Day One (or Day 46...)

January 15, 2007

After six weeks of family time, visiting with friends and a note pad filled with to do lists I think we're finally ready to fly to Africa! Well, as ready as a first time traveler to Africa can be. We've filled our heads and our hearts with information, with statistics, with knowledge about the culture and the people and then we've emptied our minds, erased the expectation (as much as we can; countering anticipation with an open mind of what awaits).

The time to read is over, the time to live out our latest dream is upon us.

Have spent final few hours packing, catching up with friends and family, (thank you to all of you who have been so supportive in our times of self doubt and what-the-hell-are-we-doing phase) and soaking in sights, sounds and smells of the big city. Toronto has never seemed so alive to me.

So here we are...our debut if you will, Whitehorse to West africa.

From where we've come to where we're going, we welcome you to our blog and do hope you can follow along.

Trisha

It's a grey morning in Toronto, wet snow off Lake Ontario freezing to streets and buildings. The last six weeks have been a whirlwind -- driving out of Whitehorse to Calgary, flying to Chicago and Halifax, then another drive to Toronto, with visits with friends and family along the way. But the bigger journey has not yet begun. In a few hours we'll get on the Spadina streetcar with a backpack each, to ride the TTC out to Pearson airport. Then a layover in London, and then Accra, the capital of Ghana, in West Africa.

We like life best when it's full of contrasts. Too much similarity dulls the senses, I find, hence the desire to do things like this. You can't get much different than sub-Arctic to sub-Sahara in the dead of winter. We have some idea of what to expect, but none of what we'll find. Life is like that, if you want it to be. G.