The funniest thing so far on the flight is that the stewardesses are all convinced that Joe (my Direct Relief colleague traveling with me and the guy in the picture in the last post) is the actor from the movie "Sweet Home Alabama." Definitely going to have to IMBD that when we land.
We've already met a bunch of other folks on the flight going over to help out. A US Air pilot from NYC, some other docs from LA. Nobody is entirely sure what to expect or what they are going to be doing once they arrive. We are all anxiously glancing over SitReps and maps and pressing each other for any new info.
Already, the generosity from some of the Philippinos we've met has been amazing...and we haven't even arrived. After the alarm bells stopped ringing and TSA had finished frisking me because I accidentally put a pocket knife in a checked bag that they told me to just carry on, the TSA agent (a Filipino) escorted me back to the check in counter where the manager (a Filipino) took the knife and told me to call him when I landed back in LA. But when we were boarding the plane, he met me on the jet bridge, gave me the knife, and they checked the bag below so I'd have it on arrival. Thankfully, now Ill still be able to open all the cans of tuna I packed with my sweet corkscrew...
The hard part about packing for this trip is that we really don't know what to expect when we get there. I have a suit for potential high level meetings in Manila and in another bag I have a pound of trail mix, tuna, MREs, water filtration systems, a sleeping bag, GPS locators, and some bug spray with 100% deet that my dad gave me and I think is illegal in the US cause it might actually just burn your face off.
Gonna be interesting...
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