Brutal

...is how those of us who travelled direct to Atlanta would describe the trip here. We left at 10am from Joburg on the 19th and arrived here in Urbana-Champaign at 3.44am South Africa time on Saturday.

Crazy.

Here we are in the Airport in Atlanta waiting to board our flight to Chicago. After more than 20 hours in the air, Simon's completely out of it. William is still looking dashing as ever and Sara is trying desperately to sms her family to tell them she's still alive. I don't think Avenal took the same flight as the rest of us, because there she is with not a hair out of place and her flawless make-up. Mandy's in the background trying to make sense of it all and telling Simon to wake up for goodness sake. I'm behind the camera, because, really, I just wasn't fit for public consumption at that point in our travels.

We were all really grateful for the tips Joan and Pat had given us on our send-off. Despite a few butterflies when we went through the gruelling process of packing and re-packing our bags at various security checkpoints, we sailed through it all. And we only had to ask about five times to reassure ourselves that our bags would indeed follow us to Urbana-Champaign. :)

It's 5.03am now and I'm wide awake. This is not a good sign. Welcome to jet-lag, everyone.