Things I am looking forward to on this trip:

• adding a new country to my checklist
• a scenic bus tour through Rwanda and Eastern Congo
• the possibility of being witness to the launching of a new program for our organization--please note this is not a slam dunk, so many things could push back, postpone, undermine, derail, or otherwise frustrate this process. All the usual philosophical cliche's apply: Murphy's law, 'nothing is ever  as easy as it seems', 'that that don't kill me, can only make me stronger', Ok, that last one is a bit of a stretch, fueled by the double espresso I just ordered and my inability to sleep on airplanes. In fact at this point I'm barely ahead of the proverbial army of monkeys randomly typing at keyboards. I mean this is a bullet point that has apparently turned into a rambling paragraph, hardly making a point at all, bullet or otherwise. Can't wait to get to a bed somewhere and sleep. That is still 14-16 hours away I expect.