Hi everybody- we are reporting live from Blantyre! So update from us and a quick hello from Malawi!

All five of us are moved into the Kabula Lodge, quickly acclimating to the “winter” schedule (the sun sets at 5:30), and are making lots of new friends! Above is a photo of the sunset yesterday. The journey to get here was not a short one, see the next (probably run-on) sentence below for details. As of Thursday afternoon we have survived getting to Houston (I had the advantage of already being here), driving to the airport with 12 suitcases (don’t worry – several of them were for packing devices), passing baggage check with them all under 50 lbs (one was EXACTLY 50.0), an 8.5 hour flight to London (New York to Frankfurt for Erik), a 12 hour layover in London, an 11.5 hour flight to Johannesburg, a 3 hour layover in South Africa,  a seemingly shorter 2 hour flight to Blantyre, a VISA procurement in Malawi, and then a bus ride to our new home!

So far we have met our housemates (two Canadian law students and several Dutch med students) as well as Matt Petney (director of the Polytechnic “OEDK” of sorts) and Sam Olvera (Rice grad who works with CPAP project). Matt was kind enough to invite us over to his house for breakfast this morning and we had a great time trying to drill them for Malawian culture advice! He also managed to cut our SIM cards so they fit into our cute new phones! We are all quite enamored by our small smart phones and had a great time trying to put contacts in. For the rest of the day we explored the city, tried out our haggling skills at the market, went to a jazz concert with out housemates and the Lodge manager, and then made dinner! We assumed because it was our first day trying to buy groceries that we probably overpaid (since we stick out like foreigners) so our goal is to decrease the amount we pay for the same amount later! Our total was 4,800 Kwacha… which shocked us because when we converted it back at the house, it was only a total of $6.70! So much cheaper than fresh produce would be in the U.S.! Erik is a pro in the kitchen (he was coaching us through the basics) and we managed a simple dinner of spaghetti, I’ll keep you posted how the four of us improve our cooking skills.

Lastly, I’d like to mention that the mosquito nets are actually quite beautiful as well as being very functional. I tell Serena and Millie every night how much I feel like some kind of fairy or something! Below is a picture Serena snapped captioned “Megderella”!

Over and out,

Meg