January 9th--

Heathrow London Airport

I was going to write that Thursday was becoming a long day, as I'm still 10 hours away from my destination but since it's already 8:42 am on Friday (london time) I don't think that I can write that. Technically speaking I had a really short Thursday. The time change between Chicago and London is 6 hours, Colorado is 7 (yay logic). And Nairobi is 3 hours ahead of London so I'm losing some time. I'll have a good amount of time on my way back though.

I have determined that someday I will end up living over here (over here being London at the moment). I love their accents, and well, there are some really interesting people. And I want to explore the countryside. I figure that it's as good of a reason as any to move somewhere, at least for a short period of time.

So, latest update on interesting people: on the 6.5 hr flight from Chicago to London, I sat next to this girl from Texas who is a nanny for a missionary family in Israel. She's been over there 6 times, and stays for 3 months at a time. It's apparently been a really interesting existence. Wow...interesting... yup done using that word, 3 times in 2 paragraphs is a little much. Lets try for some diversity of language...like something else.

8 hours later.

I'm on my final flight now. We were delayed for 4 hours at the gate, due to a security concern involving someone's luggage. I don't exactly know what happened, I napped through the delay. I think that I'm fine on the whole jet lag front, seeing as I don't sleep generally, this is just aiding me in the process of not sleeping. The stars are beautiful from the window of the airplane. The moon is full, and the stars glitter through my little porthole happily. Because of the delay on the flight, I may have some issues meeting up with the people at the airport, and I have no idea where I'm staying...other than I think it's somewhere on the Southside of Nairobi. Which amused me immensely when I heard from the program coordinator. I could be making that up however, and have my directions completely confused.

One thing that is absolutely fantastic about British Airlines is they serve wine with their meals. No surcharge, no ID check. It was fantastic. Granted, the wine wasn't all that amazing, it was actually rather mediocre, but I still smirked my way through a small bottle at dinner with my travel companion.

So, backtracking: this is one small small world. I was at O'hare, groggily minding my own business, attempting to aquire something that faintly resembled food, when this obnoxiously loud group of students came by much too happy for my state of tiredness. I kinda glanced at them, judged them and damned their glee an lack of travelwear, when I saw a face that looked familiar. I did a double take, and turned out to be a friend of my sister's best friend from elementary school in Minnesota (Rachel) who goes to Loyola, who I had met randomly when Rachel, her friend and I all accidentally bought the same megabus tickets to & from St. Paul at the end of last January. The two of us had a nice little...'holy crap, are you serious' moment, I didn't remember her name (I still don't know it...), but thankfully, she didn't' remember mine. We chatted it up for a little while. It turns out that she's spending the semester in Rome, studying journalism. Yay random encounters with quasi acquaintances.

Also at O'hare, there was this man from Milan, and we started talking. It was a really zun conversation, because I don't speak Italian, and he didn't speak very good English, but we were still able to eke out a general understanding. The conversation was along the general lines of the environment, and how the cars in the States are so far behind their time. There are so many different innovative vehicles that are used all over the world, yet travelers come here, and they see so few of them, and the ones that they do see are retrofitted in a manner that reduces their gas milage. Smart Cars being one example he used.

Anyways, low battery. Hopefully I make it to my place of abode without too many problems tonight.

Peace and love,
-Ellie/Gabi