March 20, 2010; 4.57 CST
I will soon land in London. I left North American soil over five hours ago and it was a slightly surreal experience. This is my first transatlantic flight – it’s my first time off-continent in any direction, actually, but the transatlantic thing seems to have something important about it. I am landing in John’s home country, if not home city, and I wonder if I will at all feel like I belong. (Although I’m not sure I want to belong in Heathrow, but you get the point.)
I have a window seat on this flight, and if I look out my window I can see water. I don’t think it’s the Atlantic, but the strait between Ireland and England/Scotland. Alas, it was dark when we crossed the Atlantic, or else too early for me to open my window and not drive everyone else mad: I would have liked to see it – but I think our flight home is a day flight so I will see it then if it is not cloudy. Oh! It is supposed to be cloudy when we land. I am excited if only because the London stereotype is holding true. There is also the fact that I love rain and clouds.
I don’t remember exactly how long we stay in London before boarding to go to Nairobi (ach, another 8-hour flight – although this one was supposed to be seven hours and looks like it will only take six: the wind is in our favour), but I am really excited to be in London at all. I would like to come back just to go to London, whether on my own, or with John, or with my family or with friends, it doesn’t matter. (There will be a side trip to Cardiff, but I think that one may have to be with John. Or Jess.)
Must remember to take my first malaria pill in half an hour (exactly: it’s five o’clock now). That might be interesting, because we might be landing before then … I can’t exactly tell what the pilot is saying over the intercom, but I’m pretty sure it had something to do with landing and soon. Which I knew already, but I’d like to know more specifically … I wish my little screen was working properly: I put it on auto-map when I got on the plane and it got stuck on that, and now it’s not updating and says I’m still out in the middle of the Atlantic (about halfway north-south between Porcupine Coast and Porcupine Plain (sub-oceanic features – I wonder who names these. Why porcupine?)), which I’m fairly certain isn’t true because I haven’t moved in quite some time according to the map, and also I know we went over some land and the only land in the path before England was Ireland, so by reason it must be Ireland we passed over. Hooray for logic. Also it feels like we are not over the Atlantic anymore, if that makes any sense (hint: no).
It is interesting to see the horizon made out of clouds instead of land. I think I notice that every time I fly places … the cloudscape looks like a landscape, all hilly and ridged and fluffy. If clouds were really fluffy and would support one’s weight, like in cartoons, I’d love to play around in them. They look fun. Of course I would have to be rather careful not to fall.
There is a thin line of clouds just above the horizon that looks a bit like a jet’s tail. Perhaps it is, but I don’t see a jet. I will take a picture. 
There is some frost on my window, but there is no ice nor gremlins nor US presidents on the wings, which I also took a picture of.
This is a very big plane, and I am only in the first little bit of it. Flying to Nairobi I will be on an even bigger plane, and the thought of very big planes is a sort of odd thought for me. I’m not quite sure why yet. I have been in or on very big machines/vehicles before, I believe. And it isn’t like I haven’t flown in planes. But the farthest I’ve been by plane is Vancouver, I think, and the plane was not this big. Not even to Washington was it this big.
The stewardess, for fear of sounding critical, doesn’t seem to be having a very good flight. She has been falsely happy and has seemed faintly judgmental every single time she has passed by. I’d wonder if maybe it were just me, but she seems to be that way with everyone. It’s too bad, really. I wonder if anything is wrong or if she is just having a bad day, or what.
Ah, now there is no line on the horizon. It is all blurred. I suppose I will take a picture of that, too. 
It is nice to have my laptop to unload pictures onto, with which I can illustrate this later. My seatmate must think I’m mad, picking up my camera every few minutes and taking a picture out the window. Ooooh, clouds. Heh. I like clouds. Carol-Anne is sitting behind me, but I think she knows me well enough to know that I do strange things and that’s okay with her, which is nice.
The air pressure is changing; my ears are starting to pop. They do that a little bit the whole time during any flight, but once we’re at cruising altitude it isn’t as bad. Takeoff and landing are, predictably and sensibly, not fun. It doesn’t help that I can’t hear brilliantly to begin with. I wonder how that will affect me in Rwanda. I may be constantly yawning or swallowing to equalize the pressure in my middle ear. It is, after all, the Land of a Thousand Hills.
If the air pressure is changing, does that mean we’re landing? Seems like an obvious question. Yes, I think we are descending, because there it goes again and this time it felt like we went down, too. Perhaps I shall down my pill now since I just had breakfast. That should do. I’m supposed to have it with food, and 5.15 is close enough to 5.30, is it not? If we’re landing at 5.30 I don’t exactly want to be eating at the same time … that would be rather awkward. Well, I will do that then, and then my half-sandwich can be lunch later. Hooray!
I wonder if I shall write this much for every day. That would end up being a rather large journal. Also I suppose I’ll translate each of these entries into French. Alright, time for medicine and then I suppose I’ll translate this. I imagine I will alternate rather randomly between writing in English first versus French first, but that’s okay. Perhaps some entries may even have some Kinyarwanda in them.
March 20, 2010; 20.20 CST
It feels like it’s been a lot longer than 15 hours since I last wrote in here. I will land in Kenya sooner than later, and from there take a plane to Kigali via Bujumbura. Since I last wrote … London.
Yeah. London. We didn’t get to leave Heathrow, unfortunately – at noon, the line for Customs would have taken us an hour, then it was an hour on the train to downtown, and we had to be back for three. So, evidently, there was no point. Instead we stayed in the airport and shopped a bit. I bought a not-bad sandwich and a really good smoothie, and a few souvenirs: I promised the girls I’d bring them something from London, and I got something for John as well.
Being in London, even if we weren’t technically in London, was something else. I had forgotten how much of a Brit fangirl I am (why am I? I was before I met John, that wasn’t it). I definitely want to come back just to visit London. And try to contain my fangirling – Roxanne and I squeed over lots of things. ^^;; We couldn’t take any pictures in Heathrow, which was sad because there was a phone box, and I would have loved to have had a picture of myself with the (red) TARDIS in London. I mean come on. How cool is that.
We spent what seemed like an awful lot of the time in Heathrow waiting in lines, since four of our group (including myself, which was why I was in the lines) had errors on our tickets, meaning they needed to get reprinted at every stop, and calls and emails had to be made, and the whole thing is crazy and frustrating. But oh well. At least we’ve been on each and every plane, which is good.
I undertook braiding my hair in very small braids, in order to minimize the amount of washing I would have to do in Rwanda. The first section took me an hour and a half and I had only done one … of six. At that rate I wouldn’t get it done by the time we got to Nairobi even if I braided straight. Luckily, though, the other sections turned out to be smaller (or maybe I did slightly bigger braids) so I did manage to get them all braided on the plane and I now look somewhat like Medusa. My knuckles are, understandably, rather sore. I didn’t do much else on the way to Nairobi apart from try to start A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (upon which I fell asleep because I was exhausted) and watch most of The Blind Side over people’s shoulders. I’m pretty sure I know the plot inside out and backwards. XD I also listened to quite a lot of music: Phantom, Where’s Neil When You Need Him? and Turn it On Again.
Oh, and I slept a bit, on and off. I am going to be very tired come nighttime in Kigali – it is 4.30 in the morning in Kenya right now, I land at six, we leave for Kigali at eight (I won’t be able to sleep in between), land three hours later (maybe I can sleep there), and then we’re on the ground until evening. While it’s nice that I switched more or less easily to Kigali time, it’s frustrating that it switched and I didn’t sleep with it. Sleeping in airplanes is not easy.
Before I run out of power, I ought to eat my breakfast – OH that reminds me. The food on the way to London was good (pasta with meat sauce, bit of corn salad, bun, brownie) but the food on the way here? Oh my goodness was it ever good. I had lamb which was absolutely wonderful, cooked with saffron and cinnamon I believe, tender and juicy – and it was paired with a good amount of rice and a portion of cooked cauliflower with a kick. So good. And a lovely little bun (real butter both times, so yummy), and crackers with a soft cheese, and a salad that included lettuce (what a concept – Air Canada, take tips please!), and a fruit crumble with custard. Excellent service. So now I get to eat my breakfast and I am looking forward to it! I’m sure the next time I add to this will be in Kigali … wow.
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