Africa- Finally! - Part 2

Disclaimer- Many of the photos in this post have a weird blur/reflection on them. Due to the various situations in Niamey, we had to be escorted everywhere (even just across the street from the hotel) by embassy personnel. What you see in the pictures is a reflection from our van windows.

Ok, so the last post got way larger than I was expecting. I guess I will use this post to show you the rest of the random pictures of the city that I took. I don't think most of them need narration.

A fishing boat.

Flowers.

The weather on Thursday.

The River Niger from my room.

Camels were all over. People rode them and used them to carry stuff. There were also a ton of goats running around. Sometimes they were strung together with string just walking around with a guy behind them. There were also "herds" (5 or so) of cows along the streets. The cows had humpbacks, kind of like camels. I assumed that they functioned the same way as a camels hump.

A house.

What many of the Nigerien government buildings looked like.

Houses.

Little shops. The doors/windows would open and people sold all kinds of random things out of them.

Houses/outdoor living space.

Like everyone rode these motorbikes. No helmets though!

This dude lived next door to the embassy at the American school. He was just chilling in the shade when we saw him.

The pool at the hotel.

Sunset over the River Niger.

Flying home was an adventure. I wasn't quite thrilled with the security while leaving the Niamey. I'll just say that it is just a littttllle different than flying in the US.. The plane was scheduled to leave at 1 am. Yay! Pretty much as soon as I got on the plane (in coach!) I fell asleep. Not before the plane insides were sprayed with bug spray though. Yes, the airline had to spray bug spray in the plane before we could leave Africa. Awesome. (As a note, I only got one bug bite all week and didn't wear any bug spray. It was on my leg while I was sleeping. Inside the hotel.)

We landed in Paris at around 6 am and I read some. Then I did a bit of shopping in the airport. Nothing too exciting- a couple of Christmas ornaments and some candy.

From Paris to DC again, I was in business class. I tried to stay awake as much as possible on this flight since I would be arriving in DC at 1 pm and I wanted to avoid jet lag. I finished another book and then watched Julie & Julia. I also watched some CSI. We had our two meals again and before I knew it, we were home!

Last notes about Africa:
-I loved going. I would love to be able to travel like that more often. 3 or 4 weeks a year would be so awesome. Too bad I won't get that opportunity too often at this job.

-People in Niamey live so much outside. As you can see above, many of the poorer houses are just one room or so. All of the living was done outside (from what I could see)- cooking, hanging out and even watching TV.

-The weather was awesome. 80-100 everyday with pretty much no humidity. I loved it. This is the cool time of year though- in the warmer times is can average 130.

All in all- I would do it again in a heartbeat and now I am looking so much more forward to mine and John's personal trips.