We are here!

Muraho!

After two days of traveling, we finally made it to Rwanda! We left Saturday at 3 pm and arrived in Kigali, Rwanda Monday at 8 AM. To keep things brief, let's just say I had some issues with my luggage. Des Moines airport is not on top of things. Kelsey and I were standing on the runway in London jumping up and down and hugging our luggage because we finally found it. DSM forgot to give us luggage tags so they didn't know where our luggage would end up. That was very scary for a while, but Leah was awesome about helping us find the right people to beg. :) Finally we did find it and we identified it on the runway!
I slept about 4 hours on the way to London after I watched one of the in flight movies, Taken! It was good. We toured London all day on Sunday. It was beautiful. We walked to Hyde park, Buckingham Palace where we saw the changing of the guard, we walked to Big Ben, West Minister Abbey, and we saw the London Eye. The weather was perfect, and it didn't rain a drop! We took our next longest flight, about 8 hours, from London to Kenya on Kenya Airways. This was the nicest plane I have ever been on. The plane was so empty that everyone had their own row of seats. However, my arm rest didn't go up so I couldn't lay down. Needless to say, I slept maybe an hour on that flight. We landed in Kenya at 2am Kenya time. I was happy to leave that airport. Then we took two flights to Rwanda. Everyone was worried about what I would eat, but the food on the plane was AWESOME!
We landed in a very cute little airport in Rwanda at around 8AM Rwanda time (2AM US time). Everyone's luggage arrived on time, and we were so very very grateful! Our touring jeeps were waiting outside for us, and all we could do was take pictures. The country is beautiful. Dad, I've only touched my luggage once! I practiced dragging it around for nothing! :)
Our rooms were ready for us when we arrived, and to our surprise we have a tv! Kelsey is watching something on the news as we speak. The rooms are nice. It's not a suite in the Marriott, but it is very upscale for Rwanda. We have two bed, a bathroom, two mosquito nets, a little balcony (we are on the 1st floor so it's not as cool), and everything we need. The water even stays hot through my long shower! I just have to remember NOT to open my mouth. There is a little restaurant that is connected to our hotel and we all had lunch there. Getting used to "African time" is challenging. We waited an hour for our food. I had spaghetti with a meat sauce. I don't know what the meat was, but it was pretty good. They don't have too wild of food. Tonight I had pork chops, with steamed veggies, and french fries (everything is served with "chips" or fries) The pork chops weren't Iowa chops, as in they were tiny, but they tasted really good. I also split some vanilla ice cream with a friend...very good!
After we had lunch, we toured the city in our jeeps. Our drivers are our guides for the next three weeks. They help teach us the language and point out the interesting things we should see. The country is rather strange. At some points, you can really tell that it is developing. There are kids playing with no shoes and people living in huts. On the other hand, you can turn the corner and you will see a bunch of houses that would cost $300,000 in US money. It's strange in that aspect, but otherwise I really like it here. The people just stare at us, but then 90% of them wave, give us a thumbs up, or smile. Some children even chase our jeeps. (Mom Dad and Steph, do you remember the little fish that followed our submarine? I felt like I was in the submarine again!) There are so many people walking around. It is crazy how everyone is working outside, walking, or playing. It rained today, but that didn't ruin our tour.
Everyone here is so nice. We have at least three guards (I've only seen three, there could be more) at our hotel. Kelsey and I were walking back from lunch and this guard chased us down and gave us an umbrella to walk like 15 feet. At the hotel they walk around and carry umbrellas for us. It's very nice, but I feel helpless at times.
The highlight of the day was when we went to the orphanage and introduced ourselves. We could hardly get out of the jeeps before we had children hugging us and holding our hands. We were all a little shocked by this because most children we have interacted with usually take a bit of time to get used to strangers. Not these kids! Some of the older children speak English very well! The younger ones speak their native language, but it is surprising how well you can communicate even with a language barrier. There was a three year old boy named Joshua who came up and took my hand, and then he held up his arms for me to hold and and for the next hour he wouldn't let me let him down! We spun around, flew through the air, he played with my camera (oh my, the kids LOVE our cameras!), and Joshua played with my sunglasses the entire time. He loved my hair! He would just take a hold of it and play with it. It was like he couldn't understand why it was so different. We got some pretty cute pictures. I'm so excited to go back!
We got back to the hotel around 7:30 and ordered our food at 8pm, we got it at 9:15 and we got our ice cream at 9:45.... I miss how fast you can get American food!

We have free Internet, but it is rather slow and our days are very full. I'll blog as much as I can!
Miss you all!

Courtney