The beginning...

After a VERY hectic day of last-minute shopping, packing and trying to clean the apartment at least a bit before our journey, my husband came home long past 11pm because of a business dinner. We went to bed without having finished packing our suitcases. My husband had not packed ANYTHING at all. We slept for about 2 hours and got up at 3 am to get ready. We left the house on time at 6 am, but we were already stressed out by that point.

From that point on however, everything went very smoothly.

We flew to Paris, both falling asleep right after boarding the plane.

We changed flights there and all I remember about the Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle airport is the yucky weather and the long time it took us to get to our terminal.

You cannot really see it on this picture, but it was rainy and cold and grey and we were glad to leave! J

Both Andreas and I were incredibly excited. We kept saying over and over again how we would have never thought we’d ever go to Cameroon. I remember us staying at our gate waiting for boarding and just grinning from ear to ear, everybody else most have thought we were crazy…

The flight was VERY comfortable, also we did not have a window seat and the woman next to me refused to open the window; so we didn’t get to see anything of the African continent before we landed.

The food was the best I ever had on an airplane. Good job, Air France. B (However, this fact made it hard for me to enjoy the first few hours in Cameroon and made me feel guilty about eating a darn Kitkat for the next few hours and days – darn eating disorder!!!!).

The flight was short (6 hours), Andreas slept most of the time and I FINALLY had the chance to watch THE SOCIAL NETWORK and, oh my god, what an incredible movie it is. I have heard Cliff Ravenscraft (@gspn on twitter) rave about it for months now and couldn’t wait to see it. Cliff, you did not promise too much. It IS a fantastic movie and had I not been too tired on our flight back home 2 weeks later, I would have watched it again. I also watched LIFE AS WE KNOW IT with Katherine Heigl; a typical movie for her: cute but rather insignificant.

We arrived in Yaoundé at around 6pm and this is the very first view we had of AFRICA. :D

The first thing we noticed was the enormous amount of people. It was pure craziness.

Valerie, Joseph (her boyfriend), Serge (Joseph’s brother) and his driver Armand picked us up from the airport and we drove to Joseph’s home. 6 grown-ups, 4 suitcases and our hand luggage (we had to bring some things for my sister too) in a small Mercedes.

We were welcomed by the whole family with such warmth, love, affection, sincerity and joy that we felt at home instantly.

They had prepared a delicious dinner for us and we spent the night catching up with Valerie and Joseph on what had been happening in the previous few weeks.

And thus our adventure began…

Our home in Yaoundé: