Back home

My how time flies when you are busy and somehow it still flies when you are not. It has been almost a week since last I wrote, hard to believe because it doesn't seem that long ago. Continuing on with the story from the mountains we had another early start. This was needed so that we could get everyone and everything back to base by 1:00 on that Tuesday. This sounds relatively easy but in reality getting 57 people back "home" with all stuff, all cleaned, all put away, was not any easy task, but rather a difficult one. This required extra effort from people who walked a couple of hours, some who walked for 4 hours and then the crew who returned without walking only to clean for hours. Either way it was tough, there was no way of getting around it, by the time we all returned (all did return safely!) we were spent, physically and emotionally. The debriefing time was as good as can be when you are spent, and to be honest the reality of flying home the next didn't sound so bad at that point. Sure we had had a beautiful time, life changing, life giving and blow your socks off, but coming back to Oxford was not a bad deal either. After settling in for the evening at about 1:00 I was up again at 6 ready to go to the airport. Waiting, flying, waiting, walking, riding, riding (you know the drill) and then we were home. Getting all the home seems like a big deal, once you arrive at the airport you say "we're here" whilst that has some truth the reality you are at the airport. For us that meant a 2 1/2 hour bus ride and the hailing a taxi, dealing with our rucksacks and then unloading once home. I might sound melodramadic about the whole thing, it really isn't that bad, its just when you are tired that the whole travel experience seems compounded. To say the least we enjoyed a couple of days of next to nothing here in Oxford. Relaxation, catching up some, sleeping, etc... and then life was back to somewhat normal, if one can call it that. later
earl