On the plane -

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

I’m currently on the plane from Amsterdam to Kilimanjaro - of course this won’t be posted until I find some internet access but at least I’m getting something down and out of my head.

The flights have gone rather well so far. I’m about 5 hours into the Amsterdam-Kilimanjaro leg with about three more to go. This flight left exactly on time this morning (ugh - I can’t believe or understand how it was morning then). According to the plane GPS we are currently over Africa, west of Aswan, Egypt by my best guess. Crazy.

The flight from Dulles was delayed over an hour and a half last night, so basically I “ranwalked” to my departure gate on the other side of the Amsterdam airport. I have to admit I’m not too terribly impressed by the airport - seemed rather small and cramped. On top of that, I had to go through a complete security check again. That’s the way it goes I guess.

I’ve met some nice people on both flights so far - very friendly and very willing to share whatever information they could about Tanzania and Kilimanjaro in particular. The more people talk about it, the more anxious I am to get there.

I’m trying to do some more prepping for the classes I’ll be teaching but I’m finding it tough to concentrate while on the plane. I never really could read while riding in a car and I think this might be similar.

About the biggest problems so far are the lack of communication back home (had to spend $2.50 US to send an email home from the plane to let my family know I was still in one piece), and the fact that for some reason my nose and mouth have been completely drying out on these flights. There are no air vents on these planes, like you might find on domestic flights and I think they keep the air super-dry on purpose. I’m not complaining about that much, because I prefer the air inside the plane to be dry rather than humid and stinky. The problem however is that with dry air, when I fall asleep I tend to snore - and I think I’ve *really* been snoring. I was wearing noise-reduction headphones earlier and woke myself up snoring - I’m afraid that’s pretty loud...

Ha - I just noticed the clock on my computer reads 9:50 AM on January 6th - yeah, right. In Kilimanjaro it is currently 5:50 PM on the 6th. Oh, this jet lag is going to be fun.