First travel day!! This is probably the longest travel day that I’ve ever been a part of so get ready! Travel day to Cambodia started on Saturday, October 14, and we arrived in our ministry on Wednesday, October 18.
The night before, we had squad bonding and had our Friday night revival worship session that lasted until 10pm. These worship sessions included both W gap year squad, and my squad, X Squad. Both squads have around 50 people, plus we had our mentors and squad coaches so there were a little over 100 people worshiping together. We host these Friday night revival worships in the training center, which is a big open space typically used for large sessions and worship, but also as our teams designated meeting space. My squad was leaving on Saturday, and the other squad was scheduled to leave the following Wednesday.
We had been in a worship session and just finished being prayed over by our leadership team when we realized that it had started raining outside. Knowing that we were leaving the next day, and we would need to pack up first thing in the morning, we needed to get all of our tents and gear out of our campsite, and into a space that they could dry. This led to everyone racing to pack up their big packs, carry them to the training center, and then carry their tents down to the pavilion on the other side of campus to dry. Ultimately we found the best was to carry our tents was to leave them up, but open the door and pick it up over your head by the poles. Essentially we all were standing inside of our tents with just our legs poking out as we carried them out of our campsites and down the road that led to where we would leave them for the night. We then brought out our sleeping pads and sleeping bags, and slept as a whole squad in the training center. This was actually such a sweet way to spend our last nights in the States and get everyone excited to take on our upcoming ministries!
The next morning we all woke up and immediately started preparing for the day. Each team of 6-8 people were assigned a place to deep clean to get the campus ready for us all to leave. After completing these initial chores we got right into packing up our beds and any last minute items that weren’t already in our packs. Then it was time to go down to the pavilion and pack up our tents, as we have no idea what our housing arrangements will look like overseas. For lunch, our team decided to go out last minute to a local Mexican restaurant that was about 30 minutes away from campus, however we didn’t realize how far it was and the vans leaving to the airport were scheduled to leave at 2pm on the dot. Basically, we ended up racing to order and eat, getting back to campus right at 1:57, with a good 3 minutes to spare.
We grabbed our packs and got right into the vans, leaving our campus in Gainesville, Georgia to head to the Atlanta airport. Now, the way our plane tickets worked out, the majority of the squad was routed from Atlanta, Georgia to Istanbul, Turkey, with a two hour layover and then flew to Bangkok, Thailand for a 12 hour layover. However, there were six of us that had an alternative travel route that included: myself, Braden, Georgia, Emily, Malachi, and Ethan Johnston. We nicknamed ourselves the Seal Team Six. Our travel itinerary routed us from Atlanta, Georgia to Doha, Qatar for a 3 hour layover, and then met up with the rest of our squad in Bangkok, Thailand for the 12 hour layover.
We traveled as a whole squad from our Gainesville campus to the Atlanta airport, and then the Seal Team Six separated from the rest of our squad. This was pretty disappointing as we were looking forward to traveling as a squad, however it did make it much quicker to check all of our luggage and get through security. Finally, Seal Team Six got to our gate, got our last American meal for the next 8 months, and then got on our first flight to Qatar. Our flight departed from Atlanta at 7pm and was 14 hours long. This flight was not nearly as bad as I had been anticipating, as I typically don’t like to sit for very long. I spent the flight catching up on some sleep and watching movies which allowed the time to pass quickly. We also got 2 meals on the flight which were delicious! We then landed in Qatar on Oct. 15, which was Braden’s birthday. After we got off our flight and went through another round of security, we got to sit down. Here, I gave him the present and card that our squad had put together, as we all knew he was disappointed not to be able to celebrate with the whole squad. We made it fun and spent as long as we could exploring the airport until it was time for our next flight. Talk about a short birthday! We boarded our next flight at 5pm Qatar time and got into Bangkok, Thailand at 7am Thailand time. We had a few hours to go out and explore the city. Due to luggage, we had a few volunteers from the squad who stayed back in the airport to watch our stuff, while the rest of us went out to see Bangkok! A few of my friends and I made our way to the closest mall where we got lunch and got our nails done for $8! We had to be back at the Bangkok airport by 3pm to check our luggage once again, and go through security, this time as a full squad of 48 people. This time was not nearly as easy as it had been with just the six of us. The airlines did not want us to fly to Cambodia without already having visas, however we had already arranged to pick up our visas once we landed. This took some time to figure out and caused a little bit of stress but eventually we got everyone through and onto the plane. From here we flew another hour and 30 minutes into Phnom Penh, Cambodia and landed at 8pm Monday night.
We were all exhausted at this point but the travel day was far from over. Being on the logistics team, I was responsible for all 48 members of our squad getting the required visas and customs clearance to enter the country. Thankfully the customs officers were super friendly and helpful towards our group and we were able to obtain all our documents in a smooth manner. From there everyone was able to grab their airporters and make their way out of the airport. Waiting for us was one of our amazing hosts, Sreymom. She helped us to get SIM cards for our team phones, and then helped to arrange transportation to the hostel we would be spending the night in. I had booked the hostel for our squad so I was the first person to arrive and get us all check in. The number of people each room could fit was different than what we originally had booked so on the spot we had to do some rearranging of what our first night of sleeping arrangements would look like but thankfully everyone was super flexible and kind about the last minute changes. From there everyone got to go up to their rooms and start getting ready for bed.
For myself and the rest of the leadership and logistics team however, this was not the case. We went and scoped out a local store where we were able to buy breakfast for the whole squad for the following morning. We also had a quick meeting to discuss what had been going well and what we were needing to do for the next day. Finally we got the opportunity to go to bed around midnight.
The morning came wayyyy too fast but we were all able to get up, pack up and eat breakfast before the bus came to pick us up at 8am on Wednesday morning. We then had a 5 hour bus ride from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap, dropping teams off on our way. In Siem Reap we have a host that was able to house my team for the night. We got to see a little bit of Siem Reap but ultimately had a pretty quiet night. Finally the next day, Wednesday, we were able to take our last van ride to my team's ministry location. This van ride was 2 hours long and it felt so good to finally be in the place we are going to be in for the next 6 weeks! We got a short tour of the church and school that we would be serving in, and then we were shown where my team would get to live! We have air conditioning!!! The biggest blessing!! I’ll keep you guys updated as ministry starts and I get to see what life truly looks like on the field!