Day 1: Meeting the City

If today was any indicator of the nature of our trip; we're going to have a host of excellent stories to relate to all of our unsuspecting friends back home... "this one time in Querétaro
..." (though I'll probably say México, because Querétaro is a mouthful)

We met at the church office bright 'n' early at 7:25, loaded our luggage, loaded ourselves and rolled out. To prepare ourselves for international cuisine, we got breakfast at McDonalds on the way to the airport. I can't speak for the crew in Pastor Rodger's truck, but the peeps in my car laughed the entire drive.

Arriving at the airport with enough time was a nice change from last year (sorry 2013 team, my bad, heh). We needed the spare time when we hit delays in the check-in process, due to a new - and somewhat unruly - automatic check-in system. After escaping the technology and getting through security, we heaed over to our gate, glad to be done with the complications... from here on out it should be all smooth saili-KRISTINA RENEE CARTER PLEASE RETURN TO SECURITY.
dang it.
...fortunately it was just a case of misplaced identity, which was quickly remedied.

The plane trip was wonderfully complication-free... Chris Langham and I learned that making card houses on a plane is nigh impossible (even if you have cool cards from the D.R.). We landed, eventually figured out our customs forms, got high-fived by the drug dog, etc. (Ask Craig Plata about about that one time he got pulled aside and searched with a bag of white powder (climbing chalk) in his bag)...

Adrian and Frankie picked us up at the airport and we headed towards the hotel. We stopped for a mini-meal/snack and got our first taste of that Mexican food I've been craving for a year now. Two pepperoni pizzas from Papa Johns (which were delicious... PJ's in C-Stat needs to step up their game) with a brief stop at Starbuck's. As we were preparing to re-board our vans (one rented, one belonging to the family here), we saw the shiny, brand-new red scratch on the side of our rental van. *sigh* That will be figured out later, asi es la vida.

For now, we're chilling in our rooms in a house-turned-hotel, which is beautiful and right next to both of the campuses we hope to visit. Tonight, we're going to go walkabout in the city (which is ridiculously safe, for those who were wondering) and grab some dinner. Kassy Sanchez has asked us to turn it into a prayer-walk, which is perfect.

Please be praying that our excitement will continue and that we'll be safe from discouragement as we get started.

some notes:
-I'll stop using last names tomorrow, I promise...
-Italics generally means I'm thinking it in an accent
-Mejor (better) Pizza is not the same as Mujer (woman) Pizza. One is a slogan, one is cannibalism.