I am going to try a little experiment in posting pictures to our blog. This wouldn't earn the title of "experiment" except for the fact that the internet here has been a bit of an adventure. I know I have nothing to complain about, considering the fact that I can access the world wide web at all from the top of a mountain in Swaziland. They have these things called "dongles" here (don't ask me why, but this word consistently cracks us up) which plug into your computer and by various complicated processes you install SIM cards on them and swap out the SIM card with your phone's SIM card and then transfer it back in order to load the dongle with airtime. (I know this is all Greek to those of you who have never had a cell phone outside the US.) It's taken us some days and trips to town to figure it all out, but the end result is voila!-- we have internet. It's just excruciatingly expensive. I took some little videos of our house the other day on the spiffy new camera I bought for the express purpose of showing our parents all the little mundane things of life, like where we do our laundry and how awesomely William can crawl down a hallway. Then I realized that those 5 minutes of videos would cost about 20 bucks to upload. Not going to happen. But pictures are a little less problematic.
So here we go, Allison's photo digest of the trip over.
Standing next to our teetering towering mountain of luggage at Dulles, looking incredibly tired... and we haven't even started the monster flight. (EIGHTEEN hours. Yes, you heard me.)
William definitely had the best deal this trip. Really didn't lift a finger.
All buckled in. And wearing, appropriately, one of his safari animal themed onesies.
The non-stop from DC to Johannesburg stops in Dakar, Senegal for an hour to refuel. Unfortunately the stop comes just as you've really fallen asleep for the night, and then they turn on the lights and everyone moves around and it wakes you up, even though you don't have to leave the plane. So here's William, ready for the second take-off. Note the wardrobe change. Actually this might have been the third outfit. I do remember being a bit worried in the first half of the flight whether we had enough clothes to get us to our destination, as he was going through clothes at an alarming rate (which thankfully slowed in the second half of the flight). He had managed a massive spit-up before we even took off (his only one of the flight, actually), and then there was the diaper change incident in which he managed to pee not only on me and himself, but all over the walls and floor of the airplane bathroom. Let me say it's really hard to clean the floor of an airplane bathroom. Try bending over some time in an airplane bathroom and you'll see what I mean (as your head hits the wall).
After another wardrobe change, finally asleep for good. A lot of people got off in Dakar so we had room to spread out, for which we were very grateful. Joel was a rock star and watched William the whole night, and let me sleep. I even got to watch most of a movie.
Finally in Johannesburg airport. This was after they had put us into the immigration line for diplomats, acting all shocked and distressed that we would be waiting in the regular line when we had a "little celebrity" with us. (Thus William's fan club expands internationally.) And before we waited for the hotel shuttle for an hour and a half, while the evening turned dark and cold. (A story that Joel told much more graciously than I would have.) But isn't any country a mixture of the nice and the not-so-nice?
Call me crazy, but isn't this the cutest toilet paper you've ever seen? (At our Joburg airport hotel.)
The next morning, waiting for the shuttle to go back to the airport to catch our flight to Swaziland. I killed time by posing William on various cute furniture.
Our bleary-eyed boy appears to be wondering what kind of a crazy place this is, where the sun is shining even though he should clearly still be sleeping.
Descent into Swaziland.
Finally arrived!
And as a special little bonus picture: our first visitor to our new Swazi house.
So here we go, Allison's photo digest of the trip over.
Standing next to our teetering towering mountain of luggage at Dulles, looking incredibly tired... and we haven't even started the monster flight. (EIGHTEEN hours. Yes, you heard me.)
William definitely had the best deal this trip. Really didn't lift a finger.
All buckled in. And wearing, appropriately, one of his safari animal themed onesies.
Admiring the sunset over the Atlantic while chewing on mommy's camera case. My policy this trip was anything he felt like playing with, he could have. As long as he stayed entertained.
The non-stop from DC to Johannesburg stops in Dakar, Senegal for an hour to refuel. Unfortunately the stop comes just as you've really fallen asleep for the night, and then they turn on the lights and everyone moves around and it wakes you up, even though you don't have to leave the plane. So here's William, ready for the second take-off. Note the wardrobe change. Actually this might have been the third outfit. I do remember being a bit worried in the first half of the flight whether we had enough clothes to get us to our destination, as he was going through clothes at an alarming rate (which thankfully slowed in the second half of the flight). He had managed a massive spit-up before we even took off (his only one of the flight, actually), and then there was the diaper change incident in which he managed to pee not only on me and himself, but all over the walls and floor of the airplane bathroom. Let me say it's really hard to clean the floor of an airplane bathroom. Try bending over some time in an airplane bathroom and you'll see what I mean (as your head hits the wall).
After another wardrobe change, finally asleep for good. A lot of people got off in Dakar so we had room to spread out, for which we were very grateful. Joel was a rock star and watched William the whole night, and let me sleep. I even got to watch most of a movie.
Finally in Johannesburg airport. This was after they had put us into the immigration line for diplomats, acting all shocked and distressed that we would be waiting in the regular line when we had a "little celebrity" with us. (Thus William's fan club expands internationally.) And before we waited for the hotel shuttle for an hour and a half, while the evening turned dark and cold. (A story that Joel told much more graciously than I would have.) But isn't any country a mixture of the nice and the not-so-nice?
Call me crazy, but isn't this the cutest toilet paper you've ever seen? (At our Joburg airport hotel.)
The next morning, waiting for the shuttle to go back to the airport to catch our flight to Swaziland. I killed time by posing William on various cute furniture.
Our bleary-eyed boy appears to be wondering what kind of a crazy place this is, where the sun is shining even though he should clearly still be sleeping.
Descent into Swaziland.
Finally arrived!
And as a special little bonus picture: our first visitor to our new Swazi house.
Hooray! That post did not take all night nor cost a small fortune, boding well for our future blogging from Swaziland. For now, good night.
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