Airplane food is pretty good!

Though the British accents surrounding me assure me that I am in a place far from where I grew up, I know that my mind doesn’t fully grasp the fact that I’m ten thousand meters above the ground somewhere between London, England and Nairobi, Kenya.

The flights have gone well, so far. Our first, a three hour flight from St. Louis to JFK in NYC, was a breeze; each of the four of us had our own row, and I found the flight to be very re-energizing. The flight from NYC to London was a bit harder, and none of us got much sleep. We landed in London at 9:30AM local time, and had until 7:15PM before our next flight. With that much time, we decided to take the opportunity to check London out and go into the city. Thanks to the friendly and witty advice from our immigration officer, who upon our asking how much the train costs said with a smile after pointing to herself “Immigration not information.” At that point, she had already recommended we go to Hyde Park to play Frisbee, taking the Piccadilly Line. So that is exactly what we decided to do.

Little did we know, we’d spend the next two hours repacking all of our luggage because Virgin Atlantic has some pretty ridiculous restrictions. We got it all taken care of though, and all of our stuff is flying with us to Nairobi…at least it should be…

Seeing London was great. It was quite surreal. We road the underground to Hyde Park, a 45 minute ride, and walked around for a few minutes before I led us into a pretty ritzy pizza place. When I saw the name “Pizza at the Park,” I figured it’d be a cool little pizza joint. When we walked in and found white table cloths, wine glasses, and fine dining utensils, I regretted steering us in there. We stayed, though, and the pizza was delicious! (And expensive :-/, but so you could expect.)
We are scheduled to land at 6AM, Nairobi time, and I’m hoping to get some sleep before then. I probably only slept for an hour or two last night, and many of you know how much I struggle on little sleep. It sounds like we are going to have a busy time in Nairobi, so hopefully we call can make it. I took some Benadryl after our meal, hoping that it would help knock me out, and just as I wrote that, I yawned, so things are looking good. I’ve only been traveling for a day and a half, but already I’m so excited to sleep in a bed! The yawns keep coming, so I’m going to try to catch the sleep train. Next post will probably be from Malawi!

P.S.-All these travels are inspiring some cool thoughts in my head. Unfortunately, they probably aren’t as articulate as if I were well rested, and I’m definitely going to struggle to recall them, but hopefully, I can post some good reflections when I’m a little more rested. Hoping for some peacefully dreaming!