It's all part of the adventure!: Made it to Africa!

We made it to Bamako! We are spending the night here and leaving for our long van ride to Koutiala tomorrow. I'm hoping you can read this because all the other writing on this page (other than what I'm typing) is in French!

Our journey here was exhausting, but mostly uneventful. We flew to Minneapolis yesterday morning, then to New York City (rough landing, which Jon told me is because we had a female pilot. I told him we would have crashed if it had been a male pilot), had our last meal at Chilis in JFK airport, left for Dakar, Africa ,and we were slightly delayed because of engine problems at take off in NY, had a very short lay over in Dakar and had to go through Customs, get all of our bags, go back through security, made it to that plane about 5 minutes before take off, and finally arrived in Bamako.

We are staying at a guest house in Bamako with Doug and Angela (missionaries). Then, Doug and Angela will be driving us to Koutiala tomorrow. We had lunch, and I ate nems. Nems are like egg rolls. They are ground beef and onion in rice paper and deep fried. They were very good. Andy and most of the men had a sandwich (ground beef, some other lunch meet that no one can identify, onion, pickle, tomato, mayonnaise, and soy sauce).

After lunch we all took a long nap. Tonight we will eat dinner at a restaurant in Bamako. So, today is a nice recovery day before lots of hard work.

Some things we have learned:

-Bamako has a lot of flies!
-Rainy Season in Bamako is just like summer in Omaha (90s). There are three seasons: Summer, Winter and Rainy (resulting in lots of malaria).
-If Andy is left alone in Dakar airport, we'll end up broke. We were told to not let anyone grab our bags and to give them no money. Someone took one of Andy's bags when he sat it down for a second, and then Andy gave him a $20. Andy tried to give him a $1 and the man said "no!"
-Security in Dakar does not know what power bars are and Andy doesn't know how to explain power bars! Thankfully, Larry was behind Andy and thought to say "food" or I'm not sure Andy would have made it to the plane! Andy kept saying "power bars" and was getting an odd look from security. Andy was about to take one out and eat it.
-Security is not impressive or consistent in African airports. Some people can take water, some can't, some just bypass the entire security process completely and do not get stopped, security really doesn't look at the screen as bags are ran through it, some security people go through carry-on bags, some do not even stand near bags (thankfully I was in that line and had no problems). Our last name (Blaszak) was spelled incorrectly on the tickets to leave Dakar. We had people compare our boarding pass and passport multiple times and no one said a thing. Steve, however, has already sent an email to get this corrected for our return.
-Coke tastes very syrupy (I don't think that's actually a word) because it's made out of real sugar.

Please continue to pray for our work in Koutiala!