Travel Accounts

In the last 24 hours, which seems like 32 hours because of the time changes, I've been through 3 airports, flew over hundreds of miles of ocean, hundreds of miles of desert, and hundreds of miles of who knows what else (well, I could be a bio geek and say some of what else: temperate deciduous forest, chapparel, savannah, desert riparian zone, tropical grassland).

I saw probably tens of thousands of people (and one cat), and overheard 3 identifiable languages that are not English (German, French, Swahili. There was also a Scottish stewardess on the plane who had a very heavy brogue and was mocked constantly by the other stewardess). I was chatted up (briefly, thankfully) by 1 drunk air passenger with 0 hairs on his head but 2 very thick muttonchops, who was going to Tanzania but had gotten 0 shots. Also, I accidentally took candy from 1 stranger (the guy who sat in front of me offered pieces of gum to everyone around, and I took it before I realized that what I just did was a cardinal sin).

I checked 46 kg of luggage, saw 5 in-flight movies, lost 0 items, and only freaked out because I thought I had lost my passport once.

Tomorrow, I'll be on a 3-hour drive up to the research center, and then we actually start learning stuff!

I put up new photos- they were taken from my (business class! I lucked out!) window seat on the plane ride from London to Nairobi. I tended to favor shots of coasts because it was easier to tell where we were (I was also helped by the cool little journey tracker screen BA has on the backs of all the chairs.
The first is off the coast of France, the second might be Paris, the third is the Alps, the fourth some island off the coast of Italy, the fifth is the first sight of Africa, and the last four are all just shots over the Sahara. The polka-dots are circles of irrigated land. It got dark before I could get any shots of non-Saharan Africa, but I did include a picture of the sunset.

Now, I'm going to sleep.

So You're Running Away to Africa...

...will you be blogging about it?

It's a travel blog. I'll try to post photo albums weekly, and publish entries more frequently than that. We'll see how that goes... 'nuff said.

Right now I am not traveling, I am still on campus hurriedly preparing to leave, which is to say, sleeping a lot and watching all of the internet TV I can before I lose the amazingly high-speed University wireless. I'm also reviewing the Swahili I learned last year (off the top of my head, I can only remember how to say I come from California and I like to go to the Wawa), and getting really excited about the crazy animals in my Behavior Guide to African Mammals. Civit? Tree Hyrax? Aardwolf? Awesome!

I'll be flying out on Friday, and may update around Sunday. Until then, I won't really have anything substantial to say about anything other than New Jersey weather or British Airways, and that's not what you all come here for.