Update on Africa!

Here is an update on my “I’m going to AFRICA!” post, sorry to leave so many of you hanging. I’ve been wanting to do a big trip overseas for sometime now and had planned on trying to do one in 2009. I had narrowed my countries down to India, Kenya/Tanzania, and Costa Rica. I wanted to do a long trip of about 6 weeks and do some sort of volunteer service work for some of the time.

I decided to ask my good friend Emily if she wanted to do the trip with me and she happily said YES! She didn’t really want to go to India and after some different friends advice, decided Costa Rica was too close to use 6 weeks on and that I should save that trip for another time. So Africa it is. We both work for NRS so the next tricky part was us both getting approval for 6 weeks off. We work in different departments and based on what’s happening and the season in Africa we decided to try and ask for the time off at the end of this year! Thankfully and gratefully we both got the ok, and that night we bought tickets. We head to Kenya at the end of Oct and get back the beginning of Dec. We are currently looking for some volunteer work with conservation or community development. Besides volunteering we have 2 major other things we want to do – visit the Serengeti for a few days and hike Mt. Kilimanjaro (the tallest mtn. in Africa).

We are both really excited. Emily has become an amazing new friend of mine and we get along really well. As I talked about in an earlier post, you should make sure whoever you travel with, wants to travel the same way you do or else you’re setting yourselves up for some not so happy days. Em and I both like the adventure of seeing where the wind blows us but we will have some plans dialed down. You won’t catch us with a full itinerary booked out though. We both want to delve into the African culture and connect with as many people as we can. Em is already a world traveler so I’m very fortunate to have someone so experienced traveling with me. She’s going to start off by trimming down my chronic “over-packer” syndrome that I have. We are purposely getting small Travel Backpacks, so that we aren’t bogged down. It’ll be interesting to see how I well I’ll do with so little, but I’m looking forward to it!

Well, that’s about it for now on Africa – I’ll let you all know more as we confirm some things.

Here are some photos that were all taken in Kenya & Tanzania that I’m borrowing from people who posted their photos on Flickr. These make me smile and get me soooo excited about AFRICA!!!

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One love, one blood, one life, you got to do what you should.
One life with each other: sisters, brothers.
One life, but we’re not the same.
We get to carry each other, carry each other.
One, one.
~U2 , one