Greetings from the Rocky Mountains! Apparently I just can't quit this blog, but there are lots of friends and family I've been out of touch with the last few weeks, so I find myself back here once again. As you may or may not know, I've been traipsing around the Wyoming wilderness since early May, enrolled in an instructor course with the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS). The course was a prerequisite for working as an instructor with NOLS, which I'll be doing this summer and hopefully in future summers as well. Also, I'm posting lots and lots an [View Full Entry]

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Hello Dear readers, Don't get too excited, I'm not actually coming back into the world of the blog. Instead, I'm just wanting to touch base with a number of family and friends before departing on my next adventure! Starting May 1, I'm going to be leading wilderness expeditions with the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS). My first course is instructor training in the Wind River Wilderness area of Wyoming from May 1 - June 4. After that, who knows? Here in the USA the school leads trips in Wyoming, Washington and Alaska, and the rest of my summer an [View Full Entry]

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Home again, home again, jiggidy jig. Just like that. Hi everyone ... I'm back! I'm writing from my dad's place in Indianapolis, where I've been staying for the last month. My time in Uganda was cut short by a few weeks, which allowed me to come home and spend time with family during the holiday season. Now that I've made the rounds with friends and family for a few weeks, I'm finally sitting down to post my last blog entry(or at least the last one until the next overseas adventure). My Final Month in Uganda A lot has transpired since my [View Full Entry]

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The Anniversary This blog posting finds me at a very interesting landmark: roughly one year since I left the United States! My last day in Seattle was the 18th of October, 2006, which in some ways feels like a lifetime ago, and in other ways feels like it was only yesterday. Since that time, I've begun speaking a new language (Kiswahili), visited five countries, held two volunteer positions in two different countries, learned about wildlife (especially primates) thanks to many books and a few safaris, made lots of friends from other countries, hosted a few friends from back home an [View Full Entry]

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I was dreaming when I wrote this, forgive me if it goes astray ... Okay, I'm not exactly dreaming, but I had planned to sit down and write a blog tonight to fill you all in on my latest news. However, it's Sunday afternoon back in the states. The colts are playing. And now I'm chatting online with my cousins micah and jon who are filling me in on the game action as I watch the stats online. So I'm a bit distracted. When we last left off, I was living in the village of Kayanga at the Kalinzu forest education [View Full Entry]

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Hey folks, just a quick update, mostly sending along some photos that pertain more to the last blog than this one. First thing's first, in my haste to tell you all about my camera getting swiped, the weeks of safari, and scanning all those mind maps, I forgot to tell give you perhaps the most important link pertaining to the safari. Thanks to the link, it's not such a tragedy that my camera was stolen after all. The family featured on that web page went on a very similar safari, including a visit with Jane Goodall (or [View Full Entry]

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Q: What happens when you stick a visual thinker with a language learner and stick them in a car for twelve days? A: This blog Instead of detailing every single thing we did on safari, Shelley inspired me to trade in the pen for the watercolor pencil and draw mind maps (an activity we do with kids at work) of our days on safari in Africa. Admittedly, it's much better than trying to cram in every last detail about 12 days of events and instead, coming up with a visual rendering of our journey, even if it does look like [View Full Entry]

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Just two weeks removed from my “last day” volunteering in Dar es Salaam and there’s so much to talk about! During this stretch I met up with Erica, a friend from the NOLS India trek (refer to “The Trek”) who joined me to visit the island of Zanzibar where we met up with two more friends - Carrie and Rob - who’ve recently finished graduate school at UW in Seattle. After a few days of relaxing beach time followed by cultural immersion in Stonetown, the four of us hopped on a plane to Kigoma for a visit to Gombe Stream [View Full Entry]

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I'm not sure where the time has all gone, but somehow I find myself at the end of my stint living in Dar es Salaam and working with the local Roots & Shoots groups. I spent a lot of the last blog entry reflecting on the trip in general, so I need to let you know what I've been up to these past few weeks. Many of the photos in this entry have been compiled over the last couple months (aka the long rains), but there are quite a bit more here, which is a new site as I'm leaving [View Full Entry]

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Greetings! It's all about greetings here in Tanzania. Though spoken in Kiswahili, it's common and even essential to ask a string of greetings when you meet a friend, stranger or family member in any context. The particular variety of greeting can come in just about any shape or size, pertaining to any subject of your choosing: How are you? (fine) What's the news with work? (good) What's the news of the day? (clean) What's the news of the afternoon? (fresh) are you cool? (cool) You are welcome (thank you). It's just one part of the warm and welcoming culture here [View Full Entry]

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