Monday, December 30, 2013

Orientation Day

I'm here!!! Or there, I guess. The weather is fantastic: sunny and hot and blue skies and I love it! Yesterday was rough because the flight was 17 hours so I was super tired. We took a 22-passenger van (yep, they have those) to the Wilgespruit Fellowship Centre, which is a retreat place built in 1948 to be a place for whites and blacks to interact, which was illegal at the time, of course. Lots of famous Southern-Africa people have stayed/hid from the police here, including Nelson Mandela and an old president of Mozambique. It's no 5-star hotel, but I love it more. It sits at the top of a valley and you can see a town with red roofs rising up on the other side.
It's about 4:40 PM right now and we haven't done much today. It's been mainly a MOP-orientation day, so lots of sitting and talking and praying and singing, but it'sstill interesting. Tomorrow we are going to visit the Apartheid museum and a Rhino-Lion preserve, so I'm psyched. More later! And I'm so sorry for the awful photo quality; these are coming from my iPod. 


Friday, December 27, 2013

Pre-Trip Thoughts

I don't know how to do the "blog thing", so apologies in advance. 

Ew, packing. I've got my camera, malaria meds, and passport. Also the ornament Pastor Kevin gave me. I'll include a photo so you can see how awesome it is. It's a peace sign made of recycled aluminum from a Fair Trade artisan in South Africa. (Good find, Rev Kev!) This isn't just a post about how fantastic my ornament is: I want to say thanks. Thanks to Kevin, of course. Also to everyone who helped me financially- there's no way I could do this without you! Thanks so my teachers for being flexible and cooperative with me missing 2 weeks of school. Thanks to the Wolford-Wright clan for all the support. I wish I could have seen you more this Christmas. And I think that's all the thanks.

Now that that is out of the way... The plane leaves Burlington tomorrow at 9:30 ish. From there, I'll go to DC and then take a group flight to Dakar, Senegal. I don't know if we change planes there or not... (Can I say I've been to Senegal if I really only paused on the runway as they refueled the plane?) And then we fly to Johannesburg! I hope everything goes smoothly, with no cancelled/delayed flights. We'll see... That's it for now! 

Monday, October 21, 2013

Here is the most recent, though still tentative, itinerary for my trip.  Read the numbers on the markers in order to follow my journey chronologically.