we're not in kansas anymore.

so we finally made it! after another 6 hours on a plane (totaling us to about 23 hours of travel time!) i cannot really even put into words how wonderful it felt to finally land on the ground here in monrovia. we finally got off the plane onto what looked like a glorified parking lot and then walked into the airport. we stood in line in a room that was probably the size of just one terminal at a typical airport in the states. i wish that i would’ve felt comfortable taking a picture because i have never seen anything like this… there were a bunch of people that were just standing around from what i could tell basically to look intimidating. the room was not very open but had tiles on the floors that very well could be kitchen tiles. just past the customs gates were little health inspector rooms, which i am so so glad we did not have to go in. i think horrible visions of dramatic hollywood movies would have flashed through my head non-stop. but thankfully we made it through, but then there was the utter chaos of baggage claim. again we were in a very small, over crowed room where people were scrambling for their luggage. eventually they let us out with our bags and we ventured out to see the wonderful smiling faces of the chapman family! they had all come to see us at the airport! we got all our bags in the car (and i think we almost started another civil war making sure everyone got tipped.)

the drive to their campus (which is where their clinic is and their home is) was incredible. everything was just so green! but there were people, dogs, chickens, etc. just walking everywhere along the streets. we passed a little village called smellnotaste where we got a nice little history lesson from nicole who told us that the village got its name during world war 2. some of the american soldiers were camped there for a while, and they would cook all this food that the locals could smell. the soldiers never shared their food so they could smell and not taste the food, which is how the village got its name. keith said he was not surprised because everything here is very literal. there are apparently birds that come only at christmas time that are called christmas birds. the trees that are used for telephone wires are called telephone trees. kinda cool.

when we got to their house, which is beautiful by the way, we unpacked and were told helpful things like which dogs we could not pet. we had a fabulous liberian dinner called jollof, which essentially consisted of rice, various vegetables, and beef. we also had our meal supplemented with some delicious pineapple. we discussed a few plans for the week, and i can’t wait to get into all of this. i’ll try and upload a picture or two tomorrow, but for now i’m getting too impatient with the slow connection (i’m so spoiled!)

but we’re here! we made it safely and so did our luggage (all 14 suitcases!)

peace and love
julia