Again, definitely check out World Camp's blog to see shorter, close-to-daily posts of what we're up to here. (http://www.worldcampforkids.blogspot.com) Plus there's a few pictures!!
We got back about an hour ago from hiking Mt. Nkhoma, the same mountain I hiked in January. The difference in appearance was crazy! I barely recognized the path. I got about 2/3 of the way up and hung out there for awhile with a volunteer who wasn't keen on reaching the top.... which was just fine with me!! We had a picnic lunch on a rock before heading back down and eventually meeting the rest of the group at the van. Tonight, we're going out to dinner at an Indian restaurant called Huts. mmmm delicious!!
This past week was incredible. I forgot how much I missed being at schools. Being a coordinator is hard! There were so many times I wanted to jump in front of the class and teach again. But it was also great to be able to watch students and volunteer teachers get more comfortable with each day. I did get to sit in on a little of the teacher meetings, which was wonderful. The majority of the teachers were great - very interested in really teaching their kids about HIV and obviously dedicated. There was one, though, who broke my heart. His name was Harold. This week was a holiday week, so every student and teacher was there voluntarily. Harold, however, showed up drunk on Monday. He sat in on the meeting and made a few comments during the day. It was upsetting to see that although he was not praised by the other teachers, they did nothing to have him leave. I didn't get to go to camp on Tuesday, but he was more drunk than the first day. Wednesday, when I did go back, he only showed up to eat lunch and could barely walk in a straight line. While I hope he was only sitting in on the meeting and isn't actually a teacher, I'm fairly certain he is. It was hard to realize that he probably teaches his class like that everyday. There is such a shortage of teachers in Malawi that even an obvious alcoholic is not fired.
There were two teachers who were involved in a local Community Based Organization (CBO) where we worked on Friday as part of an outreach project. One, Emmanuel, was amazing. He really wanted to work to get the facts out into the community and start to break down the stigma surrounding HIV. He was wonderful to talk to. The CBO is just a few years old. A village headman donated a plot of land to them a few years ago so they could build an office, but it is still just empty land. They are currently building new bricks and taking apart old buildings to try to build an office. On Friday, when we worked with the CBO, we worked with staff, village headmen, and a group of people living with HIV. It was wonderful to hear their stories.
The reason I didn't go to camp on Tuesday is because I was interviewing local high school students who will be Field Interns for second session. They'll work with the high school students that come over from the US, and I am SO EXCITED to get to work with them. It's a volunteer position, so the kids are really dedicated to and interested in the issues. They all just graduated from an SAT class and are hoping to go to college this fall or next. They're all applying to schools in Europe and the States.... hopefully they'll get in!!
So that's just about all I have now.... I hope everyone's doing really well!!!
Just one more thing; my favorite quote of the week came from Tonnex, the director of the CBO we worked with on Friday: "We are capable of understanding."
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Playing Catchup with Posts!
I've been great about writing blog posts on my laptop, just not about posting them here! With only one internet account for the five coordinators with all of our work, it's hard to get online! But I have been writing a lot on my own. So now that I have the chance to post, I've got lots to catch you up on! I'll date each entry, even though some of them are a little old by now. I'll try to be better about claiming the computer every few days, instead of every few weeks, but we'll see!
A quick overview: I love Malawi! I've already experienced a number of highs and lows, but I also feel so comfortable here. I'm amazing that this is only my third time to Africa and my second time in Malawi, because it seems like I've already experienced so much! But with that said, there is so much more to learn! I can't wait to get to our first camp tomorrow... everything I've been doing for the past week and a half has been leading up to Monday!
Again, sorry this post is so long! But there are a number of posts in one. I'll try to get pictures up soon, but the internet's pretty slow, and there's frequent power outages that make working on the computer difficult. I have been posting on World Camp's blog close to every day though, so definitely check that out. There's pictures and stories there from orientation. Less feelings/experiences and more facts/information, but great nonetheless! http://www.worldcampforkids.blogspot.com/
12 May: Post 2! Or is it day 2 yet?
All my time spent at layovers transfers directly into the number of blogs I can write. I definitely wasn’t expecting to get 2 done before I even reached Malawi! Now I’m in the Joburg airport, waiting for the final leg of my trip. After I typed up my last blog in Dublin, I wandered into a café. I was pretty hungry so I picked up a salad, since it felt a whole lot like lunch time. I didn’t realize it was 6am local time and 1am Maine time. I’m not quite sure what time zone my body was in. The salad with tuna I ordered wasn’t what I expected either. There were four whole potatoes, not to be outdone by the four whole tunas. The potatoes turned out to be delicious, but the tuna wasn’t quite for me. So far, all my flights have gone smoothly; I’ve slept more than I expected, and got to watch a few movies. It was super fun to watch Couples Retreat, since it was filmed at a hotel my family stayed at a few years ago.
Joburg is completely covered in fog. I thought we were still in the clouds when our wheels hit the runway. My plane leaves in about an hour and a half. Hopefully this last flight goes smoothly and quickly! It’s just about 4 more hours until I’ll be back in the Pick Palace, playing bao and sipping a pineapple Fanta. :)
16 May: Finally in Malawi!
I cannot describe how happy I am to finally be back in the WC House! Everything’s all set up – our fifth and last coordinator arrived today, so we’re ready to really get into the preparations. Up until now, we’ve been running around setting up the house, buying supplies, updating documents, and interviewing Field Staff, the new title for our updated position of Translators. I already have great stories. On the second day I was here, Jaren, Rachel, and I headed over to Metro to do all of our bulk shopping. We bought sooooo much stuff. And didn’t have enough money. So Jaren drove back to the house and Rachel and I stayed to wait it out. Linda, one of the employees, brought us each a plastic stool to sit on and stayed with us to talk. She was wonderful. She is from the North, and still lives in her home village. She has two boys, one is 12 and I think the other is around 8.
Today, we decided on what area we’d each be in charge of. I’ve been assigned three aspects of the WC program. First (and what I’m most excited for) is Field Staff coordinator. So it was my job to interview all of the new Field Assistant applicants yesterday and I’ll be in charge of picking, calling, organizing, and paying Field Staff for each of our camps. Our Field Staff is made up of two jobs: Field Assistants, who are paid and work with college volunteers, and Field Interns, who volunteer their time and work with our high school program. Both positions require translation in both directions (English to Chichewa and back), cultural awareness and information, liaison between foreign volunteers and local Malawians, and anything else we could ask for. The Field Staff are amazing people who love what they do and are tons of fun.
I’m also Cook Group coordinator. I’ll be in charge of assigning cook groups, or groups of volunteers who are responsible for dinner each night. We set a budget and they cook delicious food! For our group of 16 people, the budget will probably be around 2,500 Malawian kwacha, or $20. Yummm! And my last job is Outreach/Activities coordinator. I’m getting more and more excited about this as I start to get into it. It’ll be my job to arrange activities on our days off. We’ll probably go visit a church and a mosque in Lilongwe. We’ll go to the fabric market to buy yards of fabric, then have Loli over, who is a tailor who makes beautiful clothing and bags. There’s also a place called the Crisis Nursery, that I wrote about in that paper if you read it. Children who are younger than 2 years are dropped off by their families and are given the proper care and nutritious until their family comes to pick them up. We’ll do outreach programs every Friday and Saturday. The first week, it looks like we’ll head to a refugee camp. I don’t know much about the camp yet, but a church group requested we come and spend time educating people about HIV. Although World Camp hasn’t worked with a religious organization in a number of years, this church asked specifically for a condom demonstration, so I’m not sure exactly what to expect!
17 May
I just want to tell the world about a man I met today named Michael. (I absolutely love that people don’t call before stopping by! It leads to the best surprises!) He was born in Malawi and went to undergrad and grad school in Michigan, if I remember correctly. Then he taught in Nebraska for a number of years. Originally, he meant to spend only four years in the States before heading back to Africa, but decided, after 16 years, it was time to return to Malawi. Before moving to the states, Michael’s sister died of AIDS; he adopted her son. The son has since discovered he is HIV positive. But he is now in high school in Lincoln, Nebraska and HIV is no longer detectable in his blood. Michael calls him his “poster child.”
Since moving back to Malawi, Michael has gotten incredibly involved in every social issue you can think of. He knows so much about the school system and the current state of HIV. He is in the middle of having children’s stories published that address all types of current issues. It will be a picture book that covers HIV, gender equality, deforestation, and similar topics. He didn’t talk about the book too much, so I don’t know a lot, but I cannot wait to read it! Right now Michael is also working on assessing the effectiveness of government teacher training with a European government (I forget which one, we talked about so many things!). That’s exactly what I’m most interested in; educating teachers so they can effectively teach the new government curriculum. So I can’t wait for Michael to come back later in the session so I can talk to him more!
Then Michael asked us about the cultural differences we notice in Malawi and what we think of them. We all laughed and said we don’t really notice those anymore. We see boys holding hands or sitting in each other’s laps and don’t bat an eye, but are surprised to see a man and woman holding hands. Michael asked if we’d noticed that people use their hands instead of handkerchiefs to blow their noses here. When he was doing cultural orientation for the Peace Corps, Michael and the volunteers asked Malawians why this is. One lady responded that it’s gross to put a dirty handkerchief back in your pocket. It makes sense to blow your nose into the ground, wipe your nose with your hand, and then wash your hands. It’s just cleaner! Then we talked about directness in the two cultures. In the States, someone will call out a person they just met if they are rude. In Malawi, one will go out of their way to avoid confrontation with a person they don’t know. So even if a foreigner does something culturally inappropriate or awkward, even if they don’t realize it and would probably like to be made aware, a Malawian will not tell them.
Michael had the most interesting view points. Having gone though primary and secondary school in Malawi, then undergrad and graduate school in the states, he knows both school systems and can praise and critique both in ways that are commonly looked over. He has impeccable English. He’s not afraid to state his views and can get into amazing and unexpected discussion with all the background needed to make his point and counter his opponent. Michael’s also planning on coming to at least one of our camps, hopefully next week. I’m really hoping to be able to sit in on teacher meetings with him; he said he’d be more than happy to give us tips on how to get into deeper conversations and develop that section of our curriculum!
In other news, the first volunteers arrive tomorrow! Two girls are coming in at 12:20 local time! And we still have so much to do before and after then! The other 9 volunteers (7 girls and 1 boy) are coming on Thursday. We’ll start orientation that evening and head to our first camp on Sunday! I cannot wait to meet volunteers and get back to the schools – I really, really miss rural Malawi and the students, but especially all the teachers!!
18 May
So today, I was reminded of exactly how much patience Malawi can sometimes require. All five coordinators were up early this morning to get lots of work done. We had one meeting at 8:30am which went great. We had another meeting planned for 10am with the Ministry of Hope, an organization that runs a number of wonderful programs throughout Malawi. At 9:40, one of the head coordinators called the local hospital to make an appointment for later in the day. They told her she needed to be in by 10 if she wanted to see anyone; but we really needed her in at the meeting too. So we dropped her off at ABC, the hospital, and went to the meeting without her and slightly less prepared than I would have liked. Since I am in charge of Outreach Programs, I’ll be talking to the Ministry of Hope a lot as we work with their already-established programs. The meeting went really well – we set up what I think will be a wonderful day at a program in a village near one of the schools we work with. On May 29, we’re going to a village to work with adults in the morning and kids in the afternoon. (I’m SOOOO excited to work with age groups other than the students we normally do – I think it’ll be a completely new and different experience with exciting and new rewards, as well as great windows with many new questions!) On the way back to the house, we all thought I should get dropped off at the hospital to stay with the one coordinator because she didn’t have cell minutes to call us with and it had been awhile since we’d dropped her off. The rest of the coordinators went back to the house so they could pick up the two volunteers who arrived today!! I sat in the waiting room for awhile until she was called in. After her appointment, we called the house to see if anyone could pick us up. But World Camp has three cars, two of which were in the shop, and the last one that was at the airport. We also called three Field Staff members and the guy who runs the house when no one from WC is here, but none of them could pick us up. So we started the long walk home. An hour and fifteen minutes later, we finally arrived. Although that time could have been spent being productive, it was great to get out of the house for awhile. It also reminded me why I’m here. Ignoring the fact that we walked along a busy road the whole time, everyone we passed was so nice and said hello. I saw children running and laughing, and miles of maize fields. We passed successful professionals who looked worried and tired and people struggling to make ends meet with beautiful smiles on their faces.
Once we got back to the house, we heard that the daytime watchman, Ngoni, had stopped by the house. He’d been really sick for about the past week – with what a local clinic had diagnosed as malaria. He was in for work yesterday and it was great to see him again, although he didn’t look as good as I remember. He didn’t come to work today, but had stopped by with his whole family while I was on my walk. He was lying on the bench outside and couldn’t sit up. He wants to go back to his village to get traditional treatment for his illness that had majorly relapsed since yesterday. He believes his deceased grandmother’s spirit is inside him and causing him to become ill. In order to remove her spirit, he must go to his home village and visit her grave. There, a number of ceremonies will be performed. He must also hold a huge feast for the entire village. He has refused to go to another hospital and will need to raise the money to get home soon. I can only hope he recovers soon, whether from traditional or modern medicine.
After hearing about Ngoni, the volunteers arrived; two girls, from North Carolina. One will be a senior and one just graduated college. They’re incredibly nice and I’m glad they’re here! After dinner, we took an inauguration trip to McDaud’s the local McDonald’s spinoff for ice cream! Tomorrow, we’ll take them on a town tour and have them help us with the last few preparations before the other 9 volunteers come in on Thursday.
It feels like the session’s really starting now – volunteers are arriving and soon we’ll be back in schools! Today was hard, but incredible nonetheless. I learned a lot about so many aspects of life in Lilongwe I hadn’t realized before; I cannot wait to get back to the villages; I can only hope Ngoni recovers; and soon the house will be full with volunteers!
A quick overview: I love Malawi! I've already experienced a number of highs and lows, but I also feel so comfortable here. I'm amazing that this is only my third time to Africa and my second time in Malawi, because it seems like I've already experienced so much! But with that said, there is so much more to learn! I can't wait to get to our first camp tomorrow... everything I've been doing for the past week and a half has been leading up to Monday!
Again, sorry this post is so long! But there are a number of posts in one. I'll try to get pictures up soon, but the internet's pretty slow, and there's frequent power outages that make working on the computer difficult. I have been posting on World Camp's blog close to every day though, so definitely check that out. There's pictures and stories there from orientation. Less feelings/experiences and more facts/information, but great nonetheless! http://www.worldcampforkids.blogspot.com/
12 May: Post 2! Or is it day 2 yet?
All my time spent at layovers transfers directly into the number of blogs I can write. I definitely wasn’t expecting to get 2 done before I even reached Malawi! Now I’m in the Joburg airport, waiting for the final leg of my trip. After I typed up my last blog in Dublin, I wandered into a café. I was pretty hungry so I picked up a salad, since it felt a whole lot like lunch time. I didn’t realize it was 6am local time and 1am Maine time. I’m not quite sure what time zone my body was in. The salad with tuna I ordered wasn’t what I expected either. There were four whole potatoes, not to be outdone by the four whole tunas. The potatoes turned out to be delicious, but the tuna wasn’t quite for me. So far, all my flights have gone smoothly; I’ve slept more than I expected, and got to watch a few movies. It was super fun to watch Couples Retreat, since it was filmed at a hotel my family stayed at a few years ago.
Joburg is completely covered in fog. I thought we were still in the clouds when our wheels hit the runway. My plane leaves in about an hour and a half. Hopefully this last flight goes smoothly and quickly! It’s just about 4 more hours until I’ll be back in the Pick Palace, playing bao and sipping a pineapple Fanta. :)
16 May: Finally in Malawi!
I cannot describe how happy I am to finally be back in the WC House! Everything’s all set up – our fifth and last coordinator arrived today, so we’re ready to really get into the preparations. Up until now, we’ve been running around setting up the house, buying supplies, updating documents, and interviewing Field Staff, the new title for our updated position of Translators. I already have great stories. On the second day I was here, Jaren, Rachel, and I headed over to Metro to do all of our bulk shopping. We bought sooooo much stuff. And didn’t have enough money. So Jaren drove back to the house and Rachel and I stayed to wait it out. Linda, one of the employees, brought us each a plastic stool to sit on and stayed with us to talk. She was wonderful. She is from the North, and still lives in her home village. She has two boys, one is 12 and I think the other is around 8.
Today, we decided on what area we’d each be in charge of. I’ve been assigned three aspects of the WC program. First (and what I’m most excited for) is Field Staff coordinator. So it was my job to interview all of the new Field Assistant applicants yesterday and I’ll be in charge of picking, calling, organizing, and paying Field Staff for each of our camps. Our Field Staff is made up of two jobs: Field Assistants, who are paid and work with college volunteers, and Field Interns, who volunteer their time and work with our high school program. Both positions require translation in both directions (English to Chichewa and back), cultural awareness and information, liaison between foreign volunteers and local Malawians, and anything else we could ask for. The Field Staff are amazing people who love what they do and are tons of fun.
I’m also Cook Group coordinator. I’ll be in charge of assigning cook groups, or groups of volunteers who are responsible for dinner each night. We set a budget and they cook delicious food! For our group of 16 people, the budget will probably be around 2,500 Malawian kwacha, or $20. Yummm! And my last job is Outreach/Activities coordinator. I’m getting more and more excited about this as I start to get into it. It’ll be my job to arrange activities on our days off. We’ll probably go visit a church and a mosque in Lilongwe. We’ll go to the fabric market to buy yards of fabric, then have Loli over, who is a tailor who makes beautiful clothing and bags. There’s also a place called the Crisis Nursery, that I wrote about in that paper if you read it. Children who are younger than 2 years are dropped off by their families and are given the proper care and nutritious until their family comes to pick them up. We’ll do outreach programs every Friday and Saturday. The first week, it looks like we’ll head to a refugee camp. I don’t know much about the camp yet, but a church group requested we come and spend time educating people about HIV. Although World Camp hasn’t worked with a religious organization in a number of years, this church asked specifically for a condom demonstration, so I’m not sure exactly what to expect!
17 May
I just want to tell the world about a man I met today named Michael. (I absolutely love that people don’t call before stopping by! It leads to the best surprises!) He was born in Malawi and went to undergrad and grad school in Michigan, if I remember correctly. Then he taught in Nebraska for a number of years. Originally, he meant to spend only four years in the States before heading back to Africa, but decided, after 16 years, it was time to return to Malawi. Before moving to the states, Michael’s sister died of AIDS; he adopted her son. The son has since discovered he is HIV positive. But he is now in high school in Lincoln, Nebraska and HIV is no longer detectable in his blood. Michael calls him his “poster child.”
Since moving back to Malawi, Michael has gotten incredibly involved in every social issue you can think of. He knows so much about the school system and the current state of HIV. He is in the middle of having children’s stories published that address all types of current issues. It will be a picture book that covers HIV, gender equality, deforestation, and similar topics. He didn’t talk about the book too much, so I don’t know a lot, but I cannot wait to read it! Right now Michael is also working on assessing the effectiveness of government teacher training with a European government (I forget which one, we talked about so many things!). That’s exactly what I’m most interested in; educating teachers so they can effectively teach the new government curriculum. So I can’t wait for Michael to come back later in the session so I can talk to him more!
Then Michael asked us about the cultural differences we notice in Malawi and what we think of them. We all laughed and said we don’t really notice those anymore. We see boys holding hands or sitting in each other’s laps and don’t bat an eye, but are surprised to see a man and woman holding hands. Michael asked if we’d noticed that people use their hands instead of handkerchiefs to blow their noses here. When he was doing cultural orientation for the Peace Corps, Michael and the volunteers asked Malawians why this is. One lady responded that it’s gross to put a dirty handkerchief back in your pocket. It makes sense to blow your nose into the ground, wipe your nose with your hand, and then wash your hands. It’s just cleaner! Then we talked about directness in the two cultures. In the States, someone will call out a person they just met if they are rude. In Malawi, one will go out of their way to avoid confrontation with a person they don’t know. So even if a foreigner does something culturally inappropriate or awkward, even if they don’t realize it and would probably like to be made aware, a Malawian will not tell them.
Michael had the most interesting view points. Having gone though primary and secondary school in Malawi, then undergrad and graduate school in the states, he knows both school systems and can praise and critique both in ways that are commonly looked over. He has impeccable English. He’s not afraid to state his views and can get into amazing and unexpected discussion with all the background needed to make his point and counter his opponent. Michael’s also planning on coming to at least one of our camps, hopefully next week. I’m really hoping to be able to sit in on teacher meetings with him; he said he’d be more than happy to give us tips on how to get into deeper conversations and develop that section of our curriculum!
In other news, the first volunteers arrive tomorrow! Two girls are coming in at 12:20 local time! And we still have so much to do before and after then! The other 9 volunteers (7 girls and 1 boy) are coming on Thursday. We’ll start orientation that evening and head to our first camp on Sunday! I cannot wait to meet volunteers and get back to the schools – I really, really miss rural Malawi and the students, but especially all the teachers!!
18 May
So today, I was reminded of exactly how much patience Malawi can sometimes require. All five coordinators were up early this morning to get lots of work done. We had one meeting at 8:30am which went great. We had another meeting planned for 10am with the Ministry of Hope, an organization that runs a number of wonderful programs throughout Malawi. At 9:40, one of the head coordinators called the local hospital to make an appointment for later in the day. They told her she needed to be in by 10 if she wanted to see anyone; but we really needed her in at the meeting too. So we dropped her off at ABC, the hospital, and went to the meeting without her and slightly less prepared than I would have liked. Since I am in charge of Outreach Programs, I’ll be talking to the Ministry of Hope a lot as we work with their already-established programs. The meeting went really well – we set up what I think will be a wonderful day at a program in a village near one of the schools we work with. On May 29, we’re going to a village to work with adults in the morning and kids in the afternoon. (I’m SOOOO excited to work with age groups other than the students we normally do – I think it’ll be a completely new and different experience with exciting and new rewards, as well as great windows with many new questions!) On the way back to the house, we all thought I should get dropped off at the hospital to stay with the one coordinator because she didn’t have cell minutes to call us with and it had been awhile since we’d dropped her off. The rest of the coordinators went back to the house so they could pick up the two volunteers who arrived today!! I sat in the waiting room for awhile until she was called in. After her appointment, we called the house to see if anyone could pick us up. But World Camp has three cars, two of which were in the shop, and the last one that was at the airport. We also called three Field Staff members and the guy who runs the house when no one from WC is here, but none of them could pick us up. So we started the long walk home. An hour and fifteen minutes later, we finally arrived. Although that time could have been spent being productive, it was great to get out of the house for awhile. It also reminded me why I’m here. Ignoring the fact that we walked along a busy road the whole time, everyone we passed was so nice and said hello. I saw children running and laughing, and miles of maize fields. We passed successful professionals who looked worried and tired and people struggling to make ends meet with beautiful smiles on their faces.
Once we got back to the house, we heard that the daytime watchman, Ngoni, had stopped by the house. He’d been really sick for about the past week – with what a local clinic had diagnosed as malaria. He was in for work yesterday and it was great to see him again, although he didn’t look as good as I remember. He didn’t come to work today, but had stopped by with his whole family while I was on my walk. He was lying on the bench outside and couldn’t sit up. He wants to go back to his village to get traditional treatment for his illness that had majorly relapsed since yesterday. He believes his deceased grandmother’s spirit is inside him and causing him to become ill. In order to remove her spirit, he must go to his home village and visit her grave. There, a number of ceremonies will be performed. He must also hold a huge feast for the entire village. He has refused to go to another hospital and will need to raise the money to get home soon. I can only hope he recovers soon, whether from traditional or modern medicine.
After hearing about Ngoni, the volunteers arrived; two girls, from North Carolina. One will be a senior and one just graduated college. They’re incredibly nice and I’m glad they’re here! After dinner, we took an inauguration trip to McDaud’s the local McDonald’s spinoff for ice cream! Tomorrow, we’ll take them on a town tour and have them help us with the last few preparations before the other 9 volunteers come in on Thursday.
It feels like the session’s really starting now – volunteers are arriving and soon we’ll be back in schools! Today was hard, but incredible nonetheless. I learned a lot about so many aspects of life in Lilongwe I hadn’t realized before; I cannot wait to get back to the villages; I can only hope Ngoni recovers; and soon the house will be full with volunteers!
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
First Post from Abroad
First blog post from abroad! I’m only in Dublin and have already narrowly avoided catastrophe. I didn’t even realize my flight out of JFK was delayed 3 hours, but someone at the ticketing counter (where I wasn’t allowed to check in because I was too early) offered to switch me to an earlier flight. I would’ve missed my connection here. So now I’m waiting in the Dublin airport for my next connection to Heathrow in 4 hours.
First adventure: the road trip to Portland. Even before that, five of my closest friends from Crew came to see me off this morning. Erin, Gigs, Kristin, Amy and Caroline all came over at 6:30am to say bye. Thanks again, girls! It was the perfect sendoff, complete with pictures of next year’s 5man!! Then, an epic road trip with Katie, Gemma, Abbey and Annie to Portland. First stop was at Jorgenson’s for a yummy breakfast (everyone needs to get the breakfast sandwich, seriously. It’s absolutely delicious.). Then LLBean for some last minute shopping and photos with huge moose! And of course, a stop off at Whole Foods to pick up dinner for the plane. The drive was so much fun, and the perfect way to end my semester in Maine!
I found the door to door travel time, and it’s exactly 48 hours. And now, I’m just about 18 hours in. 2 flights down, 3 to go. I just can’t explain how excited I am to finally get back to Malawi. It seems so surreal that the time’s finally here!
First adventure: the road trip to Portland. Even before that, five of my closest friends from Crew came to see me off this morning. Erin, Gigs, Kristin, Amy and Caroline all came over at 6:30am to say bye. Thanks again, girls! It was the perfect sendoff, complete with pictures of next year’s 5man!! Then, an epic road trip with Katie, Gemma, Abbey and Annie to Portland. First stop was at Jorgenson’s for a yummy breakfast (everyone needs to get the breakfast sandwich, seriously. It’s absolutely delicious.). Then LLBean for some last minute shopping and photos with huge moose! And of course, a stop off at Whole Foods to pick up dinner for the plane. The drive was so much fun, and the perfect way to end my semester in Maine!
I found the door to door travel time, and it’s exactly 48 hours. And now, I’m just about 18 hours in. 2 flights down, 3 to go. I just can’t explain how excited I am to finally get back to Malawi. It seems so surreal that the time’s finally here!
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
One Week Left!
So, not much to report on, only that I'm getting way more excited to leave soon! So excited I figured I'd post again! I leave in only 7 days! The down side? I get there in 9. :( That's right, 2 full days of travel. Colby --> Portland, ME (with stops for shopping on the way!) --> JFK --> Dublin --> London --> Johannesburg --> Lilongwe --> WC house! Flights are confirmed, I've started to pack up my dorm room, study for finals, turn in last papers and assignments, gather supplies, pack.... and there's still so much more to do! Anyway, I hope everyone's doing well! Be sure to stay in touch, I'll want to hear how everything is going back home (or where ever you are if you're also abroad for the summer/fall!)
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