Off To See The World July 2- 3, 2020

Well… This is the beginning of a wonderful, exciting and scary adventure so, I guess I’ll just start at the beginning. 

July 2, 2020

At 4:30 am the alarms go off in the hotel room where 12 of the 13 Francis family members are staying. (Emma is in Hungary.) We all got up, put on our clothes, and did some last-minute packing. About 4:45 we left our rooms and headed down to the bus that would take us to the airport with our 22 suitcases. As we loaded the bus Ben and Dani said goodbye. There were lots of tears because it would be the last time to see them in person for a long while. 

Our family was the only one on the bus because we took up the entire thing. Sam and Sariah were also there to help us. 

When we got to the airport, we unloaded the suitcases and hauled them into the airport. Sixteen of the suitcases were loaded as baggage and each person had one carry on plus a backpack. This was when we said goodbye to Sam and Sariah. There were many, many more tears. 

Security was pretty smooth, but we did have a lot of stuff to load back into every body’s backpacks. With all eight of us, we definitely made a scene. 

The first plane ride was as normal as it could get for a plane ride during Covid. There was a seat in-between each person and you had to wear your mask the entire time. One of the plane attendants gave us a bag of treats for our journey. 

When we landed in Seattle, we made it off safely.  We stopped at a McDonalds for lunch and then took an underground subway to get to the international terminal.  

As soon as we got off things started to become less and less American. Every person waiting to get on the plane was Japanese. All. Of. Them. We were the only Americans there and there were eight of us. I’m pretty sure the only reason why the intercom explained the instructions in BOTH Japanese and English, was because we were there.

The second plane ride was about 10 hours and more exciting at the beginning and the end than in the middle. (You can probably guess why.) Hardly anybody was on the plane and it was less empty then the first. Like I said, we were the people to stare at. If you turned any direction you were sure to lock eyes with someone. All of the plane attendants were really nice to us and one of them even baked us Chocolate chip cookies. Like four times. 

Luckily, since the plane was so empty, we had as many window seats as we wanted! Four window seats, and then buddies sat next to each other. Mama and Papa sat in the center section where they could easily reach all of us from the aisle. It was pretty exciting.

Nico, Autumn, Avi, and Eli enjoyed watching movies on the little TV’s. They also slept and played with things from the bag our Aunt Debra and Uncle Tom gave to us. Baden and I did the same, but we also took lots of pictures of the beautiful view. 

When we first landed, we waited on the plane for the Covid team to allow us to get off and then we were hustled into a room with the rest of the passengers. The first passengers off walked all the way to the back of the room to sit down. All the Japanese people were very polite especially to us. I’m not sure if it was because we were the only family or because we were American. Or both. 

We sat on seats that read, “Priority” which meant that we would be first. After a few minutes of waiting and listening to some Japanese instruction, we walked down a hall to the “Covid Testing”. This was the part that we were most nervous for. All eight of us had to be tested and there were many tears from the youngest four but thankfully we had a very nice nurse who helped us through it. Once we finished, we went through Immigration, which took some time. The Japanese people have lots of paperwork and they write everything by hand. Then, we headed down a long hallway to turn down a second really long hallway. At the end of the walking we were stopped by customs. We all said a small prayer in our heart that they would let us through. 

Finally! After some explanations about why we were coming and why we didn’t have our military ID’s… they let us in! Papa and Mama both gave each other a huge hug. It was a miracle! That was where Papa was stopped four months ago when he tried to fly to Japan. He was so grateful to be on the other side of customs with our family.

The last thing we needed to do was to get our luggage. Some nice Japanese Security men loaded it onto four big carts and helped us get to the main airport. They had really big smiles behind their masks and were probably laughing at us. We were so thankful for their help. We all held our breath as we walked out just to make sure we would really make it. 

We did! We made it! We walked through the final gate and saw a big sign that said, “Tokyo 2020” for the cancelled Olympic games. As soon as we came through the gate we all just started cheering and jumping up and down, especially Mama. She said, “I’m in Japan with my family!” She wanted to show us everything and tell us everything at once, but mostly we were all just so grateful to be safely in Japan! A day, a night, and a day of miracles.