The Journey

The journey to our final destination has been long, but full of unique meetings and opportunity. Regardless of how experienced you are as a traveler, the adventure of seeing new destinations is always exciting. I guess that's why we do it.

There are 4 of us traveling from the U.S. together. Doris: the founder of Women to the World, Gip: a horticulturist, Dr. Hadi: a medical doctor from the middle east currently living in the United States and myself, traveling as a filmmaker to document the ongoing work in the middle east.

There are a lot reasons for the trip which will be described as they unfold. For now, I'm shooting the surroundings to tell the story. Specifics of our whereabouts will be kept general for security reasons. Any close friends and family reading this will already know where we are anyway.

We arrived Tuesday evening (we left Georgia on Sunday).

On Wednesday, we started our first actual day at about 4:30 am. The comforting sound of the rooster next door made me feel at home. (We currently have 29 chickens at my house in GA).

Accomodations are good and our new friends here are taking care of us extremely well.

For those in "the biz", here's a list of equipment:

An HVX200, mac laptop, 220 power converter and a Terabyte hard drive. Shooting on P2 Cards and downloading when and where it's safe. Nice and mobile....and acceptable as "carry on" baggage internationally.

Details on the trip from the begining.

Travel Log:

SUNDAY

Lexington, GA

9:00 am - 3:30 last minute packing (as usual for me). Along with finishing up the repairs on the truck with my dad. (thank god he was there)

3:31 meet with 2 members of our group at Doris's house for the trip to ATL airport.

Atlanta, GA

6:30-7:00 arrive at the airport in Atlanta and meet with Dr. Hadi who flew in from Washington D.C.

9:00 Get on the plane. (Delta, which I believe is short for "don't even let them aboard")

We find our seats, which were carefully planned out so we could work and have meetings throughout the flight (all aisle seats). What happens? We get asked to move around so a "family" can be together for the journey. OK, sure. Now the fun begins...musical chairs.

Doris gets bumped to first class and I get some more leg room just behind business class (woo!), Dr. Hadi politely moves to the back of the plane and poor Gip gets stuck with "the family" with crying babies (the whole trip). He'll get a medal for that I'm sure.

I slept like a baby for about 11 of the 14 hours, then strangely enough watched "the kite runner" while talking to the passengers next to me..."Gary" an American truck driver working in Iran (in it for the money) and "Jay" from The Four Horseman International. Nice guys.

11:00pm

We arrive in Dubai, find our bags and take them to a "holding" area so we can reclaim them later on after touring the city on our 12 hour layover. We meet up with Taj, one of Dr. Hadi's friends who took us on a tour of Dubai:

1. Grocery store

2. Cityscape tour including that HUGE hotel shaped like a sailboat. (you know the one, everyone has seen the discovery program I'm sure)

3. FOOD at a really cool buffet style restaurant in a mall at about 1-2am. The view was fantastic and the food was out of this world. (well, it was actually just in Dubai) We also met up with Taj's brother Ahmad there.

4. Return to the airport, claim our bags and sit around until 5am until the security gates open so we can once again recheck our bags for our next flight.

Dr. Hadi runs into a very good friend who also is a Dr. and lives in the U.S. (Whoa!)

I did manage to have a latte and croissant for "breakfast" (also one for Doris, and a bottle of water). Getting the latte reminded me of my wife. This is where I start to miss her and wish she were traveling with me.

Have you ever had one of those moments where you weren't sure if paying 14 dollars for 2 cups of coffee, a bottle of water and a roll was too much money? I've never been good at math, I'm an artist. I didn't know the currency conversion rate so all I did was watch the girl taking my money "cheat" and use a calculator to do the conversion and give me the correct change back...then I asked her (nicely) "are you SURE that's the right amount?" (as if I knew exactly what change I needed in return). After she double checked, I said "OK, thank you". Maybe I got ripped off, maybe not....who knows?

7:30 am

Get on the plane for our final destination (time for another nap).

About 10:00 am.

Land.

WERE HERE!