And we’re off!! Step one to trekking in Nepal is getting there. Even before that, we had to say goodbye to Sabrina at the airport and that was the hardest part of this trip. This was our third weeklong or more trip away from her and the longest by far at three weeks. She had told us she wasn’t a fan of us going. As this is Kim’s third trip to Nepal for three weeks or more, Sabrina knew a bit of what to expect but that didn’t make her any happier about both her parents leaving on the same trip. There were tears all around as we said our goodbyes and Grandpa took Sabrina back to the Island. He did mention on a phone call later that after leaving the airport she cheered up quite a bit.
At the airport we met other members of both the trek and climbing expedition. Half of the group is climbing Pumori on the Nepal-Tibet border. Participants were; Matt (group leader), Fabrizio, Kim, Diane, David, Dave, John, Alan, Tyler and I. These names will come up many more time, so memorize them now. :) After heading through security some of us stopped off at the bookstore to load up for the trip. Kim picked out The Almost Moon
I found while thumbing through that I already knew most of the story as we had raised $15,000 last year to build a school with Room to Read. So it sat out most of the trip. I picked up Dave Barry’s History of the Millennium (So Far)
The flight to Korea was good. Boeing 777 with on demand entertainment in each seat. Ahhhh….I was in movie watching heaven. The group was broken up throughout the plane for this portion of the trip so it was just Kim and I most of the time with David off to my right and forward a bit. We watched movies, napped, ate twice, played Yahtzee! and stretched a bunch. All in all I was impressed with Korean Air’s service on this flight. I know it’s a little thing, but the hot towels before a meal sure are nice. Ahhhhh….
At the airport there was no room for us in the Transfer Hotel. The Transfer Hotel (two of them actually) is nice as it eliminates the need to pass through Immigration and Customs and actually enter the country. While not the biggest deal, leaving the country the next day would prove to be a bit of a pain. But that’s for tomorrow’s post!
We were dutifully escorted to a bus taking us to the airport Best Western (oh the irony) for our night’s stay. After checking in we all met 
up for some grub in the hotel restaurant including many questions about whether to drink the water or not. For me it was too late and I kept right on drinking lots of water. Yummy, yummy water. In the end, nothing bad happened, but it was fun guessing for a while.
And thus ends the first day! Of course it was now the second day already because of the pesky International Date Line, but we’ll ignore that for the rest of the trip and just stick to ‘normal’ waking times as days.
Continue on to Day 2! (and it actually starts the day after the day after day 1 )
