The Journey

I don't know how long you have sat on an airplane, but Roxy and I just spent approximately 3 days on one. Ok more like one day, but it felt like longer.

I left from good ol' KC which meant I needed to head down to Houston to meet up with Frox before heading to Amsterdam and then Kilimanjaro. This all would have gone swimmingly if United Airlines had decided to put my bag on my plane. Needless to say the panic level was high when I arrived in Houston with only one bag, of course the less important one. Lucky for me and Roxy we have pretty cool, helpful parents and between the four of them and us we managed to find the bag and get it onto my flight to Amsterdam. I would elaborate more on how this happened but truly I have no idea. I think it had something to do with magic.

So for your viewing pleasure I took this picture of our airplane in Houston.

When we arrived at Schipol, AMS we thought we had wandered into an Apple computer. Everything was very white and shiny and modern. Oh, and there were a lot of tulips. Lots and lots of tulips. That short transfer was uneventful except for the lady on the people mover whose shoelace got stuck, causing her to fall and squish the baby she was carrying. I think it was pretty ok, it was a little upset because it was smashed, but we think it was ok. Anyways she was swarmed by really helpful, really blonde KLM employees shortly.

So then we fell asleep for a little while and then many many hours later we were making our final decent! Landing gear was down, the lights of the runway were in sight and just before we touched down we rocketed back up into the air. Now, I'm no pilot, but I was aware that this was odd. Turns out there was another plane chilling on our runway and either our pilots didn't know about it or hoped he would move? Not 100% on that.

On attempt number two we landed (hooray) and this is Roxy on the tarmac, very happy to no longer be on a plane. 

After about an hour of waiting at customs for our visas we made it through and found Joel, a nice Swiss who manages the hostel. He grabbed us and our bags, threw us into a cab (thanks Juma!) and we drove into the lovely, starry night. Seriously the air here is alarmingly clean, and there are lots more stars than we have in Houston. Twenty minutes later we pulled into Hostel Hoff and were mobbed by friendly dogs and other volunteers.

This morning we went on a tour of the town with Mary, who knows everything about Moshi and ate goat for lunch. Its pretty good, quite sweet actually. The town is awesome, sort of everything you would want in an African city, crazy drivers, street vendors, row after row of amazing shops, bizarre restaurants and some gorgeous weather. So tomorrow we start at the clinic and I can't wait to post about that. Later! M.