Missed yesterday. Woops.

I napped maybe 10-20 minutes that night, woke up, got the taxis all set, Harish gave us one last goodbye, and off to the airport. We had a little bit of trouble with immigration about our stamps, but we got through. I slept almost the entire flight to Addis Ababa, woken up only when my neighbors needed to use the restroom or briefly for food, most of which I didn't eat. I think it was in part because I was so tired, but it did NOT look appetizing. Sat in the airport for a little bit, and then off to Kilimanjaro. Much shorter flight. We got out, had to fill out some medical forms, show our yellow fever vaccination cards, Brenna never got one and they paid a guy $25 for one, the passport guy was pretty friendly (and for some reason excited about my passport, I think), got our baggage, thought we would have to go through customs declaration because “nothing to declare” was closed and then discovered that customs was walking through a door, and met our guy from the tour company. It started raining lightly, we got into the bus, less crammed than the minibus from Sariska, sat in the back, Clay hilariously said “sometimes when I listen to you, I wish I had a choice” (yeah, I deserved it), short ride to Arusha but a long ride through Arusha, and then Center House, a hotel run by the Catholic Church here. We got settled in, my bed was lacking a mosquito net but that got taken care of thanks to Stella and a man whose name I didn't catch, met a very kind, matronly woman named Mother Rose, Denny had some issues with the money again, apparently the sixth time this trip, he's about to kill someone back at Hiram, and time for dinner. We ate at a place called Pepe One with Italian and Indian food. The tables split a handful of pizzas, pastas and fish, all very good, the pizza especially so. Partway through our meal some performers came out and did a show, some acrobatics, some tumbling, a little bit of juggling. A flaming limbo bar, which we all tried to get Allen to go do. They weren't absolutely amazing, but they were perfectly good, although I was impressed by the guy who not only supported his whole body upright with hands on a bench, but switched to supporting himself with only one hand to place bricks under his hands. He later had the bricks vertical and when they fell, caught himself. Some people felt awkward about it, some people just thought it wasn't a very good show, I enjoyed it decently well. After dinner we headed back, Swaffy, Zypy, Brenna, Jacob, Clay and I went to a store and got some water, only 700 each (keep in mind it's 1335 to the dollar). The guy still owed us 100 in change after he gave us most of it and gave us a pack of gum because he ran out, which amused me. We walked back, I had some trouble falling asleep but it wasn't too bad, and here I am now. We leave for the safari this morning, two days out, then we come back and have some time in Arusha.

Tuesday, February 23rd, roughly 8:10-8:20 AM local time