I’ve talked about Ehtiopia before, but I finally got around to going through a bunch more of the pictures I took while I was there, and it’s made me all nostalgic and whatnot.
So, here’s some photos with stories attached to them. Enjoy!
First and foremost, for those of you who want the penny-a-word version, the trip was great. So, if you want to stop there, you can, I guess, but remember: I know where you live. Is he kidding? I don’t know!
First off, despite how jokingly you’ve used the phrase “Africa is far away,” Africa really is far away. Total travel time was approximately 26 hours each way. On the way there, I was awake for most of that because, well, I’m fat, and I find airplanes to be exceedingly uncomfortable. It didn’t really help that I was all a-jitter for the adventure ahead of us. The weirdest thing on the flight from Dallas to Frankfurt had to be flying into the sunset, and a few hours later, flying into the sunrise. I mean, sure, I’ve stayed up all night, and I’ve even watched the sun rise, but doing so in a plane was just a little surreal, especially considering that “night” only lasted a couple of hours.
Anyway, in Frankfurt, three of us got bumped up to Lufthansa business class, which rocked. Seats that recline all the way back, choosing the movie or whatever to watch, ahh. Bliss. Truly.
When we finally landed in Addis, we were all tired, but we had to go through customs and get our visas and all that fun stuff, but that was all relatively smooth. When we got out of the airport, it had been just over 26 hours since we had all met in Dallas. What a day that had been, but we were able to have one final adventure that day, however. When we got to the hotel, we were met by, or I should say we interrupted, a grand gathering, about 30-40 men were crowded into the lobby of our hotel watching the soccer game on the 15 or 20 inch TV they had there. The rancor grew silent as we came trudging in, 7 white college students, each carrying two large bags (one of personal effects and one of supplies). Amid the stares, we were quickly funneled upstairs to our rooms, where we each collapsed for the night.
The real adventure would, like the rest of this story, have to wait until tomorrow.
NaBloPoMo Entry #7
those are fantastic pictures.
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i love the time-lapse pic… very nice! and i can’t believe how far the “africa’s far away” line got lol. and to think that i started it at letu…
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Very special pictures. And it feels like this is going to be a great story. I’ll settle in and look forward to more.
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Yeah, I skipped most of the words in the middle (time crunch this morning) and just smiled at the pretty pictures. Good job, Brain.
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Jake: Thanks! There are more to come!
Sethly: You started that? I had no idea.
Jamie: I’ll be doing telling this one for a few days, so I hope I can keep your interest!
Rachelskirts: That makes me sad, then it makes me happy. The pictures are better than the words anyways.
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I know I’ve already told you this, but I really love the time lapse stars picture. Pretty, pretty.
Also, I’m pretty sure your 26 hours travel time beats this, but my entire flight from Chicago, I had this crazy guy sitting to my left asking me for gum ever 2.5 minutes. I kid you not, every two and a half minutes was, “Hey, do you have any gum? I want some gum.” So, uh, yes. That has no relevance whatsoever, but I thought you might like to know.
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