cattle drive

I had the best night's sleep in over a week, got my Via and TJ's soy creamer, a little Top Chef All-Stars on the TV, and I feel like a new woman. So driving on with our story:

So if you watched the videos in the previous posts, both my version and the MSNBC coverage, you can see that the airport was swarming with people. When the buses pulled up, we were unloaded into lines by bus. We were bus #2 so we all parked ourselves and our luggage on the sidewalk and waited for someone to tell us what to do next.

Like all good evacuations, this one had some food. The boys broke out the MREs while we were waiting to find out which flight we'd be assigned to. I snaked some of the cheese and crackers -- my favorite part.

Baby and I caught a nap until we were given numbers assigning us to a flight to Athens, Greece. Then we were allowed inside the terminal to wait in another line. The other possible destinations were Turkey and Cypress.

Josh saying goodbye to one of our Egyptian friends. I pulled out the video camera because when he started talking in Arabic, the woman you see at the edge of the frame turned to stare at him, eyes and mouth wide open. By the time I started filming she was trying to be less obvious and wasn't staring straight at him anymore.

The line through security fed from two sides. Half of the flight had to be American civilians, the other half could be embassy families. So they'd take a group from the tourist line and then take a group from the embassy line. Once all the people for our flight made it through security, then we waited in another line to have our passports stamped. Camille was fantastic the entire time.

Post passport check, waiting in the holding pen for the shuttle to take us to the plane. I think this is where I started mooing.

Yea, we finally made it on the shuttle. To give you a sense of how long this took, we arrived at the airport around 1 or 1:30 and our flight didn't actually take off until almost 7pm. We spent the entire 6 hours in line, moving inches at a time.

We were on the last shuttle bus -- Carter making sure we all got on the flight.

And then to kill time on the flight we just took lots of pictures of each other. It was a regular commercial-looking plane, but no TV, no movies, and a tiny snack.

But good things were waiting for us in Athens . . .