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As I write this, I'm staring out the window high up in the sky through beautiful, sunny, clear skies, down on the Sahara Desert below. We got into Brussels ahead of schedule but needed all the time we could get to navigate through the confusing airport in time to reach our next flight: to Kigali! I've gotten to sleep some on the flights but now I'm awake, enjoying the view and trying to get some work done, including starting to design the graduation certificates for both the girls' & boys' camps. We should land in about 4 hours and I'm still very excited.
--later--
As we came in for a landing and the beautiful moon came out, I was telling Kim what to expect and I realized something, I felt more like I was coming back, almost like I was coming to another home, instead of venturing to a foreign land. It was a comforting deja vu feeling as landed and walked into one of the smallest airports I've ever been to. And at the same time so nice to have someone there that was seeing it all for the first time to remind me to appreciate and it and enable me to see it again for the first time through her eyes, her responses.
In the airport, we met up with Willa Shalit, an incredible woman whom I have been fortunate to get to know on my trip last year and through my work, (she's the CEO of the vendor that runs the Path to Peace program.) She is heavily involved in the Hope Shines Foundation and I had introduced her to Kim on the flight to Brussels. We also met "H", another volunteer. H apparently was sitting behind Mrs. McCain on the flight!! (Apparently she's here working on an AIDS thing.)
As we waited for our bags, it became quite crowded around the luggage conveyor belt (there was only one for the whole airport since the other one was broken.) When our bags finally came, it was impossible to get through to get the bag. After watching my first bag circle a few times, I basically hurled my body through the crowd at the bag. This did not turn out so well. One foot on the conveyor belt turned out to be a bad idea as it continued to move and move me with it as I fell off into the crowd, but I got my bag! Haha, whoops.
We had a few people waiting for us to take us to our hotels and it was great catching up with some people I had met last year on the way to the hotel. We are staying where we did last year, Hôtel des Mille Collines, (which you might have heard of as the hotel that the movie "Hotel Rwanda" is based on.) Once we got to the hotel, Kim and I checked into our hotel room that we are sharing with April, I started the blog, and fell fast asleep.
