Saturday 2/11: I’m Going to Tanzania!!!!!!!

This morning I slept in and after breakfast I went back to bed to read… Catherine lent me the book “Hot Six” by Janet Evanovich (an author that’s been recommended many times), so I started it this morning. And I read half the book today!! It’s crazy, but I’m enjoying it! :)

It was really sunny today, but super cold! After deep-cleaning my room (which really needed it… I finally threw away all the Christmas wrapping paper I’d saved…), I decided to go on a run with Dunja. I wore leggings under my shorts, but just had a t-shirt on top….brrrr! It was only 33ºF, so it was pretty chilly! The run felt good, though, and I spent a lot of the time thinking about how it’s already the middle of February and I’m heading into the home stretch of this adventure. I realized that I haven’t felt homesick in a while! Not that I don’t miss home and everyone there, it’s just that it doesn’t ache like it did at the beginning. I think that part of it is that I know I only have 3 months left and then I won’t be seeing the people here, who I love so much! As I was running, I was looking around and thinking how much I enjoy living here and how I’m going to miss it. I know that I wouldn’t actually want to move here permanently (and I still think of Corvallis as home and where I want to settle down), but I am happy here for now.

I hung out with Catherine for a while this afternoon, just chatting and drinking tea. And then I went upstairs to do some research on plane tickets to go to Tanzania. I had looked at them before and every flight that left from Paris to Tz had a layover in Amsterdam. The issue was that either the layover was for 50 minutes (way too short) or for 12 hours (way too long)!! Frustrating! So, I tried going through London and I thought that would be a good idea, but then I found a ticket from Milan, Italy to Tanzania—ROUND TRIP—for $656.25! All the tickets I’d seen before were about $900-$1,200!! So, I decided to act quickly and buy the ticket before the price went up. So, (thanks to Maria, who fronted the money until I can transfer more into my US account…) I’m officially going to Tanzania from May 1^st to May 15^th! Yippee!!!!!