Where in the World is ChicaChan?

I had to stay in Brussels for one night before catching my flight to Rwanda the next morning.  How I loved TAP Portugal when they told me I could check-in to my Rwandan flight from Lisbon and check my bags all the way to Rwandan.  I have to say, the food and drinks on TAP Portugal are great and you don’t even have to pay for it!  Good stuff!

Luckily, I have another business school friend who lives in Brussels that I could crash with.  Yay!  I could probably not afford to jet off to this many places without having places to stay at.  Oriol has been living in Brussels since last April.  I was going straight to his flat where his landlord was going to let me into his flat as he had a Dutch class.  Great, no problem.  I took the train and metro easily to his place.  Yet when I arrived no one would answer any of the buzzers.  Darn it!  I managed to get in and figure out which one was Oriol’s flat but I figured I would have an hour and half before Oriol would arrive.  Thanks to a really nice Ecuadorian woman who lived in the flat below, I stayed in her flat reading Oriol came.  I was really at her mercy!

Finally Oriol arrived looking for me, confused as to why I ended up hanging out with this woman.  We went off to a restaurant to get dinner and drinks.  It was perfect meeting up with Oriol as he had lived in Kenya for 2 years.  He shared his experiences from living there.  He loved it so much that he really wanted to return to Africa.  It was comforting to hear about his feedback on Africa in preparation of my trip the next day!

I was freaking out a bit as the moment had finally arrived!  I was going to catch a plane to Rwanda!  There were no more stops left in Europe and the reality of going to Africa was here!  I still can’t believe the surreal feeling!  It was the same feeling I had before I moved to Barcelona or before going to Guatemala for an internship – the fear of the unknown; the excitement of traveling somewhere completely new and different; the anxiety of starting something new.

Here we goooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!