Skip to main content

Getting ready for take off...

So its the night before I leave on a grand month-long adventure to Kenya. 

In less than 24 hours I will be in London.

Craziness.

I keep trying to go through everything in my head: Do I have it all packed? Do I have the too much stuff packed? Did I forget to do something before I leave the country? My malaria meds are in that one bag... The sunscreen is in there too... My passport still hasn't disappeared from my backpack no mater how many times I frantically check for it...

Okay, I think I'm good. 

I'm definitely not worried about the trip itself, actually being in Kenya and all. In fact, I'm pretty dang excited. I think I'm mostly worried about packing the right things, if you couldn't tell already. My clothes and stuff is split between one check bag and one carry-on duffle bag with some wiggle room in each for Wheels equipment. I hope my duffle bag meets the carry-on measurements. I should probably look for that online... 

The team is meeting tomorrow morning to divide and conquer the gear into our individual baggage. The plan is to meet in the Wheels lab around 10:00am to divide, pack, eat lunch, and then load up in a van for Dallas. We hope to get to DFW airport a couple hours in advance of our 6:45pm departure. 

So, DFW at 6:45pm to London Heathrow at 9:35am. I signed up to get the "asian vegetarian" in-flight meal. Pretty exciting. :) I plan to spread my time among sleeping, finishing up a book report, and preparing a testimony about going on missions to be presented to a church we are visiting our first Sunday in Kenya.

The plan is to spend two nights in London and then catch a flight to Nairobi on Saturday. From then we'll be stationed at the SACDEP center in Thika, Kenya and traveling back and forth to Joytown Primary School during the day. Last day in Kenya is scheduled to be June 2nd. We'll catch flights back through London and arrive in Dallas on the 3rd.

It really is happening. I hope I can get enough wits and good sleep in me before I leave. I have a feeling I will need it.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Clinic and Karibu - Joytown Day 8

  Karibu! No not the animal, the Swahili word meaning 'welcome'. Today was significant in that I finally felt welcome as part of the community at joytown and no longer a visitor. I've built relationships with the BethanyKids therapists and am able to recognize/name a large portion of the kids. At the end of the school day around 3:30, we have an ever growing number of kids inching into our work building and crowding around our stations, usually centered around a computer. I guess I never really expected to build friendships with therapists at Joytown, my perception of it was always centered around the research and the children. However, I am so glad for our relationships so far! Today we continued with data collection but with the interesting component of the mobile clinic visiting day. Surprisingly, besides moving the location of our 10:30 tea and 1:00 lunch, the clinic did not interfere one bit. On the contrary, it provided some awesome opportunity for conversation ...

Another One of Those Kenyan Days - Joytown Day 9

  Both last night and this morning the four data-collecting students (Matt, Anna, Nicole, and I) had a team pow-wow about our progress and plan for the day, one of the last days of data collection. We arranged all our subjects, times and wheelchairs to be used and sent each other off with a smile. Today went pretty much nothing like our plan. We had forgot about Murphy's strong residence in Africa. ;) After a bizarre chain of our subjects being either sick, gone on school trips, or just plain unable to continue I found myself walking down the road with Ms. Rispin to our Joytown secondary school (high school) neighbors in search of extra people to help fulfill our study. However, regardless of plans, today went amazingly! I really enjoyed spending time with the high school-ers who have some pretty awesome dreams for the future and similar interests. I talked with one pair of girls about music and the different instruments they would like to play if their school had...

And Now Presenting… - Joytown Day 13

Our whirlwind day of presentation (no wheelchair pun intended) began with a formal presentation to the Joytown secondary school (high school) and ended with a true Kenyan-style impromptu pres to the primary students and teachers. We carefully planned a presentation to the high school students, even creating a powerpoint to share with them containing graphs of the finalized data and pictures from the study. We miraculously packed 20+ people and wheelchairs into a computer room of the school library that was really only designed for 10 or so comfortably. We shared our data results and the Tinsley family shared some really encouraging words to the teens/young adults, urging them to realize that they are fearfully and wonderfully made by God for great purposes in this world. After exchanging contact information with one of the head-teachers who organized the high school participation in our study, (once she had told us about three different ways about the high school exchange progra...