plane ride

I suppose it makes the most sense to tell the story of our trip starting from the very beginning. 

We left from Portland....

 ...wheeling our luggage to the gate...

 ...and we had a chance to look at our plane before we got on it.

 Isaac hadn't flown since he was 1 and we went to Wisconsin, so it was like an entirely new experience for him. Please excuse Isaac's messy hair. The days prior to departure were really crazy. 

A mountain in Oregon. I'm not sure which one though. I'm terrible with recognizing mountains. Must have something to do with having grown up by a large body of water, not by the mountains. Or just sheer laziness or lack of motivation to learn the names. Something like that.

 The SkyMall magazine lulls me to sleep every time too.

 Utah. We had a stopover in Salt Lake City. I thought that was an interesting place to fly international from, but apparently Delta flies out of there... so it wasn't really that weird.

 France, as seen from the plane. Someday we will have to visit. 

 Charles de Gaulle international airport. There was a nationwide strike of the airport security workers that day and it took forever to stand in line and go through security. We stood in line for an hour and a half before someone pulled us aside and let us go through the family line. Then the "security person" there gave us contradictory instructions... anyway, we got through, no problem. It was just a long wait and a good thing we had a 4 hour layover. 

Charles de Gaulle is very visually appealing inside though! Really confusing airport layout, but there is lots of signage and it is manageable. I noticed that the writing on the runway was in English, not French. I guess that must be the case at all international airports? I'm not sure. Maybe not in Iran or North Korea. :)

 Sunset seen from a plane

 "Oh yay! More plane food!"

 Our first glimpse of Ouagadougou (Ouaga for short), at night.

One thing I noticed immediately was how flat the landscape was and how much less light there was than a city of comparable size in the US. When I went to Tunisia I remember also thinking that Africa was really flat as we came up to it by boat. Next: first days in Ouaga.