Given the arrival requirements in Kenya for work, I had a choice of flying out over the weekend on Swiss or leaving Sunday night on Ethiopian Airlines. Nervous, especially in light of the crash in Africa about 2 months ago of another airliner, I would have preferred to avoid it. Since it was Ana’s birthday, I didn’t have a choice.
The good news is that we landed. 
I’m in Adis now, about to board the next leg to Nairobi. The landing was rough, and we bounced. Overall, I wouldn’t say it’s a pleasant flight but other than the smell, it’s not that bad.
I had a bit of a luggage weight issue. I still can’t get that right. Sure that the limit was 20kg, I was peeling things out, and left my jeans and sweatshirt at home. It turns out that the limit is 30kg so I was well under, but now my carry-on was too heavy since I’d tried to put the nicer/newer clothes in there in the event (touch wood) that yet again I lose a bag. Items were shifted, and I got on my way.
Weird incident…at Ben Gurion airport, I was approaching one of the security checkpoints and the girl who checks my passport says to me “It’s true that there is an area in Canada called Quebec, right?” Now, I travel out of Israel on my Israeli passport so she was asking me this as a purely random stranger. She got a laugh at the irony of asking a Canadian out of all the people at the airport. The deal was that she made a bet with her co-worker that Montreal is the capital of Quebec. Neither could understand who in their right mind would name the capital city the same as the province. *shrug* Never could understand the French.
As I am writing this, it dawned on me that the airport is completely socked in with heavy fog in addition to the rain. Oh…this gives me soooo much optimism for the take-off.
