South Africa

It's 9:30 am (2:30 am CT) on Tuesday morning, and I'm waiting for my South African Airways flight to Lusaka. I'm eating some ostrich bilatong which I'm told is like beef jerkey. The jury is still out on that.

We drop our bags off with Susan Greer (wife of the guy who runs Camp Life) who's meeting us at the airport to take most of our bags back to the Mugundushi Village. We'll stay at the airport and hop a short flight to Livingstone for a few days of rest at Victoria Falls. So far, the trip has been fairly smooth. Again, Heathrow proved to be a challenging connection. We had a 12-hour layover yesterday so Betty, Dawn and I visited downtown London. We took the train to the River Thames and walked around for about 7 hours. We listened to the bells at Big Ben. "Look, kids. Big Ben...Parliament!" Then we walked around Chelsea hoping to see A-Rod walking out of Madonna's apartment. I'm not sure she even lives in Chelsea, but Betty thought it would make a good story.

The train had mechanical issues on the way back to Heathrow so we had to take two connecting buses between Terminal 4 and the new Terminal 5. I walked right on to my plane with little time to spare. I was drenched in a nervous sweat, but it all worked out. The 11-hour flight to Johannesburg was smooth. I watched "All the Presidents Men" which killed a good 3 hours. The rest was spent sleeping.

We met most of our Week 8 campers at DFW. It's a good mix of young adults, married couples, families and college students. One girl just graduated high school and decided to raise the money and go by herself.

I'll update more if there's Internet availability.