Twelve Hours in Johannesburg

Muli Bwanji ("Good morning" in nyanja).  

It's 1:15 pm (6:15 am CDT) in Johannesburg, South Africa.  The bus came around at 4:45 am this morning to take us to the Lusaka airport for our flight to Johannesburg.  Thirty-five of us are here waiting for another 50 in the group to arrive. We'll have about a 12-hour layover in the airport before our flight for London.  One of the families on the trip invited about 6 of us to a VIP lounge with free food, drinks, cocktails, magazines and Internet. It was a God-send.

I got about 4 hours sleep last night and am running on adrenaline right now. I plan to document the past week with the kids to kill some time in the airport. It was a hard week, but another amazing experience. I had 8 of "my kids" from last year! I took much more video this year which I'll eventually get posted to You Tube. So please check back here in the coming days for video and photos. The final photo count was 587.

Karin is picking me, Dawn and Betty up at DFW on Sunday around 4 pm. Craving Tex-Mex and anything with salt in it. Everyone is well, but nursing upper-respiratory coughing. The dust was horrible. It hasn't rained in Zambia since March so grass was few and far between. I've been taking Cipro and eating Ricola cough drops like they're M&Ms.

We had planned to take a taxi to downtown Johannesburg, but apparently it's not the safest city to roam. I wish Gayle would swing by and take us to the Oprah Winfrey Academy.