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I had a great time in London, largely because I got to catch up with my friend from Wharton, Srinidhi. Besides my long morning jogs around London and a visit to the Tate Britian, I kept sightseeing to a minimum and had a great time with Srinidhi.
The flight to Johannesburg was lengthy, to say the least: 11 hours. Sitting in the seat next to me was a very talkative 76 year old woman who was born in England but had lived for the past 25 years in South Africa. While she was a very nice woman, she just loved to talk a little too much: about her three marriages, her recent travels, her boyfriends in various cities, and her various aging health problems. She also prided herself on not sleeping on planes. I thought turning on my headphones to watch a movie might give me a break from chatting; it did not deter her from trying to talk over the movie. I gave up about half way through Invictus. I thought earplugs and an eye mask might allow me to sleep; this also did not deter her from trying to continue our conversation. I'm pretty certain she purposely bumped me several times throughout the night to see if I might wake up (since she does not sleep). I did wake up but then had to twist in my chair as to be much harder to bump and not reward this behavior. Needless to say, it wasn't the greatest night's sleep.
Getting through the Johannesburg airport turned out to be a very large headache, but my flight to Malawi was on time, and I must say that flying South African Airlines was a rather pleasant experience. When I landed in Malawi, Drew was at the airport to meet me. We took a taxi to a hotel in the central part of the city.
I had done a good deal of research on Lilongwe before making this trip, so it's been about what I expected. There are decent roads, but the infrastructure still seems a little limited. There are people all along the side of the road, doing everything from walking to what appeared to be a pig roast. It's winter here, so the weather is rather mild. The biggest difference is that it's just past the shortest day of the year here, so it gets dark very early, while the days had been very long in Europe. On my first night here, Drew and I met with four other volunteers to have dinner at a Italian place that was clearly catering to the sizable volunteer community. The dinner was good, although definitely not exactly wonderful. Drew has been living for months without running water or electricity at his Peace Corp volunteer sight, so simply relaxing in the air-conditioned hotel with hot showers is a huge luxury. Given the pace of my trip up until this point, taking a day off also didn't seem like a horrible idea. So I've seen just a small part of the city, but we're heading to Lake Malawi today, which is about 3 hours away and should be wonderfully scenic.
I'll do a better job of taking more photos. But things are going great and I'm so glad I decided to make this part of my trip.
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