALL things through Christ who gives me strength." Philippians 4:13. This verse was really encouraging for me during this whole trip. I hugged my family, cried (of course ;) and went through security.

After security we headed to our gate, ate breakfast (I had a very tasty breakfast burrito that my mom had made me. Thanks mommy.) We boarded the plane for Chicago, Illinois where our six hour lay over was. We had the long over because the three other groups from our choir had to join us. Kira, Abby, and I all sat at the back of the plane and it was great to sit next to those funny, awesome girls! I did my devotional, (Jesus calling)  and read my book,  ("Vienna Prelude" which is an amazing book! I totally recommend it) listened to music, and I wrote in my journal. It was a nice short two hour flight, but I still got pretty restless. I think I was just getting a little anxious. :)

We landed safely in Chicago and headed over to where the other groups gates were going to be. We played card games. Never play a competitive card game with me in the airport, I kind of get a little... well... competitive. We all jammed out to music, ate snacks, and then it was time to meet up with Jackson and his mom. We played card games with Jackson, I called my family, ate  lunch ( I had a sub sandwich) and we then met up with Mrs. Porter's group and Rebekah. On our way to our Austrian gate,  we, of course, had to pick up some famous Chicago Garret popcorn... which was so yummy! We ate all of the popcorn during our one hour line for security and because of the delay we had to literally run to our gate. I don't think it was a smart plan to call my parents at that point. Oh well, they got a good chat with me while I was running to the gate... ha ha! Great memories, am I right?! ;)

We arrived to our gate barely on time and boarded. Kira and I were assigned to sit next to each other and Abby, Emma, and Emma's mom were right behind us which was so much fun! There was a nice old man in Kira and my row which was good, but he only spoke german. On the eight hour flight I journaled, read, watched Sound of Music (of course) and another movie, listened to music, read the sweet note that my wonderful parents had written for me, slept only two hours, and ate the really tasty chicken and mashed potatoes dinner that they serve on the plane. The flight actually went by really quickly which was nice. When we started getting closer to the ground you could see these really cute houses with unique red roofs and you could see the beautiful, long Danube River!

At 12:50 pm (their time) we arrived in Vienna, Austria!!!! All 14 of us picked up our luggage and met up with our Chauffeur. When we were driving around I was shocked by how much graffiti there was. Seriously, on every single wall there was graffiti. I personally thought it kind of ruined the beauty of the city. He dropped us off at our hotel, we dropped off our things, met up with Mrs. Ali -- Mrs. Porter's friend. We will be singing at her international school and she came to Colorado to give us some voice lessons before we left. Mrs. Ali gave us these famous chocolate wafers called Manner Vollkorn. They were SO good! On our way to our cruise down the Danube River we were all kind of famished we HAD to stop by McDonalds. (Not my preference but I was really hungry.)

The cruise boat was so cute! I really enjoyed the cruise. It was nice to be able to do something relaxing after a long day of travels and feeling jet lagged. It was really cold outside though, but I still had a blast! It was nice to see so much of Vienna too on the Cruise. After the cruise and a long day we headed over to the hotel, had dinner, and fell asleep immediately. We had finally made it to Vienna after preparing for three months!!

I hope you enjoyed the first two days of my Vienna missions trip and I hope that you will come back again. Blessings!
Kaila