Vietnam!

After a painfully long 16-hour flight from JFK to Hong Kong which left on Monday morning and arrived in Tuesday afternoon, we had about two hours before our connection to Ho Chi Minh City left. We finally arrived at our hotel in HCMC around 7:30pmcon Tuesday. The whole group was exhausted; with no other choice, we rallied and headed to exchange money and eat dinner before heading to bed horizontally for the first time in a few days. We had to be up early this morning. With the bus scheduled to leave the hotel at 6:30, we didn't have time for a full breakfast, just a boxed one on the bus. As we headed out to Can Gio during the morning rush hour traffic, we got our first glimpse at the city. More motorbikes than I've ever seen before. They're everywhere, yet with no identifiable traffic pattern. We traveled by bus, ferry, and boat to an island with government officials to hand out care packages and bicycles to kids that brittanys hope works with in the community. It was a formal ceremony of sorts, filled with speeches, photo ops, and organized chaos. From there, we took a brief walk through the village before heading back to the boat, then bus, then ferry, then bus (again), with a stop for lunch somewhere along the way. Luckily for me, I'm not the lone vegetarian, so we get our own table with plenty of veg-friendly foods. Yum!!! We sat in a ton more traffic in the afternoon as we waited to get back across HCMC to a center for blind children that is run by some nuns. They sand and performed for us, while some of the Etown students prepared games and activities accentuating their other senses. It was a jam-packed day. Upon returning to our hotel in HCMC, I went with 6 other "adults" for a hot stone massage. Totally worth it. Tomorrow is another full day (with time for a buffet breakfast). The group is splitting up, and I'm headed to see the Cu Chi tunnels. While I'm certain it will be a fascinating morning, I can't help but be mildly anxious due to the crawling-through-small-spaces-designed-for-wartime aspect of it all. Hopefully I'll be able to post some photos before the end of the trip, but no promises.

Time to dust off the old passport...

As I looked back at this blog, and stepped back in time, I realized just how long it has been since I've been abroad in a social work capacity.  Not to mention how much has changed over the past two and a half years.

Well, the time has come again.  On Monday I head to JFK airport, bound for Vietnam.  I'm looking forward to the trip, a trip co-sponsored by my alma mater, Elizabethtown College, and a wonderful organization, Brittany's Hope.  I'd wanted to go on this trip when I was a student, but the stars never seemed to align just right to make it a possibility.  Well, although the timing is never really quite right, and my work has been chaotic and somewhat unexpectedly in transition for the last two weeks, they're incredibly supportive of my long-planned trip.  While I really haven't had time to prepare for the trip over the last two weeks, I am excited and very much looking forward to another adventure abroad, even if it is only short-term.

Dear Africa, you helped me write this by showing me to give is priceless.

I left Uganda on Aug 2nd.  I travelled for about two weeks, stopping in Lusaka, Zambia, Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, Livingstone, Zambia, Kasane, Botswana, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, & Lalibela, Ethiopia.  Some highlights:

1. In Lusaka, Zambia, visiting UNZA.
2. In Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, I fell into a tourist trap and played with some lion cubs.
3. A hippo in the Zambezi River.
4. Some of the estimated 60,000 elephants in Chobe National Park, Kasane, Botswana.
5. Sunset on the Chobe River.
6. Victoria Falls from Livingstone, Zambia.
7. One of the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela, Ethiopia.
8. Hiking to Asheton Myriam, one of Lalibela's monasteries.  

Goodbye, Uganda

I leave Uganda in less than 24 hours.  I came on the Friday shuttle to Kampala, and have spent the weekend doing last-minute errands, exploring more of the city, relaxing, and saying (or trying to say) goodbye to some friends and coworkers.  On Saturday, Laura, Vicki (the new princeton africa fellow in Kla) and I left the guesthouse around noon, when a driver came to take Tara to the airport, and got dropped at the shopping malls in town to get some snacks and money.  From there we went and had lunch, then walked around the downtown area, stopping to buy some DVDs, have some smoothies, and go to a couple of craft markets.  On our way back from downtown, I called my friend Josephine from Moroto to say goodbye, as she's at school in Kampala now.  She happened to be in church, but left immediately and came to meet us very quickly, and then took us to her hostel at school so that we could meet her friends and hang out for a while.  It ended up being a lot of fun - she's doing a certificate program at the YWCA, and her roommates/friends are from all over, including Kenya and Tanzania, and Kitgum & Arua Districts.

Some Photos:

1. Laura, Agnes, & I on the shuttle.  We were 9 people from Kitgum to Kiryandongo, and 10 from Kiryandongo to Kampala, though for the second half we were in a minivan, so it was slightly less cramped than the land cruiser.  
2. Laura & I near Karuma when we had a flat tire.
3. The men fixing the puncture.
4. Reaching Kampala.  Perhaps somewhere in Kawempe.
5. Josephine & I in her "dorm room."
6. Looking out the window from her dorm to the taxi park/Kampala Road/City Square
7. In front of the school sign.

I haven't uploaded the pictures I took today, but they were only from the walk to Shoprite and when Agnes came to the guesthouse for a small visit...

Photos From the First Kidepo Trip

More Photos

1. A  dinner with Laura & the PC kids.
2. Laura's photo of the group when we went to South Sudan from Kidepo.*
3. Laura's photo of one of Gloria's sisters, Heather, & I when the vehicle was stuck in the mud 
4. Laura's photo of me, Tara, & Heather on our "nature walk" that the guide suggested because we were getting restless waiting for someone to come tow us out of the mud.
5. Beginning of the sunset near my house

*Don't worry, there's just a land border, no formalities.