En route to Ghana

It has been a hell of a 48 hours that leaves me writing to you from a ho(s)tel in London, England. On Tuesday night at 4:00 PM it became clear that I was not to be receiving my VISA in time for travel to Ghana (and that my passport was similarly lost). After some deliberation (and a sizable portion of fury) Debi, her mother and I packed up and left Ocean Isle, North Carolina at midnight. We drove to Chapel Hill, which we reached at approximately 3:45. At around 4:45, after gathering what we guessed might be enough materials to at least get another passport made in Washington, Debi and I departed Chapel Hill for DC, bound for Ghana’s embassy. We hoped that the lack of return emails and messages meant somehow that my visa was sitting waiting to be picked up with no more than a 15-minute delay.

To be honest, I don’t think either of us believed this to be true, but we arrived at the embassy at 9:15 and departed at 9:30 with my travel visa stapled into my passport. The lesson: don’t sweat it and it will work out. We left DC and fortunately did not have to fight rush hour traffic going the other direction, but we did have to circumnavigate a big wreck on I-85, which left us 30 minutes to prepare to leave upon arrival in Chapel Hill. Debi packed our bags on the way home in the back of my Toyota Corolla with the seats folded down, while I carefully metered my Red Bull intake and completed my 11^th consecutive hour of driving.

We departed RDU on schedule at 6:15 on Wednesday evening, having slept two hours combined, all in a car, since 10:00 on Tuesday morning. Debi slept the entire plane ride and I nearly did the same, with brief reading and movie intermissions. We had a relaxing day in London today since both of us have been here relatively recently. We made the mistake of taking the Tube in, in the middle of rush hour, to the center of the city. Our plane arrived at 7:00 and we got to our hotel at 9:15. Unable to check in until 2:00, we explored the areas immediately surrounding our hotel, and found a cool Italian cafe at which to eat ciabattas for breakfast. Then we explored the shopping district, which entailed me sitting on benches while Debi tried to find a sweatshirt to wear in the cold that she somehow failed to predict despite the modern wonders of the internet and weather.com.

After a much-needed (and much too short) nap, Morgan, a family friend, met us for dinner. We had great British food and enjoyed a few beers at The Pride of Paddington, a cool pub that apparently really gets going when Scotland and England square off in (what the rest of the world calls) football. Right now we’re winding down the night in anticipation of our 6:00 AM flight to Amsterdam, followed by our flight to Ghana later in the day. Hope all is well at home, and congratulations to the graduating class of 2010.