Skip to main content

Travel Day 1...


Woke up this morning and didn't want to get out of bed. I was so warm and so sleepy and it's summer so what do I have to do anyway. Oh that’s right. 

I'm going to Kenya.

I ate a last "American" breakfast of fruit and blueberry muffins with a good friend, who has been lovingly hosting me in her home between the end of school and my departure. We discussed hopes and plans for our respective summers, although they look quite a bit different. I was glad to have the extra time with her and the chance to see off several of my closest friends as they headed off to their summer plans. It's much easier to say goodbye to one or two people at a time rather than the whole group at once. :)

The four of us student team members met at the Wheels lab at 10:00 this morning to begin sorting and stuffing our gear. We shuffled around data collection binders and heart-rate monitors and clothes until each bag reached its 51 pound limit or got dangerously close to busting a zipper. About 20 minutes into our packing, a group of photographers and a reporter from a Longview newspaper squeezed into our lab space, snapping photos and asking questions as we stuffed and weighed our bags.  Once the final members of our team arrived, our faculty lead and a local family, we finalized our packing, ate a take-out lunch of Vietnamese pho, and loaded up the cars. 

The plan for the rest of today is to board our airplane from Dallas DFW at 6:00 pm and fly! We travel through the night and arrive at London Heathrow tomorrow morning at 11:45 am. 

I'm sitting now in the DFW airport, killing time and trying to fight off the enticing smells of airport snack-age. I've done pretty well so far, armed with an apple, some pungent spearmint gum, and my webcam. :) 


All set to go!
R.G. LeTourneau shades
Goofy pics
Matt, he's a professional sleeper.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Oh the Americans are here. Make spaghetti.

Tuesday and Wednesday passed quickly and easily as we now all adjusted to Kenya time (Goodbye jet lag!) and were back to our Joytown research routine. We knew what had to get done and the time we had to do it in.   SACDEP welcomed us back with a Tuesday meal including "American food" aka spaghetti noodles. Just noodles. Haha Thanks, Kenya. We continued our wheelchair research at Joytown Primary School and got to return to the Secondary School (Kenyan High School equivalent) for a second survey time with the students. I realized through this survey that although we are very different, Kenyans and Americans, much is the same. High school students are high school students. They are teenagers. Some with attitudes, most with dreams, and all of them with lives that are just as real and crazy to understand as my own. *Philosophical vent over* Once our survey work was finished, Danielle decided to jump in and join a group of Secondary girls rehearsing songs for an upcoming talen...

Hello again Kenya

After 24 hours of travel to the other side of the world and two days of research work I've finally gathered enough jet-lagged energy (and strong enough wifi) to write this. On Monday, I escaped the thunderstorms, tornadoes, and flooding of Texas on a trans-atlantic flight to London. The team included Professor Rispin, Prof Sasaki and Danielle. 8 hours later, we arrived with time to crawl through layers of Heathrow security and wander, sleepy eyed through the airport to our next gate. By 11am we were on our final 8 hour flight to Nairobi, Kenya. My plane buddies included a Kenyan track runner who's said he's filled up three passports traveling and racing in countries around in the world (completely paid for by sponsors, by the way). And he hasn't even finished college. Why am I in school again? Kidding... sigh... Med school... My second plane buddy was a newly graduated Kenyan-born pharmacist living in Houston. He reminded me how much doctors are needed, especially in ...

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...