En Route to Rwanda: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

The adventure has officially begun! After a 5 hour delay out of Dulles, an 8 hour flight to Dakar, Senegal for refueling (and they wouldn't let us off the plane), and another 7 hour leg to Addis Ababa, we are finally able to have a little rest before the last stretch of our journey to Kigali and eventually Butare tomorrow. Excitement is overpowering my exhaustion at the moment, which is surprising considering the one hour of sleep I got before boarding the plane in D.C. It's been quite a long 24 hour with many unexpected curve balls thrown at us, and despite everything that we've been through we are already managing to have a good time and make friends. I just came upstairs after a free dinner provided to us by the airline after delaying our flight to Kigali for a day. I'm a little disappointed that dinner wasn't traditional ethiopian (injera bread is maybe one of my favorite things in the world), but it was nice to have a real meal after a day of only airplane food. After dinner we hung out in the bar and drank Castel, a traditional ethiopian beer, and made friends with some of the other hotel guests. One man, also stuck overnight on his way to visit his family in Sudan made a point to make sure that we were feeling welcome in Africa. Another, Frank, who we had met earlier at the airport and was on his way to visit his family in a town 6 hours from Kigali sat and chatted with us for a while. He gave us suggestions for things we could do in Kigali before our bus-ride to Butare and answered all the random questions we threw at him. I like that many people have been approaching us in attempt to make us as comfortable as possible...it's a big change from city life in D.C. where people don't dare to even look at each other in passing. We have to wake up at 6:30am tomorrow to catch our bus to the airport so I won't write a long entry tonight. I'm glad to finally be on our way to a month of excitement and experiences unlike anything I have ever encountered. A demain!