Differences

Several people have asked if I'm back in the states. Sorry, I guess I never clarified that even though I left the Sandbox I'm not back home yet. I'll be traveling for the next 2 months or so, just wandering around the world visiting friends, enjoying cold weather, new cultures and good food.

Here I am in front of a fountain. I don't know why the fact that this country trying to beautify their country impresses me so much but it really does. Another thing that I love about Russia is the mullets. Everyone has them. Men, women, children. Somehow they are cool and I love it.

Small Children

In Sudan small children were always just amazed to be in the presence of a white girl that it became completely normal when they would get in my face and stare at my blue eyes and freckles. They would point and talk about me and I would laugh and joke with them.

It got to the point that I would be out to dinner with local friends and kids would come up to our table and stand there for long periods of time and just look at me. Yesterday I actually had the exact same experience with 2 little blond haired, blue eyed Russian girls. They weren't even together, it was 2 separate experiences. I'm not sure what was so different about me that they found me fascinating but it was fun.

But African kids laugh and play when I joke and make faces at them...these little girls were more petrified than anything and their parents would come whisk them away as if I was going to curse them or something. It was great. I felt right at home.

Moscow

This is my little friend at my going away party. Her hair is out of control and it is the cutest thing!

I made it to Moscow. It isn't cold but I'm cold. By that I mean, the weather is moderate but this Sudanese girl who owns nothing but chacos is just not used to 75 degree weather. I am amazed at how developed it is. I've been here before so I don't know why I'm so pleasantly surprised. They have a metro, paved roads, traffic laws, grocery stores with everything under one roof, clouds, rain, parks with fountains, gummi worms, kiwi, chocolate covered raisins, and escalators everywhere.

We went to McDonalds today but not just any McD's. This one has 24 cash registers and seats 500 people at a time. It was amazing!!

Pictures

Just a few more random pictures from the Sandbox that I didn't have an opportunity to post while I was there.

Jebana

Usually when the ladies pounded the beans they would do it in this crazy African rhythm and I loved it. Then they would hand it over to me and expect me to just break out into a rhtyhm too. I'm not African so I don't have this amazing sense of rhythm instilled into me and it always took me a few minutes to catch the hang of it and come up with a beat.

What I really loved is that, while they would sit there and laugh at me making a fool of myself trying to get it together, once I finally got a beat going they couldn't ever replicate mine. I think it's a great example of how African and Western music are just so different.

So here I am making a pathetic attempt at pounding coffee beans in a cool rhythm.

Sadie Mac

Since I'm traveling for a while I figured I'd stop by and see some old friends and meet their new cute little baby. She is a week old today and pretty much the cutest little girl ever.

The first day I got there Sadie had to spend the night in the hospital because she had jondus but now she's healthy and doing great.

That's me and Sadie hanging out at Starbucks on the Mediterranean. The Med is behind me but it's across a really big road so you can't see the beautiful water.

Kisra

Kisra is a type of bread thing that they eat in the Sandbox. It's similar to Ethiopian injeera, just real thin, pancake like stuff that you use to pick up other things. This is my friend Sandy making it. Basically she has a fire under that big flat black thing and it's really, really hot next to it. She knew I was taking a video and she was so excited to be 'in a film'.

Dancing

Homeless

Yesterday as I was going through my suitcase trying to decide what to wear I picked out the cutest thing that I own. I figured I should look cute on my first day of freedom. Then I went to the mall and got a lot of dirty looks and realized that compared to everyone else I looked like trash. It's not that my clothes are old but they don't fit right anymore and they've been worn and washed in Sudan which automatically makes them weird.

Plus I've gotten used to doing whatever I want in the heat. By that I mean that I don't do anything to make myself look cute. It was always too hot to wear my hair down so I would just pull it up. Makeup just sweat off so I never put that on either. Really my number one priority for the last 2 1/2 years was doing anything to not be so hot and looking cute was nowhere near as important. Really being presentable only consisted of wearing culturally appropriate clothing.

Now it seems strange to me that you're supposed to make yourself look decent before you go outside. In the big scheme of things is it really all that important? I guess so, based on all the nasty looks that I got at the mall.

But what am I supposed to do about this? I mean, everything that I own at this point in my life is in that suitcase and that was the cutest shirt I found. I don't want to spend a lot of money on clothes now because I have a skewed perception of fashion after life in Africa. What if I buy things and then get to America and look like an idiot?

But I can't keep looking like this. It's one thing to look kind of trashy when you're the only white girl around. People assume that you're a normal person capable of looking nice but that you just chose to dress like that and it's somehow ok. But when I get to Eastern Europe and am just another white girl in the sea of white girls people are just going to think I'm homeless.

No More Sandbox!!!

After an unexpected delay I finally made it out of Sudan!! I was supposed to leave on Friday morning but I woke up sick on Thursday and had to postpone my flight for a day but I did make it. I don't know why I was surprised by the delay...typical Sudan giving me a a little last reminder of just exactly why I should be excited about leaving.

The airport was fun too. I had a 5:45am flight so I arrived at the airport at 3:30am to find a complete zoo. I didn't check my bags in until 5am, but then again neither did anyone else. They don't have computers and all the check-in guys had hand written passenger manifests so every time someone checked in that desk agent had to go to all the other desks and cross them off everyone else's passenger list. Ridiculous.

But the entire airport was aware of the problem so they didn't even look at my form when they waved me through immigration and they barely glanced at my passport as they rushed me through passport control.

Then I ran into a line about 100 people long to go through the security check to get to the gate. We have a small airport and there are 2 metal detectors to get to the 3 gates. Since there were 2 flights at the same time there were 2 really long lines. Then my flight's metal detector breaks so they tell my line of 100 angry people to 'merge' with the second line of 100 angry people.

I thought there would be a riot. Men were yelling, people were fighting, it was crazy. There were women and children in the middle of all this, so to help them out the security people announced that they would let the women and children come around to the side of the line, not anything abnormal. But that just made the men even more angry.

Finally they just let everyone go through the metal detector without checking anyone!!! I'm no expert on airport security or anything but I definitely feel like there is something wrong with that picture. I guess there just 'wasn't enough time' to try to make sure terrorists didn't carry weapons on the planes.

My flight was an hour delayed because the K-town airport couldn't get their act together, but no surprise there. When the plane lifted off I realized that, in that moment, I was getting my last glimpse of Sudan. I kind of pictured my departure as being this bittersweet, emotional moment but I found that I couldn't be sad because I was still perturbed/angry over the airport situation...I will NOT miss times like that.