Well all... We made it!
I’m writing this from the airport in Nairobi, Kenya, I have no internet here, but I do have a few moments to write down what my last two days have been like. That probably means that this was written hours ago and by the time you read this, I’ll already be in Kigali.
Our trip started on a very uneventful half hour or so delay. Not much to say about that... Had a decent flight from Toronto to Paris, sat beside some pretty cool brothers from LA on their way to an Epic backpacking tour... but that’s their story, not mine... The flight was long, boring and like usual, I didn’t sleep AT ALL! We got to Paris at around 9 am, so at this point in time I was still pretty awake actually, seeing as how if I was working that night I’d still be up and at work for another 6 hours. Once we got to the airport we fumbled our way around the airport, found an information desk, bought a day pass to the train and Metro and we were on our way out in to Grand Ol’ Paris!
We had a pretty awesome first day in Paris. We’ll be stopping for 2 days on the way home, so we didn’t feel that we needed to cram a crap load of things in to our 10 hour layover. We jumped on the train and headed in to the center of the city, transferred on to the Metro line, with the help of a very helpful and short French guy after wandering around the Notre Dame Metro station for about 10-15 minutes and then we jumped on our Metro to the Eifel Tower! Once we got out of the Metro and started heading towards the tower we found out something that would be a giant thorn in our sides the whole day... It was HOT! 36+ degrees!! AND...we were wandering around with all of carry-on bags. Let me tell you... by the end of the day we were NOT a group of people you wanted to walk downwind from!! But anyways, other than the fact that we were melting, we meandered our way over to the tower, did the usual pictures and ooohhing and awwwwwing about it... and then we took a nap. Well, some of us did... I didn’t. We pretty much just hung out at the Eifel Tower for about 2.5 hours in the shade, not wanting to move. It was pretty sweet. AND We got BAGUETTES!! (insert stereotypical French laugh) After lounging in the shadow of the Eifel Tower for a few hours, eating baguettes, napping and people watching we decided to drag ourselves out of the shade, back in to the heat of mid-day and jump back on to the Metro to head back towards Notre Dame.
Once we got to Notre Dame, again we did the typical ooohhing and awwwwing and the pictures thing. We wandered through the church, which was actually Very cool. A lot of very detailed stained glass, paintings and everything else you’ll find in an old European Catholic church. We looked in to climbing the towers, but it turned out that we wouldn’t have had enough time, and if you’re not a member of the EU it costs a tone of money, as opposed to free if you’re European. After going through the church and doing the whole tourist at Notre Dame thing, we wandered over to a park across the street and... crashed in the shade again for another substantial amount of time. After hanging out there for a while and bathing ourselves at a public water tap we split up a bit. 2 of the team members headed back to the airport for a break from the heat and the other 7 of us decided to take a wander up the river along the banks beside Notre Dame. After walking for a while, we decided to once again, lounge in the shadow of another great Paris landmark and have a glass of wine on a river boat turned piano lounge.
After hanging out there for a while, we realized that we were pushing it close for time, jumped back on the Metro and made it back to the airport, found our check-in, gate, other team members and all that jazz and had about 15-20 minutes to relax before boarding the next flight.
As with the first flight, the over night flight from Paris to Nairobi was nothing special. I met a Catholic Priest who worked in CAR (Central African Republic) for 26 years as the head of a school just outside of the capital who was heading in to Nairobi for a leadership conference. Really nice guy, hard to talk with but I got to practice my French a bit more and he got to practice his English. Once again, I did not get any more than maybe 2 minutes of nodding off before being woken up for the meal... and that was the last of that. Nothing else really to say... we landed in Nairobi and 5:30 am local time, I’m sitting at the gate right now, writing to you, waiting to board the plane in the next half hour to finally get to Kigali!
Well, I think that about sums up what my travels in to Paris and Africa so far have been... Thanks for reading! I hope to hear from some of you throughout the next 6 weeks!! Keep checking in... I’ll have fairly regular internet access and will probably end up writing in the evenings before I go to sleep and then posting the next day when we hit a wireless connection. I’ll FINALLY be back in Rwanda in about 2 hours!! (which is actually hours ago, remember, I won’t be posting this until I get internet access after landing and settling in to our guest house...) I’m So Excited!!! GAHHHHHH!!!
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