Madness ensued from the minute the plane touched down! Jonathan was having "tummy troubles" in the last few minutes of the flight and let's just say an airplane bathroom in descent was not the place to take care of it =) As soon as the door opens, I told him to run and take care of his needs and I would wait for him outside the men's room. Well, he was quite ill and it took quite awhile, so I just sat there reading a book. A man in a customs uniform approaches me and I explain the situation to him and got a reaction I did not anticipate; he made me go yell to get Jonathan out of the bathroom. Then, he starts asking me 1,001 questions about where we came from and where we were going. I am so jet-lagged and so oblivious that I had no idea at what he was driving at; I couldn't figure out for the life of me why he kept asking about being in South America or Africa. Then, it clicked. He thought that we were drug smugglers and Jon's tummy troubles involved balloons filled with illegal substances! What a great foot to start off on!
We made it through immigration & customs with no problems, thank goodness. Most of you know I had troubles with my visa / passport right before leaving; all that worry was for nothing! When we walk through the International Arrivals gate, we don't see a driver with our name. We wait, and wait, and wait and no one shows from the hospital to pick us up. So, we go buy a Vodafone Prepaid Cell Phone Sim Card two terminals away and when we call to activate it, you need a valid address that we did not have at that point. So, we go to buy a traditional calling card, and apparently in the day and age of cell phones, they are few and far between. Thank goodness, we met a lovely Kiwi woman named Isabella, who let us use her cell phone. She made us promise that we would "Pay it forward," while we were here.
Jonathan finally got in touch with someone from the hospital and the lack of a ride was a miscommunication. So, we showered in the aiport and hopped in a Maxi and set off for Nambour Hospital.
We arrived in Nambour at our lovely temporary housing, pleasantly surprised (and a little bit relieved at how nice it is!) It's a lovely two bedroom townhouse directly behind the hospital. We were met by the property manager, Ian, who is a lovely bloke. He got us settled and advised us where we could get some basic groceries for breakfast. (Nambour is a sleepy town to say the least! We walked down the Main Street for 20 minutes before we found a place to buy milk & eggs and only saw 4 people!)
But, we did find Domino's! After ordering pizza, we settled in, watched all 5 of our television channels & called it a night. We very happy to be here and so excited about our new adventure!
