Operation Honor: May 28th

May 28th:

Greetings from three very tired Grants in Nancy, France!!!

Operation Honor continues! Even though we are extraordinarily exhausted (I think we've slept about 6 hours in the last 65 hours), this has been a surreal journey even in the few days we've been gone! God has been so faithful to get us through the jet lag, mistakes, and foreign navigation, and we are ready to collapse into bed (in our 10x20 hotel room). It's only 3:45 at home, but 12:40 a.m. here...as this is our fourth time change so far, our internal clocks are so confused. :o) To keep our chins from hitting our chests and to keep poor Dad awake, us girls spent some of our 4 hour drive making up random phone calls to each other, doing song improvisations, and practicing accents.

Our travel schedule has kept us busy, excited, and completely lacking sleep. May 28^th was a day of travel…we departed the Philadelphia International Airport at 10 PM on May 27^th and flew 6 hours to Dublin, Ireland, arriving at 8:20. Thank you, time changes! Despite valiant attempts to sleep on the plane, we were unsuccessful, so we arrived at Dublin feeling pretty tired. We passed through security and customs (which was magically a thousand times more pleasant since the workers had such charming accents!) and then tried to fall asleep while in our airport chairs. No chance! We departed for Paris, arriving at the Charles de Gaulle Airport around 5:00 PM.

That evening, we had a three hour drive to the small French town Nancy. Although fairly obscure before 1944, Nancy became an important part of the war when it was selected as the location for the building of a bridge to transport troops and vehicles closer to Germany; engineers under the command of Colonel McCollam were to construct a crossing point for the allied troops. 

It was a neat experience to be in the place where we knew Papa had been- we were even able to drive over a bridge across the river (same one he would have built the bridge across in 1944), which was wonderful. Thanks to our GPS, which was giving us some…ahem…interesting…turns, we didn't arrive in Nancy until 11:00 PM. We stayed in a tiny hotel room that evening, and since we had an early check-out limit, we decided to get to bed as fast as we could. Unfortunately, since we were greatly fatigued and jet-lagged, we accidentally overslept.  Whoops! We woke up at 10:35 (we needed to be gone between 10:45 and 11:00) and made as hasty an exit as we possibly could, brushing our hair and teeth as we ran out the door. J We then made our five hour drive into southern Germany, where we would see Neuchwanstein Castle!

Thank you to all for your continued prayers for our safety...