Tuesday Mar. 15 1:04 am (Freetown)

So I'm here. In Freetown. In Africa. My chest is filled with some feeling I can't name just thinking about it. I loved the air the minute I stepped off the plane. It's warm, wet, close, full-bodied and leaves a sticky residue on your skin that just makes you feel alive. The airport was chaotic as expected but nothing we couldn't handle. Just hand over your passport, find your luggage (we did) give a few polite "no's" and you're through. Our guide -can't remember his name- told us we were late for our ferry and our first 11 minutes out of the airport spend speeding through the country side in the pitch-black. We covered 15 km in that time. The scents, the taste, the sights and the speed were exhilarating and had everyone excited and laughing hysterically. The ferry was chaotic like I've realized most of Sierra Leone is so far but it was great fun. We went up on deck amid a sea of stares and had some fun talking to the locals. Amy joined a group of dancing little people and "shook waist"- made my night as if it hadn't been made already.
Afterwards driving through Freetown was such an intense experience we could hardly take it in. - everyone just silently and wonderingly stared out of the windows. The sidewalks are covered with people doing every sort of thing imaginable. here's a man barbecuing some chicken over over a ghetto-looking fridge, here's a boy reading a book next to a pile of rubble, here's a woman breastfeeding her baby, here's a child sleeping feet up on a park bench... and it goes on. There's people everywhere and everything you see has so much texture. Sheds with 50 layers of paint and peeling advertisements, make shift stores made out of abandoned cargo containers and people selling Nike shoes in the middle of the street.
I'm just too sleepy to think through everything I saw today and relate it but I saw a lot. Packs of stray dogs, gaping holes in the concrete sidewalks, the largest tree I've ever seen... I think I'll stop now.
I'm just glad to be in a air-conditioned room with a soft bed and a mosquito net even if the landlady did charge us an extravagant amount for it. A stab of loneliness hits me now as I think back on my beloved friends in Canada and a family I haven't had contact with yet. But I got a lot to live for.

-Yours always, Caleb V.

Monday, Mar. 14, Time: ???

Time is definitely weird when you're travelling. It's there but is constantly changing and affects you very little- you just sleep when you can. Currently we're two hours away from Freetown. Disembarking is going to be a chaotic experience or so I've been told. We've been told to refuse help and offer none. Very Christian idea that. These two words are definitely overused by me yet they do the best job of desribing my emotional state: nervous and excited. The trip is finally beginning, the adventure finally starting. Hopefully it's all uphill from here. Just flew over the Sahara desert. Phew. Deep breaths. I'm going to Africa eh?

Sunday Mar. 13, 8:12 PM (Montreal Time)

Scratch that it's now 9:36. I'm sitting in the centre of a airplane, the lights dim and blue, the air treated and stale and pitch black windows on all sides. I'm beginning the 7 hour flight to Brussels, Belgium. On my left sits Curtis watching the movie The Fighter and on my right a burly silent stranger who spends most of his time staring forward, occasionally leaning forward to eat a tictac from the pouch in the seat in front of him. Ah, no he moves- it appears he's decided to take advantage of some of the stupendous in-flight entertainment.
Today has been travel with 100% of my time being spent on airplanes or wandering airports.Due to the advice of a overly-kind attendant with a strong asian accent we managed to get quite lost. We quite literally passed the same CapitalOne booth four times walking around and ended up going through security when we had no need to. All in all however our travelling seems to be going well with only one small incident of Curtis losing his boarding pass.
Obviously I spent a good deal of time today thinking of what I have ahead of me of what I've left behind. Thing is I don't really know for sure what to expect ahead but I do  know what and who I've left behind. And so I find myself lonely and missing people I probably wouldn't be missing if they weren't 1000's of miles away.
(I'll think I'll skip this next section. Nothing exciting)
But enough about love - bleh- I'm not here for love, I'm here for an experience. Maybe I'm making a big deal out of three weeks. But I don't think I am. It's the longest I've been from home (Though does distance really matter?) and I'll be in a completely foreign, strange and exciting environment.

It's now been three hours since I've written. Time passes oddly on a plane. Big burly sad guy who drinks vodka with coke next to me turned out to be super nice. We had a conversation- he's going to Africa too, Sengali in fact.
I think a problem I have is focusing too much on what I'm missing. I'll back home to my dear friends but for now I should focus on the people I'm with: Curtis, Amy, Blake, Jessica, Katie, Mrs. Cavey, and Mr. Quissy. I have so much coming ahead and I think it's time I get really really pumped.
We should land in Belgium soon. Apparently they sell beer in vending machines there :) I have to get one, if only to say I did.
-Yours always, Caleb van der Leek

Sorry.

So it turned out Africa had no internet to offer me, and definitely not daily. So I apologize to those who expected much and got nothing in return. It made me sad to be out of contact for so long. But now I'm back, and thanks to a beautiful gift by the amazing Rebekah Ho, I have a bit of an archive of my adventures recorded in my moleskine journal. So as I sit here listening to the Age of Adz, let me update the first one of my entries for you and we'll see where it goes from there.

The Evening Before.

So I'm sitting home alone in a dark house, the washer beside me making a racket and a furnace warming my air. Odd, in three days, maybe four I'll be in a new place with new people far away from where I am now. So SO far away. Unimaginably far. Half-a-world-away far.Odd. I don't think it's hit me yet. I'm still living the life I've always lived, with thoughts of school, technology and friendships and then suddenly I remember what's suddenly looming so large above me. It's hard to reconcile those thoughts. I'm excited, so excited, yet not as much as a I feel I should be. I think an emotional overload may come tomorrow evening or as I lie in bed tonight. A half smile is crossing my face as I type.
I will really do my very best to journal and blog while I'm there for those who'd care to follow. I'm still deciding whether I should write in my journal and copy over to the blog or to relay my general feelings and doings here, and keep the journal as collector of more private, personal thoughts. I'm sure it will all work out. I'm getting that feeling- I don't really have to worry, everything will be good. I just have to let it happen.
I have more thoughts I could relate, but don't have the motivation or energy to relate them. So may you all have a beautiful spring break, and goodbye North America- goodbye.

         -Yours always, Caleb van der Leek.