Thursday

We met at Sydney airport at 8am, cleared the money changes out of pesos, said to good bye to love ones and we were off. First we flew to Brisbane were we had an hour stop over before continuing on to Manila, which was a 7-½ hour flight. The flight from Brisbane to Manila was choc a block. We were down with the chickens and the goats, which was fine as the more aircraft disaster shows I see it’s often those in the tail that survive. The boys were a pleasure to travel with; they did themselves and their AOP uniform proud.
We lost 2 hours in the air and arrived at 7.30, which was 9.30 Sydney time. At the airport 2 friendly faces, in David Mclean and Peter Jones, greeted us. We all jumped on a small bus and were driven to the uni which took just over an hour, which was great as there were not a lot of cars on the road because of it being public holidays over here at the moment.
On arrival at the BarCIE hotel, we jumped straight into some dinner, rice, vegie n prawn stir-fry and bbq chicken. By this stage the boys were starting to fade so rooms were allocated and we settled into our modest yet comfortable homes for the next couple of weeks.
All in all, a long day, but a successful day. We arrived safely, we did not lose anyone or anything, the boys travelled considerately, we meet up with our other team-mates, we have somewhere to sleep, the container is at the orphanage. All of the pieces have come together.