Getting excited!

Hello all!

I heard that some of you were receiving my support letters so I thought it would be a good time to start blogging! First of all, as my letter said, I hope you all are doing well and I hope to be able to give you all a little more of the details and progress of my trip than my letter was able to articulate.

I will be in Kenya for two months, leaving Kansas City May 25th and returning the evening of July 16th. I will be staying with my cousin in law's parents while in Nyakach. There we will have very different living situations with squatty potties, splash showers (available only a few times a week), and intermittent electricity. My cousin suggeseted that I bring over a bandana because we will not be able to shower daily and it will help manage my dirty hair! From my understanding, there is a town a few miles away that has internet access which we can use every other week due to the journey it takes to get there. We might be able to use my cousin's cell phone to text family a little more frequently to update them on our safety. The main mode of transportation we will be using while over there are motorcycles. We will be commuting by motorcycle to the two hospitals we will be volunteering at which will be a fun and new situation for me. We plan to work in and with the community from the time we arrive until July 8th where we will travel to the coast for a week on the beach with my cousin and her husband and another group of tourists. This will be our time to relax, have fun, and see more of Africa before coming back to the States. We are planning to go on a 2 day safari at some point during the trip as well which I am very excited about!

My friend Laura, that is going with me, and myself are going to be meeting with my cousin Emily and her husband Dan this weekend to finalize plans for the trip and get a better understanding of our trip. Emily and Dan live in Illinois so this will be the first time they meet Laura and the first time we talk in person about the trip. Although we have not all met in person, we have been planning this trip for over a year and we are all getting excited as the trip gets closer. I hope that this meeting gives us more clarity and peace about the trip and more information for me to post here for you all to read!

While planning this trip, I am currently finishing up nursing school (graduating 5/16/10), preparing to take the nursing board test to get the official RN letters behind my name, job searching, and working a little bit as well. As a part of my last semester in nursing school, I am working with an RN at Children's Mercy on the night shift (7pm-7am) two nights a week for a total of 320 clinical hours by the end of the semester. I also work a shift one day a week at my job at KUMED on the neuroscience floor as a nursing aide. I have a busy schedule to say the least but I am not impossible to get ahold of and would love to communicate with all of you in any way possible.

I think this post is enough to digest for the time being but I will update you all after the meeting I have this weekend with Emily and Dan. If you want more information about the organization I will be working with you can go to http://www.daladevelopment.org/.

Also here is a YouTube video of my cousin Emily giving the candy PopRocks to the members of a Maasai villiage. Its funny and gives you a view of the people and environment we will be interacting with. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDAZcl4TJVQ

With love,

Christy

P.S. Here are the key players in this trip

This is Laura, my friend who will be graduating with me from nursing school in May.

This is my cousin Emily and her husband Dan. Both are the creaters of the organization Dala Development and live part time in Kenya and part time here in the States. I believe they will be in Kenya starting at the beginning of May and staying there for 6 months!