Grace & Peace: September 2008

It's really hard for me to believe that it's only been about 2 ½ months since my trip to Japan. It feels longer. MUCH longer. However, here I am with a long overdue blog on my travels.

My adventures actually began before I even left the U.S. I was able to spend a fabulous 4th of July weekend relaxing with some of my former roommates before my L-O-N-G plane ride. Me, Bethany, and Amanda met up with Rachael in Lake Geneva, WI. Rach was housesitting and needed some help. :) It was a sweet time filled with lots of laughter, good food (including puppy chow of course....haha), going out on the lake in the boat and almost throwing up, an intense game of phase ten with a boy named Max, fireworks, and more laughing. I am so blessed to have these girls in my life and we are trying to take advantage of the time while we all still live somewhat near each other.

what's missing in this picture?

at Egg Harbor for lunch...sooo good.

Bethany, demonstrating her musical talent!

my attempt at being creative

Rachael with the golden hair.

happy 4th!

Rachael...being the wonderful friend that she is, was the poor soul who had the job of taking me to the airport way too early on Sunday morning. I'm pretty sure we were up late Saturday night and I'm pretty sure my head was on the pillow for less than 2 hours before I had to get up and get ready to leave. I was so nervous to fall asleep for fear I would somehow not wake up and miss my plane! Thankfully I jumped out of bed as soon as my alarm went off (why can't that happen everyday?!) and the traffic in Chicago isn't too bad at 3:30 am so we got to the airport just fine and in plenty of time. My stomach was a knot of nervousness and excitement but I could not wait to get on the plane and go back to sleep. Unfortunately my plan failed. I didn't sleep very much at all and it was freezing cold on the plane.

Once I got to San Fran I met up with Rob (Ben's best friend) and we had barely enough time to grab something to eat and board our next plane for the largest portion of our trip. Neither one of us slept very much on that flight either, which ended up being to our advantage later on. Once we landed in Nagoya I was beyond tired and when I have reached that point of tiredness and my brain is no longer fully functioning....all I can do is giggle... a lot. An exhausted, giggly Charissa in an airport in a foreign country where people don't speak your language makes for an interesting combination. Everything was funny to me. It was great fun. We figured out where to re-check our bags after a kind Japanese woman who worked there helped us. I'm sure it was obvious that we needed help. I should also mention that I think we were the only Americans in the airport because it was a week day... and it was ridiculously hot. We had about a 4 hour layover in Nagoya and spent that time sitting at our gate, walking around, and doing mad libs in an attempt to fight the sleep that was trying to overtake us. We finally boarded our last plane and were so anxious to just get there! The flight wasn't too long, although by that time I was really struggling to stay awake. We were greeted by a lovely sunset as we landed in Fukuoka and it hit us that we were just moments away from seeing the Graves'!!! It was actually torture waiting for our baggage because we could see Ben and Kristi through the door, but they couldn't come to us. It was a small flight though, so we didn't have to wait long for our bags! At last we were together in Japan. It was unreal. Our travels weren't over yet though...we then had a 2 hour drive to get to Sasebo where Ben and Kristi live, but we were just happy to be with our friends. We slept so good that first night and had no jet lag at all the entire trip, which was a huge answer to prayer because we wanted to be able to enjoy our time there to the fullest!