Things I never thought I'd think:

"We're finally that close to the Sudanese border!"

After a smooth check-in and a very long flight, I am here in Addis Ababa!

I live through fourteen hours every day, but for some reason, the fourteen hours between 10:20 am Annapolis time and 7:55 am Addis time felt especially lengthy. Maybe it was that I switched seats so that a mother-daughter pair could sit next to each other, not realizing that I would no longer be occupying a window seat, which as you know, are prime sleeping-on-a-plane locations; maybe it was the incredibly cute but very clearly unhappy youngest daughter of the beautiful Somali family sitting across the aisle from me; maybe it was the fourteen hours of coughing and sneezing and sharing germs with more strangers than I usually interact with in a week; or maybe it was simply the fact that I have been looking forward to this trip for so long that there's no way the flight couldn't drag on for an eternity. Whatever it was, it felt like forever.

Which, naturally, only made getting off the plane, through baggage claim and customs, and into a van on my way to a friend's house even sweeter. 

The drive here was an adventure unto itself, and I feel like so many of the things I've heard about African traffic are true. Pedestrians walk in and out of the road and in between moving vehicles like it ain't no thang, riders of the public taxis hang out the side windows, rules are more tentative guidelines, following distance is close enough to shake hands with the people in the back row of seats of the vehicle in front of you, the third lane area of the road is a perfect place to replace a tire or two, and you will definitely spot at least a couple trucks with blue-camoed guards carrying large, intimidating guns in the back.

I'm now showered, rested, and fed and enjoying the sights and sounds from the second floor bedroom where I'll be staying for a couple of nights until I fly north to Mekele to meet up with my cousin. 

So far, so good.

I (very stupidly) forgot to charge my camera battery in the chaos that was the two days before my flight, which I only realized when I'd pushed the shutter button to take a picture of one of the roadside markets and it didn't work. I'll charge it and get some "real" pictures taken and uploaded of Addis in the next couple of days.