We made it!

So, we finally made it to Rwanda! We had two ~8hr long flights and a couple layovers, but the traveling has finally come to a close. We ended up getting into Kigali in the early evening last night and almost immediately went to bed. However, the brief night was not without its worrisome moments. We hadn't done any currency exchange yet, figuring we'd get it done at the airport once we arrived. However, the airport was very small... it makes the one in Tucson look gigantic. There wasn't a currency exchange open at that our. When we finally got to our room, we asked one of the workers where we could get money, and he looked at me with wide eyes and said, "Tomorrow's Sunday...." I had a brief moment of panic that we were stuck in a foreign city without money for two days. Luckily, that moment passed quickly, and we were assured that there were places open on Sunday where we could get money. It turns out that the airport exchange is a huge ripoff, so we may have lucked out!

We woke up this morning to tons of talking and singing right outside of our window. There's a large group of people who were doing a religious fast... and it ended today. It was pretty loud, and given that it was 5:30am, we tried to roll over and ignore it. When we finally got up, we enjoyed a nice breakfast, including bananas, pancakes, fried eggs, and hot tea. We then received a phone call from Malea, who is one of the Peace Corps workers who will be sharing the house with us over the next month. She and her husband, Tom, met us for lunch and gave us a quick orientation of the city. We were finally able to get some cash and enjoyed a nice hamburger and Coke right across the street from the hotel that "Hotel Rwanda" is based on.

Tom and Malea have now gone their separate way, and we're taking a brief moment to let everyone back home know that we've made it here alright. Hopefully we'll be able to make it back to the A.E.E (African Evangelical E... something) without incident (the bus that we were on earlier ran out of gas. It's all a little overwhelming at this time, but having Emily here definitely makes it easier. We're both very excited about getting to Kibungo tomorrow, and we look forward to getting to know Tom and Malea better.