Last entry from home

Hello to all of you, Friends and Relatives, where ever you may be.

We are frantically packing and getting ready to fly from Cincinnati tomorrow afternoon to Dulles Airport where we'll spend the night before flying via Ethiopian Airlines to Addis Ababa and on to Arusha, Tanzania.

Yesterday we had a telephone conference call with the CCS Program Director and approximately ten of the volunteers who will be beginning their stay in Moshi this coming Saturday as we do. We learned several important things during that telephone call:

First, we are a very diverse group. About five or six of us are at or nearing retirement age. Several others have just graduated from college. Two are Italian and joined the conference call from Italy. Two others are Canadian. There is one couple who has already been to Tanzania twice with CCS. While this upcoming trip will be their first experience in Moshi, they certainly like Tanzania well enough to return there often. Several of the volunteers have already spent significant time in Ethiopia and love that country. They will be a wonderful source of information for us.

Second learning: our experience in Moshi will be much less cosmopolitan and much more "rural" than we experienced in Morocco. We've been warned that electricity is rather sporadic and that the home base in which we will be living has no Wifi. That means that we'll probably not be able to upload our blog entries daily. Homebase is approximately a five or ten minutes walk from Moshi, so we'll enjoy walking into town to visit an Internet cafe often. However, we've been warned that electricity is also not reliable in the Internet cafes. Therefore, we're not sure when we'll be able to post our first blog entry from Moshi.

Third learning: Our visa application to volunteer in Tanzania requires a resume of work experience. It doesn't have to be "official" in any sense. If I had more time and energy, I would be tempted to claim that I have been an astronaut or a personal trainer. However, I have to stick to the truth in light of my lack of time!

Last learning (for Jean): Another CCS volunteer is working with me in the day care. She is a substitute teacher for Kindergarten through fifth grade classes in California and has already written some lesson plans. It is clear that she has much more experience with this aged child than I do. I look forward toward learning from her.

That is the extent of my thoughts right now. In the next few hours I have to see if I can get my luggage below 50 pounds. We're flying via Delta from Cincinnati to DC tomorrow and will have to pay for any luggage that we check. Ethiopian Airlines, on the other hand, allows two pieces of luggage to be checked free of charge, but both pieces have to be under 50 pounds. Kirk has found that my carry on is too big for Delta to accept it as a carry on. Therefore, it too will have to be checked. That means about $60.00 for each of us to get our luggage to Washington! I wonder how much that is per mile of flight? Musings, no time to find the answer right now.

Love to all of you,
Jean and Kirk