My biggest, hairiest, most audacious goal ever

I love running. I love the feeling of accomplishment after both a three-miler on the treadmill or a 13.1 mile half-marathon. I’ve always wanted to run a full marathon but never had quite the right amount of motivation for long run after long run.

Until the organization where I work presented an opportunity for 8 runners from around the country to team up to raise over $40,000. We’re sending a team of high school students from Boston to help a village in Malawi build a primary school which will educate hundreds of children. The experience is life-changing for the urban American youth who spend two weeks in a developing country working hand-in-hand with the villagers to build the school.

I’ve been to Malawi and seen hundreds of children getting their lessons outside under a tree – a school building would mean everything to the families in this village. I’ve also seen the impact that a building like this has made in hundreds of other villages around the world which is why I’ve committed to running 26.2 miles in less than three months and raising $5,500 for this school.

I’m sure you know where this is going. I need your help. In order to make my goal of $5,500 by April 16th, every donation large or small or assistance you can provide me helps immensely!

I encourage you to check out buildOn’s website here and if you want to see what we do firsthand, please watch this fantastic (short!) video on our website.

If you’re able to make a donation, here is the website where you can do so. Please know that buildOn is a registered 501(c)(3) organization and your contribution is 100% tax-deductible. My friends in Malawi and I thank you in advance for your generosity!

FINALLY, please share this post. Send it to anyone and everyone you know. Pass along buildOn’s mission and my big marathon goal. If you know anyone who’d be particularly interested in service learning and education both here and abroad, please let me know and I’d be happy to talk to them. Also, remember that your company may have a donation matching program that you can take advantage of and DOUBLE the impact of your gift!

Okay, enough of my sales pitch. I hope you all know that this is very important to me and I would be most grateful for any help you’re able to give. I love the people in these communities and feel very blessed to be able to help them by running 26.2 miles through the streets of Boston.

Most importantly, my friends in this photo would be eternally thankful for an opportunity for education, for a future that they may not have had otherwise.

Happy New Year!

I’m a bit late to the “Happy Holidays!” game as I’ve been busy up and down the east coast with family, friends and work responsibilities. We celebrated Thanksgiving, Christmas, my birthday and New Year’s Eve and I managed not to leave the country for four whole months.

As I sit here in Virginia and prepare for my February trip to Nepal, I thought I’d share with you a list of thirty things I want to do before I’m thirty. Not resolutions, per se, just interesting things that would rock. So here goes.

Thirty Before Thirty:

1. Buy a house
2. Add a little one to our family
3. Visit 5 new countries (Mali, Senegal, Haiti, Ethiopia, 2011 — need one more!)
4. Run a marathon
5. Be a vegetarian for a month
6. Make one of my many business ideas finally come to fruition
7. Be a vegan for a week
8. Try snowboarding
9. Host a big family holiday (Christmas, Thanksgiving, etc) (Christmas 2011)
10. Learn another language
11. Drive across the country
12. Play a team sport
13. Fly first class
14. Ride a horse on the beach
15. Learn how to sail
16. Perfect a very fancy and impressive dessert
17. Consistently volunteer with a nonprofit
18. Read 50 books in a year
19. Get my hair cut short (chin length?), just for kicks
20. Spend a week with no internet
21. Sew something and actually use it (Union Jack pillow, 2011)
22. Pay off debt (Paid in full, 2011)
23. Perfect a solid headstand in yoga
24. Improve my photography skills to better capture my travels
25. Summit the other four 5000+ foot peaks in New Hampshire’s White Mountains
26. Summit Mount Washington in winter
27. Attend a Patriots playoff game at Foxborough
28. Learn how to make a perfect martini
29. Complete a 30 day yoga challenge
30. Foster a shelter dog

They say that telling someone about a goal increases the likelihood of accomplishment by 85% and with this list I think I need all the percentage points I can get. What are your resolutions or goals this year? How are you going to change the world in 2012?

Happy New Year to all and here’s to another year of happiness and changing the world and making it happen!

Battle wounds and horror stories

While I do travel to some off-the-beaten-path destinations and stay there for more than the average person would be comfortable, I don’t live like the locals or speak seventeen tribal languages (or even one, for that matter!). I haven’t visited sixty different countries nor can I boast that I have no idea who the Kardashians are, but I have made my way through a handful of developing countries and can relate to the plight of the expat aid worker.

I follow a funny blog called”Stuff Expat Aid Workers Like (similar concept to Stuff White People Like) and when I saw this post the other day about airport horror stories, having just experienced a minor airport inconvenience myself, I had to chuckle. I’ve got my own treasure trove of airport experiences that I like to break out when the timing is right – Full body searches! Threats of being held captive in the Kabul airport! Dark back-room examinations of visas and passport stamps! Demands for bribes to be set free from the grips of Egyptian police!

Here’s the full, hilarious and totally relatable original blog post:

No EAW [expat aid worker] dinner party or illicit drinking session is complete without an exotic tropical disease story and its companion piece, the airport horror story. Whatever this genre lacks in the sheer terror stakes of the ‘armed militia roadblock’ canon, it more than makes up for with its ample scope for comedic retelling and ‘confirmability’ by others who have been through the same airport (but not, of course, had the once-in-a-lifetime experience you’ve had).

The key to successful delivery of an airport horror story is to tell it with the resigned air of one who has ‘seen it all’ and considers the time you had your unwashed unmentionables strewn across the floor in Karachi while simultaneously being threatened with a cavity search, imprisonment for blasphemy and immediate deportation as nothing more than an amusing anecdote on par with a drinking story from that supposedly ‘dry’ country (more on that later).

Your story must, of course, be more inconvenient, more scary (not that you should admit being scared) and more righteous indignation-causing than the stories of those whose company you’re sharing; women EAWs [expat aid workers] have a distinct advantage in this respect as the ‘down to the tampons’-level luggage inspection followed by overly enthusiastic body search and temporary detainment will beat a ‘heated argument and threat of imprisonment’ story by a male EAW any day.

Where possible, EAWs should gracefully weave a token bribery moment into their story, demonstrating their local nous and survival skills. Airport horror stories also provide the perfect opportunity to segue seamlessly to or from a passport stamp story, especially when it involves actual or threatened confiscation of said passport.

What’s your airport horror story?

The bragger has bronchitis, or, why my flight to Ethiopia was NOT GOOD

When I talk about air travel with other people, I tend to get a little braggy. Oh, I don’t mind flying on long, 15+ hour flights in coach! I’m a trooper! In fact, I’d even say I LIKE it! Yeah, I know I’m so hardcore!

Sure, I think takeoff and landing are kind of like a thrilling amusement park ride and I usually love my end destinations and I don’t generally mind all the waiting in line and I pretty much love airport food courts and having dozens of hours alone in which to read or watch crappy chick flicks is fun.

My journey to Ethiopia yesterday was NONE of this. My journey to Addis Ababa yesterday (today?) was more like this:

GRR. Look at that angry, shiny face and big, scary fist ready to punch something!

I have been sick for a week and Mark finally convinced me to head to the doctor the day before I left where it turned out I have bronchitis! I got meds and an inhaler but traveling while sick is never, ever fun.

The plane to Addis was completely full and my seat neighbor was a missionary from West Virginia who was traveling alone and had never been outside of the US before. Needless to explain where this is going but while we were waiting for takeoff, she literally scrolled through her entire contact list and called everyone to shout the following, OH MAH GOODNESS SADIE! Ya’ll should SEE this plane! It’s the biggest thing I’ve ever seen in mah LIFE! Four cabins and let’s see, NAHN seats across! NAHN! Can you believe it?! And repeat.

She asked to get up to use the toilet before we took off and I thought, yes, good idea so she wouldn’t have to get up every hour. I did not know that this field trip would entail me escorting her to the restroom and showing her how to open the door. She was a sweet woman in her sixties and very excited so my patience reserve was still near full.

But then. She had met a girl in the airport and wanted to switch seats with someone so she could chat with her for 12 hours (poor girl!) and after twenty minutes of seat-switching debates and negotiations, she ended up staying near me, promising to chat with me for the WHOLE FLIGHT! (I am not a chat with strangers on a long flight type of girl, if that wasn’t clear).

To make a long, excruciating story short:

• The plane was FILLED with kids so much so that it felt like I was on a first grade field trip
• The crew never turned the cabin lights off so it was loud and bright for the duration
• The only remotely interesting movie available was Bride Wars. If you’ve seen it, then enough said
• Upon arrival in Addis, I waited in line for an hour to get my visa and if I didn’t already know I was in Africa, the lack of personal space that my fellow line-waiters allowed me confirmed it
• My luggage is not with me. I DON’T KNOW WHERE MY THINGS ARE. Deep breaths were taken to type that out.
• Upon arrival to my hotel (after finding out my driver had gotten tired of waiting for me and left the airport, then waiting for him to come back), I was given a room with repairmen in the bathroom fixing a gigantic brown leak in the shower and half of the carpet soaked in water, but promised that I could rest in the bed while they worked. I opted to grab a bite to eat and wait for a dry room.
• I have no toiletries or clean clothing for at least another 18 hours.

I think I’m going to cut back a little on my overzealous declarations of love for air travel going forward.

Welcome to Addis! (I’ve already promised myself that even if my bags don’t come, I’m going to have ADVENTURES in Addis tomorrow, filthy, grimy, greasy hair and clothing are no matter!)

View from my hotel room. From what I've seen on my limited drive down Bole Road, the city seems quite nice and clean, and do excuse the Blackberry photo but my camera cord is in my poor MIA luggage.

Throwback: Touring London

A month after I turned 21, I went to London for an internship with the London Assembly at City Hall. It was my first time abroad and some of the best, most life-changing six months of my life. While browsing through my hard drive, I found a folder with all of my journals and papers from my time in London and I thought it would be fun to look back on my thoughts and experiences in 2005, especially since I’m headed to London today.

January 30^th, 2005

After being in London for about three days, the tube is becoming more familiar and we are beginning to understand the Londoners and their “funny” way of talking. We moved into a nice apartment in a unique Arab neighborhood, and it is quite the culture shock, but exciting nonetheless.

Westminster was our first tourist destination today and we were able to see most of the area on a quick but thorough guided tour through the area. Our first stop was Parliament but because of a misunderstanding and some confusing rides on the tube, we missed the tour. The building, however, was absolutely amazing. There were numerous pillars which were all ornately carved and some looked like they were made out of gold. As soon as we stepped out of the Westminster tube station into the street, Big Ben began to chime the hour, which made me realize I was truly in London. It was an amazing experience for my senses; being able to see and hear and take in all of what Westminster had to offer (including more pub grub—apparently, the pub menu is the same at every single pub in London!)

The tour began with an old building across the River Thames where the Church of England was run out of—sort of like an office building for the Church, right next to Queen Elizabeth’s Bridge painted in red, which symbolized royalty, while the green bridge across the way stood for Parliament.

Westminster Abbey

We also saw very expensive neighborhoods around Parliament where many members of Parliament live currently and have lived in the past. There is a bell that rings throughout Westminster (even in pubs and MP’s houses!) that alerts the MP’s that voting is occurring in Parliament so the area is popular for MP’s to live since they can go vote at the ring of the bell and then come home and “finish their pudding”, as our tour guide described.

She also showed us many boarded up windows in the same neighborhood. During the 1700’s, windows were a sign of wealth, so the more windows a house had, the wealthier a family should be. The British government, however, saw this as a way to increase their revenue, so they taxed the British for every window in the house. Since this was already an expensive area, people began boarding up windows to be able to afford the house payments! The windows are still boarded or bricked up today.

My battery is dying! More tomorrow….

Throwback: En route to London for the first time

A month after I turned 21, I went to London for an internship with the London Assembly at City Hall. It was my first time abroad and some of the best, most life-changing six months of my life. While browsing through my hard drive, I found a folder with all of my journals and papers from my time in London and I thought it would be fun to look back on my thoughts and experiences in 2005 especially since my husband and I are about to go to London in a couple days.

January 27^th, 2005

The trip to London is underway. After the stress of learning that all flights to Washington D.C. were running over an hour behind (which of course, my flight was first to D.C. before London) and attempting to call London from my cell phone (which of course, Verizon Wireless would not allow) and hassling HSBC Bank for my loan money (which of course, was beyond their control), I made it alive to Chicago where I will connect to London Heathrow airport.

Saying goodbye is one of the hardest things to do, especially to Mom, Dad, and Shannon. Being the emotional girl I am, I cried saying goodbye to everyone. I even had a teary eye watching Rochester, New York’s city lights disappear as my plane ascended into the night sky. It’s hard to imagine that I won’t see the United States for over six months. I could either be completely homesick and want to come home early, or completely love London and never want to return.

This trip has so much in store for me, especially never having traveled abroad before. I don’t think I could be any more prepared than I am, except having more than three hundred dollars to my name. I want to travel to Scotland to visit my ancestors’ graves and my many-times-removed relatives, to Ireland to celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day, and to all of Europe of course, to see the sites and say I’ve been there. This is one of the most exciting times of my life and I plan on taking advantage of every minute that I’m in London.

Granted that I survive the seven hour flight across the “big pond” and don’t incur any more significant delays, I should be arriving in London at approximately eleven in the morning on Friday morning, London time, at which point I will begin my vacation!

Mottos for the trip:

VENI, VIDI, VICI! (I want to go, see, and conquer!)

THE SKY IS THE LIMIT! (Actually, the money is the limit, but I’ll live like a pauper to be able to travel!)

LIVE LIKE YOU WERE DYING! (Because who knows when my next opportunity like this will arise!)

I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts…

I’ve been in Haiti for six days and have yet to share my experiences – how selfish of me! I would first like to share the amazing weather here. It has been between 80-85* during the day and about 75* at night. The sun has not stopped shining since I landed in Port-au-Prince on Monday. Compared to the snow/sleet/rain that the northeast US has been getting, I feel pretty fortunate! I wake up every morning thinking it’s summer and then realize I have to go back to the frigid rain next week – it’s a bit disappointing.

My first day here I hired a Finance Officer. I was able to promote from within so I was excited to boost office morale and finally complete my team of five wonderful Finance Officers around the world who report directly to me. Because of this new hire, I’ve spent a lot of time in the office doing training with her and the other staff and because of my office time, I’ve had fewer adventures, and because of my lack of adventures, I’ve been doing less blogging.

Yesterday, however, we went to visit a school construction site and as per usual, it was filled with enthusiastic children and villagers all lending a hand to finish their school.

I got to talking with one lovely man who introduced himself in Creole as Djejuste Gaulthier then promptly handed me his national identification card to prove himself. I glanced at his birth date and was shocked to find that this agile little man who was shoveling stone and jumping off brick ledges was EIGHTY YEARS OLD. He had thirteen children and when I exclaimed at how wonderful that was, he informed me that four were dead. Okay then.

He grabbed my hand and took me on a walk down the dirt road to a tall coconut tree where a few boys were resting. With a quick command in Creole, a teenage boy shimmied up the tree in mere seconds and starting dropping ripe coconuts down for us to drink from.

My little friend Djejuste whipped a machete from who-knows-where and hacked a small hole in the top of the coconut for me to drink from. The coconut water was delicious – cool, slightly sweet and quite refreshing. Apparently, coconut water is filled with electrolytes and many other health benefits (Google told me this, not Djejuste).

As I drank my water, the boy in the tree continued to hurl down coconuts until we told him that we couldn’t possibly drink any more. I turned my back for a second, to toss away my empty coconut shell, and the boy in the tree was already on the ground. I had wanted to see how he got down without breaking a bone but he was too quick for me.

It’s Saturday morning and I’ve been at the office since 7am training my staff but we hope to make an escape soon to head for the beach! I will be sure to think of all the Americans freezing up there while I sip a cocktail and lounge in the Caribbean Sea.

Goree Island

Last Wednesday my colleagues and I boarded a ferry for Goree Island, a tiny island off the coast of Dakar, Senegal. It’s a touristy destination that touts itself as being vital to the slave trade of a few hundred years ago, but its importance is debatable. Historical slave trade island or not, it was a cute place to walk around and breath in the fresh ocean air.

I’m a huge fan of touristy ferry rides. There is nothing better than enjoying a cheap boat ride on a sunny, 80 degree (and not humid!) day.

The boat floated past this fort on the way into port. I would have liked to tour the fort and learn a bit about its history, but at 500CFA (like…$1) , I wasn’t about to pay to get in.

We did pay a buck to get into the Maison des Esclaves (House of Slaves) where slaves were purportedly held before making their trans-Atlantic voyage, but historians debate whether any slaves were even housed here. If they were? It was a bit disturbing. The cave below was supposedly for recalcitrant prisoners. It was about four feet high at the entrance and got smaller towards the back.

We poked around the museum for a few moments and then joined a tour group of Europeans. The Senegalese guide was speaking in French, then another Senegalese was translating into Italian. My colleague then was translating for me into English (whispering in a corner) until a group of obnoxious Italian geriatrics shushed him over and over again. Maybe if they’d stood on their feet like everyone else instead of sprawling on the ground, they would’ve been able to hear! AHEM. Anyway…

After the museum, we decided to just wander the island and explore. Around every corner were beautiful, brightly-painted, crumbling buildings and colorful souvenir vendors.

I was thrilled with the photos that my little Canon managed to capture but days and places like this make me long for a fancy DSLR camera (and all the ability to understand and operate it!).

We found a clearing and gazed off at Dakar and then our watches and realized we had to rush back to catch the next ferry.

But not before I coaxed my colleague into taking a photo of me at the harbor.

It was a lovely day and a perfect way to bid adieu to warm, sunny, glorious Senegal.

Until next time!

He would have exceeded the baggage weight limit

Before my organization commits to building a school in a village, we first have to get the buy-in from the community leaders since they will be providing not only some of the materials, but also much of the unskilled labor. So we headed out late in the afternoon to host a community meeting and describe our expectations to them.

The men went to the mosque to pray then congregated on a mat in the shade. We opened the meeting with another quiet moment of prayer.

The villagers were excited about the prospect of their new school and agreed to all of our conditions. Partway through our meeting a clamorous chorus of baa-ing surrounded us on all sides. Sheep were trotting past us in massive packs, their moaning baa‘s drowning out all of our talking.

I asked my colleague what was happening, why all these sheep were descending on the village and he told me that each morning, a shepherd came to pick up all the villagers’ sheep and took them out to wander and feed in the bush all day. Then, after evening prayers, the shepherd brought them back to the village entrance and they all made their way through the little village to their respective homes.

See the little sheep family walking home? I die!

I totally lost my focus on our meeting and grinned broadly as I watched the sheep find their ways home, all on their own. It was a part of life that the villagers didn’t think twice about but I was enamored; the sheep and their afternoon walk home were adorable. I have a bit of a thing for sheep: see here.

Also adorable was the little boy who caught my eye during our talk. He kept waving to me, pointing and taking photos with his father’s cell phone camera.

After the meeting, he came up and “introduced” himself. Moussa, as he was called, stuck out his little bitty hand for me to shake. About seven times. Over and over.

As we were getting ready to leave he tried to follow me and climb up into the car so I hoisted him up next to me. He looked confused but refused to leave my side. I was pretty close to packing his little body up in my suitcase, but I promised Mark not to bring home too many souvenirs.

Poor guy burst into hysterical tears as his father pulled him from the truck so we could leave!

Today I went to Saint Louis, a beach town in the north of Senegal. Here is what happened:

We tried to renew the registration for our truck at the vehicle registration office but were told we need to drive to the Mali/Senegal border, pay a fee and fill out a form there within ten days. We also visited the bank to complete various and sundry paperwork. Unfortunately, yet understandably, I do not have photographic evidence of these activities.

We drove past the famous art deco Hotel de la Poste. My colleagues were not excited at the idea of wandering around the hotel to take photos of the interesting architecture, so all I got was a 30mph drive-by.

We drove through the smelly fish market, past the dozens of goats picking through piles of garbage along the shore, past the fishing boats and fishermen spreading their nets on the ground and mending holes, past the little hotels with the handfuls of European tourists, to another beach. The sand was a littered mess but the closer we got to the water, the more beautiful it became.

We splashed in the water again, soaking up the ocean air and the sunshine. I should rephrase that. I splashed in the water. My African colleagues dipped one toe in, declared it much too cold for any sane person to touch, and ran away to sit on the sand and leave me to frolic alone.

I hoisted my jeans as high as they would go, tied my hair back and splashed to my inner five year old heart’s content. I also got my first glorious little sunburn of the season. (Holy smokes, shield your eyes, look at those white legs!)

We finally got hungry so decided to venture back into town for some fresh seafood. And then my colleague backed our truck into a six foot hole. A group of local men gathered around as he hit the gas, spinning our tires and digging the truck deeper into the sand. They immediately jumped in to help, throwing rocks under the tires, shoveling out the wheels, LIFTING the entire rear end out of the hole. I sat under a tree and played Brickbreaker on my Blackberry, occasionally throwing out helpful suggestions like: Why don’t you go BACKWARDS since the truck is pointed uphill? and Um, is the truck in 4-wheel drive? (Turns out it wasn’t and this suggestion basically saved the day).

An hour later, the truck’s tires finally grabbed onto the planks the men had laid on the sand and we were on our way to lunch. I enjoyed this delicious calamari salad followed by a chicken lasagna and lemon cake for dessert. The food I’ve been eating, especially in Senegal, is heavily French-influenced and delicious!

After lunch I convinced my colleagues to take me to a couple shops where I was too busy successfully bargaining the shopkeepers down 60% from their original prices to take photos. I purchased an antique Dogon door for our home (kind of like this) and a birthday/Mother’s Day/Christmas present for my mama.

The day ended with a salad for dinner, a few emails and a blog post before bed. I love the litany of adventures this trip has afforded me but I am simply exhausted! Home in (less than!) three days…