The Mocha Club Blog

Editor’s note: Mocha Club member and volunteer, Annie, is blogging from Capetown, South Africa on the Mocha Club trip from May 28th-June 10th. This is our first official “trip blogger” so please help us spread the word and check back for updates!

Hi friends.

Well, it’s 6:20pm in London. We are about an hour away from boarding the plane and heading to Cape Town.

And before I continue, let me insert this fact: I have not slept very much in the past 36 hours. In fact, I believe I have slept 10% of the time. Which is a low percentage. So I am tired and this here blog post may reflect that.

Our team officially met for the first time yesterday. For the last few months, we have been meeting via conference calls since Ernie is from L.A., Ellie is from North Carolina, and Andrew is from Chicago. (The rest of the team are Nashvillians.) So it was awesome to finally all be together, talking constantly about what supplies we brought for the kids in Cape Town, going over our plans and thoughts, and remembering that all our plans could get changed, so “BE FLEXIBLE PEOPLE.” At least that’s what Marisa keeps saying.

From left to right, here’s our team!
Ellie, Quinn, Betsy, Emily, Marisa [MC Events Coordinator], Darcy, Annie, Adria, Andrew, & Ernie

And y’all. If you could see Ernie now. He is attempting to grind off a portion of his camera battery to make the prongs fit into an adapter. So pretty much, the background noise for this blog post is metal prongs grating against metal flooring. And it appears he’s actually getting somewhere. He’s like our own personal McGyver. (McGruber? Who’s with me? SNL? Come on, that’s funny.)

It’s been fun to spend time together as a team. And by time, I mean A LOT OF TIME. We flew into JFK in New York (where the above pic was taken) and then flew to London. Here in London we have had about 9 hours of layover time where we somehow, much to my poor feet’s chagrin, walked to Hyde Park, Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, and Trafalgar Square. Now back at the airport, we are all far past exhaustion and either totally hilarious or horribly annoying.

Or in my case, both.

Ernie is sweating. He just walked by me to go test his newly shaven plug and he is   drenched. Being that innovative is a workout, people. I made Betsy take a picture, because you deserve to see this.

It’s time to head to the gate, so I’m gonna have to quit blogging. Which is always sad to me.

We arrive in Cape Town at 8am Saturday, May 30th, so hopefully we’ll get a chance this weekend to update you on how things are going. If Ernie gets this adapter thing worked out, maybe his next assignment will be wireless internet for our guest house in Cape Town.

Here’s to hoping,
Annie