Day 1ish

Charis woke up at 6 this morning and I went and got her so we could hang out for an hour before I left. She saw the suitcase and was super clingy. She wanted to be held and wouldn’t go to grandma. She cried when I left which is really unusual and heartbreaking. I am in a stretch of traveling 8 of 14 weeks and it is not providing my daughter with a predictable set of parental relationships.

We caught an 8:00 Northwest flight to Minneapolis and from there flew to Amsterdam. We got into Amsterdam at 6 am so, the rule of thumb is that we should have slept on the trans-Atlantic flight…except 6 am Amsterdam time is 9 pm pacific time. So I did some studying and sermon prep and watched 2 movies. The first one was the new Narnia movie. There were some unfortunate thematic licenses taken (most glaring was the completely unnecessary sexual tension between Susan and Caspian which will just exacerbate ‘the problem of Susan’ in the adaption of book 7) but on the whole it was a very good movie. I honestly was on the verge of tears several times, but I think it was because I was more vested in the characters than a 100 minute movie allowed for. There was a very real sense in which I felt like they were making my story. I guess this is what other people felt like watching Pride and Prejudice or the Harry Potter movies. The other one was Speed Racer, a highly stylized film by the Wichoski brothers that flopped at the box office. It was surprisingly entertaining.

I also got a couple of new MP3 albums for the trip: The Decemberists’ Picaresque
( which means ‘humorous adventure stories, starring roguish antiheroes’) and Death Cab for Cutie’s Transatlanica (which seemed appropriate for obvious reasons). After a couple listens, they are both good, but the Decemberists’ album might be really good.

Amsterdam to Kenya was uneventful. Surprisingly it was approximately the same length of flight as Minneapolis to Amsterdam. I would have thought the latter would have been longer. We got into Kenya late and our driver was waiting to take us to our hotel. We have 2 days before we have to teach. Tomorrow will be a sleep in/explore day, then Monday is a setup and prep day. I will reserve my first impressions of Nairobi for tomorrow.