12/8/2011 - Arrival

Our flights from Detroit-Amsterdam-Nairobi were nice.  I sat next to some nice people.  I sat next to a Kenyan  girl who is studying in America on the way to Nairobi.  She gave me lots of good advice.

Arrival in Nairobi was quite a cultural shock.  General conditions in the airport were fine, but certainly not up to what I would consider western standards.  Our flight from Amsterdam was FULL (747).  That meant the airport was a bit chaotic on our arrival.  There were hundreds of people there to welcome family and friends coming in for the holidays.

Passport/Visa/Baggage took 3 hours!  It was nice to be received by Pastor Kennedy and a team from Nairobi.  We had two vans, 3 security guards and new friends!

After introductions and a briefing by Pastor Dean we loaded into two vans.  I volunteered to get into the luggage van alone with a few of our hosts.  We broke down about 10 minutes out of the airport, but after a few minutes of tweaking with the engine, we were on our way again.  The trip to the conference center where we were staying took a while, since we got lost a few times.  The roads in Nairobi are not always connected, paved, etc.  Driving at night is very difficult since there aren't lights everywhere and I never really saw any road signs.

We finally found BTL and they waited up for us and had some food for us.  We got our room assignments, found our rooms and I got to talk to Stacy for a minute, which was nice.  I finally hit my bed around 2:30AM Kenya time.  This will be a short night.