Today was sooo tiring I am ready for bed! The day started off with a long drive to Blantyre which is where Mulanje Mountain is.
On the way there I tried to go to sleep since it was so early but I did see a few things. I saw this huge truck of stuff on the road that had fallen on its side; I was glad nobody was hurt but it looked crazy. Then I saw Malawian military men marching in the fields doing training. That was pretty cool and I wish I could take a picture, but it’s against the law to take pictures of government people, police, military men etc. 
These are women washing clothes in the river.Finally we did reach Mulanje Mountain. Honestly, I was not excited for this hike. I am not a mountain climber at all and I wasn’t too wild about doing it in old Jordans because boots would have had more grip for the rocks and stuff. Well anyways we started the walk and we had two guides with us.
The whole thing was pretty much up a very steep hill so my legs were getting a work out. I kind of sucked it up and started walking with the fast group up in front. I was amazed with Dr. Kelly because she is like 72 trooping up this mountain with us. I did feel bad for Patty because she uses walking sticks since she has a bad hip so she struggled with it and eventually had to go back to the van where Dr. Barber and her husband stayed.
I was excited to see these pretty big monkeys run by. One of them kind of stared us down from a far distance. One of our guides told us that there’s this big race that men do which is running up and down the whole mountain. He said he had done it last year and came about 50th place out of 250 runners. The first place winner had a time of about 2 hours and 40 minutes so you can tell it was long. A problem we got into while hiking was that this man with sticks on his head and barefooted came down the trail we were walking and one of the students took a picture of him. He got so upset and asked for money for his photo being taken without permission so the girl had to tell him that she deleted the picture. After he left, our guide told us that the man never cares about pictures, but he was mad because she had a picture of him getting sticks some where he had no permission to be so now it all made sense. During our hike we saw a long line of little girls who looked younger than ten struggling with a whole bundle of sticks on their heads climbing up rocks and sticks barefooted. I just felt so bad that they had to work on a Saturday, had no shoes, and work so hard; after seeing that I couldn’t complain about anything.
After a long, long hike up many steep hills, rocks, and tall grass we finally reached the waterfall. It was very hard getting across some of the rocks but it was pretty cool to get to the middle of the river to see the waterfall. Some of us even sat on this large rock in the middle and ate lunch.
The trail we took down hill allowed us to see many people on the mountain. They were nice and said hello to us, but one group of older ladies kept pointing at me and said sister which was kind of odd; Danielle wasn’t near me so she probably got the same reaction since we look different from the rest of the group.
I was so glad for the hike to be over and I was more excited to see what the wood carvers had at their stands. This time our group had a plan to make sure we got good prices for things. We looked around for 15 minutes and tried to bargain good prices. One or two people brought something and the rest of us kept bargaining. Then we all walked away to the van. When the van’s engine started up all the people kept running to our windows offering way better prices. It was kind of funny but I was glad it worked.
The next place we were headed to was to see the new Annie’s Lodge in Blantyre. When we got there her daughter Catherine greeted us and invited us in for tea. I was the happiest person ever because I saw that they had Nesquick strawberry milk. Now I didn’t have milk so I put it in the hot water they gave me. Then I tried to add cream and sugar, but it wasn’t quite the same. Then finally I got offered some milk. With a little more cream it did start to taste decent so I was very happy. They also gave each table a whole plate of different cakes to try; the chocolate one was the best of course! Annie came along with her boyfriend Limbani who is apparently some big famous musician in Malawi so that was pretty cool. She gave us a tour of the lodge in progress. It was nice, but I think the one we are living in will always be the best one. I also found out that Annie owns one of the clubs we passed.
We got back really late but it was a pretty good dinner because my table had some great conversation about some random topics; it was one of those stories you had to be there for.
All in all today was good.
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