Friday, July 14, 2006

Traveling this week

I don’t have too much to say today. I was able to talk to Dave this morning as he was on his way to the hospital (don’t tell Grandpa!) at about 5:45 am in Michigan – yikes! I certainly enjoyed it, though.

Our schoolwork is definitely picking up. We’re supposed to be finishing the Swahili books we’ve been reading and writing a draft of a book report. I decided to switch books late in the game, so I still have a bit of reading to do. We’re also finishing our community projects. Yesterday, Megan and I met with the director of the Adventist Development and Relief Agency, whose offices are right down the road, as well as one of the development studies students, who works with World Vision in Kenya. We enjoyed talking to both of them about their work and about how their faith and the faith of the organization impacts the work that they do. If we get a chance to talk to anyone else we will, but we’re ready now to start writing a short report in Swahili. Both of us are graduate students, so we initially envisioned a well planned and organized mini-research project, but we realized, fortunately, that the point was to use Swahili and to learn (in a short amount of time), not to do real research.

We’re leaving early tomorrow morning for Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar. It will take about 9 hours by bus to get there. We’ll be in Dar for 3 days, then we’ll take the ferry to Zanzibar, where we’ll be for 5 days before flying home a week from Monday. It should be a lot of fun. I’ll update you later in the week.

2 comments:

Julie said...

I was excited to hear about World Vision from one of your previous posts. I'm glad you were able to meet up with them. Jamie and I have sponsered a child through them for about 9 years now. That would be so exciting if you could meet yours in person!

I'm also so glad for you and Dave that you were able to talk this morning :)

Anonymous said...

Hi, Sarah -

We really enjoyed looking at all the pictures! Seeing the pictures of your classmates made me wonder the reasons for each of them doing this Swahili class. Are they all studying development as you are?

The street scenes and storefront brought back memories of the bazaar in Afghanistan. The "bathroom techique" picture also reminded of us our trip to AF!
My favorite pictures were of the children. :)

Your trip sounds fun - at least once you get there; traveling may not be so much fun - 9 hours on the bus! We'll look forward to hearing about your experiences and, hopefully, seeing some pictures!

We are still waiting to hear from CURE in Malawi - the medical director is on vacation until the end of July. I don't think I had remembered to tell you that.

Love you -
Cheryl