The flight from Kenya to London was about 8.5 hours. We had flown out at 11 pm I believe. The attack had happened right around 12 I believe. So by the time we were walking around the terminal it had been over 20 hours from the start of the attack. We went into a store that sold newspapers. There were about 6 different newspapers. The attack was the front story of several and in pretty much all of them. And then we started seeing our picture in them, seeing the picture of Morgan and Ann. We never expected to be pictured in international newspapers. Again, very surreal.
And then we sat down and the story kept coming up on the news and again we'd see our pictures. And we were still wearing the same clothes that we had been running in. It was just a very strange feeling. The horror of it still hadn't fully set in, but we were definitely jittery - we startled very easy which is not great in such a crowded place were loud noises happen continuously.
Our next flight took us to Washington DC. Our layover here was much longer - about 8 hours. Some of our best friends live in the DC area and were kind enough to pick us up and give us a tour. Both Ryan and I have been to DC before but it was our first time there together, so we were excited. It had been a year or so since we'd last seen our friends (Robert and Shauna Bastian) so we were pretty excited to get to spend some time with them!
When we got in their van we just caught up with them a little, told them a little about our trip. We asked them if they'd heard about the attack. They told us about the attack that had just happened there. Then we told them about how we'd been at the mall. I can't really explain why, but it was kind of hard to tell them. It was hard to tell anyone. Over the past several hours we had talked about the attack a lot. We'd dreamt about it. We'd rehearsed it and tried to make sense of it and compared our memories of it. But telling people that didn't know already, people that cared about us, it was just hard. We had talked about whether we even wanted to tell them. Part of us didn't want to, part of us just wanted to enjoy our time with them and pretend like our life was just what we had always imagined them to be (which doesn't include terrorist attacks.) But we did tell them - and we showed them the newspaper we had bought that we were in. And that was that.
We really enjoyed our time at The National Mall - we still felt anxious and much more cautious than normal, but it was fun. We didn't have a ton of time, and being Sunday we limited our activities more than we normally would, but it was nice. And it was really nice to be out of an airport or airplane.
The first thing we did was go to The Old Post Office Tower - the view is great from there!
We spent the rest of the time just walking around and visiting the memorials.
Back at the airport we decided to call my parents. I knew my parents would want me to call regardless - my mom likes to know when we are home safe. And I knew that she would be even more anxious because of the attack. What I didn't know was that she already knew that we had been at the mall, and so did many people by this point. Ann had sent an email to her family and several of her friends (including my parents) explaining a little of what happened and saying we were safe. It also included our pictures. My mom of course told all my sisters and sent them the email. A few of my sisters are very active on facebook and so posted about it and tagged us in it. And that is how the word spread. The story was out, people knew. My mom sounded fairly calm when I talked to her but my sisters have told me that after receiving the email and up until I called she was very stressed and nervous, so it was good I called. I also got a call from my best friend so I talked to her as well. We also bought 2 more newspapers with our picture.
By the time we got back to Texas it was late - around 10 or 11. Ryan's dad picked us up from the airport. He told us they had been watching all the news coverage about the attack and were so glad we hadn't been there. So we told him we had. He was so distracted by that that he forgot to turn when he was supposed to. And then pretty much the first thing he said when we walked in the door at his house was tell Ryan's mom we'd been there. She was upset. Upset that we'd been there and upset we hadn't told her sooner. I can kind of understand their perspective but the truth is we didn't tell them until we got back out of kindness. We knew that they would just be worried until they actually saw us - so why not wait until they could see we were unharmed to find out how close we had come to being killed. Anyway, we talked about it all for a little while, then went to bed. I so wanted to go into Abby's room and hold her and love her. But she is not the kind of sleeper that you do that to, so I had to content myself with looking at her on our monitor. We didn't sleep great, but we slept.
We got up the next morning as soon as we heard Abby stir. It was so great to hold her. I had missed her SO much. It was the first time I'd been away from her for more than a few hours since that last day in the hospital. It had been such an amazing trip and I'm so glad we had that opportunity, but it was so great to be back with our little girl!
We talked a lot more with Ryan's parents about our experience at the mall. We got to talk a little about the rest of our trip too. One of the really hard things about our trip ending that way was that those few hours of awful so overshadowed our week of amazing. And the amazing was so much nicer to talk about.
Ryan had planned on going into work but couldn't bring himself to do it. We just weren't ready yet. So he typed up a short email explaining what had happened so people could understand why he wasn't going to be in. He sent if to a few people. We spent a few hours at Ryan's parent's then came home. It was nice to be in our own house again - just us, Abby, and Penny.
The next day our interviews started happening and I came to understand anxiety and have so much more compassion for those who suffer with it. It is awful!!!!!! But it is passed now and I pretty much only look back on our time in Kenya with fond memories and happy feelings. Life is beautiful - I'm so grateful for it!
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