Malawi, Africa: WE'RE IN LILONGWE!!! PRAISE JESUS! Day 4 continued

SO...guess what...I couldn't sleep on the plane. I am beyond exhausted. I have never felt this physically and mentally tired and not able to sleep. We finally landed in Lilongwe. AFRICA IS SO SO BEAUTIFUL! On the way over...we flew over Mt. Kilimanjaro...I didn't see it but they announced it on the flight. I thought that was pretty neat. I STILL can't believe that I'm on a different continent! Crazy stuff. 3 continents in 4 days! Anyway...the thing that we worried about the most was luggage making it and getting through customs. With how the trip had gone so far, we knew something was bound to go wrong...but NO...all of our bags (29) showed up. AND it took 10 minutes MAX to get us and all those bags through customs. It was amazing! They only opened up 3 bags. We get outside the airport and are immediately greeted by some of our translators and John Gardner- a missionary from FB Springdale who is staying here for a few months. Him and Doug (the missions director from FB Springdale) got everything ready for us before we showed up. You should've seen what our van looked like driving to Ntcheu...19 people...29 bags and at LEAST 2 carryons EACH...we were CRAMMED in there for 3 1/2 hours. We got to see a lot of beautiful scenery and malawian people everywhere. Got got to the house and unloaded all of our stuff and picked our rooms. There are 3 bedrooms in the house we're staying in. All 6 guys plus John share one room, Gina, Meredith and Joley share the "master" with the bathroom and Abbie, Beth and I share the other. The house is a decent size with concrete floors in every room. There are 2 bathrooms..1 for the girls and 1 for the guys. The water doesn't work well...but it works. Josh was sweet and set up all of our mosquito nets on our beds. This was definitely new for me...and interesting. We felt completely disgusting after that long trip so we HAD to try to wash our hair. We didn't want to get in the shower...things here aren't exactly clean...so Abbie and I boiled water (To kill the germs) and mixed it with cold and poured water over our heads with cups- hanging them over the tub to wash our hair. Baby wipes were used for the rest of the body. My hair felt AMAZING afterwards. I was so thankful to have it clean...or kinda clean. You've got to understand that here, you never really feel clean. The humidity is BAD...you feel sticky/hot all the time. There is NO AC ANYWHERE. The house we're in is somewhat of a "compound"-it is surrounded by a 9 ft fence with glass edges lining the top and a watchman at the gate. This house is right in the middle of the city strip-kind of like Dickson Street in Fayetteville. You walk out the front gate and into chaos. TONS OF PEOPLE! And can you imagine...12 Americans walking out...we got PLENTY of stares. Some of them have never seen white people before. We are not EVER allowed out of that gate unless we are on the bus or have at least 2 guys with a group of at least 5. It's serious business. Well...it's my bedtime...i'm about to get in this mosquito net and see how it goes. hopefully I can sleep...with the help of Nyquil. Excited about tomorrow! HOGS won today BTW...they beat LSU IN GAME 1! WOO PIG SOOIE!