elizas
Eliza S. Joined: September 4th 2008
Logged in: December 6th 2009
Logged in: December 6th 2009
Galapagos: September- December
Tanzania: January- March
Namibia: April- May
Travel Blog Posts
Before you sit down to read this, I just want to warn you that it is quite long! I just had to put that out there before you all blame me for taking up minutes or hours or even days of your time!.... Ever since I left Tanzania, time has flown by! I arrived in Windhoek, Namibia on a Wednesday in mid-march. At the airport, I waited with my transfer driver for a girl named Gemma. We were driven to Chameleon Backpacker’s Lodge. We were in a room with 6 other strangers and we all shared one bathroom. The following morning, I took a REAL shower with hot water (from solar heating- very environmentally conscious… they had compost and recycling too!) Gemma and I spent that Thursday in a shopping mall 5 minutes from our hotel. ... read more
I apologize for having taken 5 weeks off on my blog! We have been in Dar es Salaam for 4 weeks and live quite far out of the city so when we finally make it to the internet, I never get long enough to write! I apologize in advance that this will be extremely long… Here we go! My last week in Moshi was great. We volunteered at a school for deaf children which was an eye opening experience. We learned that most of the children started out only having normal ear infections, but since they were never taken care of, they eventually became deaf. It was hard to look at the kids knowing that many of them would have completely normal lives had they only been provided with proper health care. Many of their parents ... read more
Africa is still amazing! Three weeks have gone by and so much has happened! During out last week in Arusha, we volunteered in three different places. The first was Camp Joshua Christian School. It is an orphanage as well. The rules are incredibly strict there, but the kids were very sweet and kept coming up to us while we were working. They have two cows, yet they did not have a cow shed. We built a cow shed from nothing! First we had to clear tons of stones, then cart about 50 wheelbarrows full of sand to our project site, move tons of cement blocks- it was insane! I loved the manual labor though because it is so satisfying. We made a cement floor and then had to build the wall around it. Filling the cement ... read more
Hello from Tanzania! These have been two very busy weeks… and internet access is a bit unpredictable! We live a 5 minute walk from the internet café, but it moves at snail speed. To start, my actual traveling was just about the longest experience of my life and I had about 3 hours of sleep for two days straight. My trip included: Boston to Dublin, Dublin to London (where I then waited for the rest of my group for a good 12 hours), London to Nairobi (8 hour flight!), and then Nairobi to Kilimanjaro! I was absolutely exhausted but luckily I was with my group by that point. From the plane I could see Mt. Meru and Mt. Kilimanjaro. When we got to the Kilimanjaro airport, we went through customs and then we went to collect ... read more
Again- I need to apologize for not writing in weeks! When the end of my trip started to near, I was much more reluctant to go use the internet for hours at a time... which these blogs do take to write! On November 9th a new volunteer arrived... her name is Marily. She is from South Africa but now lives in Denver. She has four children and lived in Chile for 7 years. She is really nice and it was fun to have another volunteer in the house... although it was quite busy for a last few weeks! She worked at the hospital in the mornings (with babies) and taught English at one of the high schools in the afternoons three days a week. On the afternoon she came, we all went up to my host ... read more
Hello! Haven't written in ages... but there is so much to say! I apologize in advance that you have to read a ton. Charlotte got here about two weeks ago which is wonderful. It is nice to have someone to speak to in English and we immediately got along. She is from the UK... she is 22 and just finished studying to become a teacher. We live in adjacent rooms and work at the same school. She works at Ingala in the morning from 7:30 to 9:30 and the school from 10 to 12. She is just learning Spanish so I do a fair bit of translating, but that only helps my spanish more since I am forced to actually understand things! Halloween was fun, although different since we didn't have trick or treating! It was ... read more
It has been a long time since I wrote, so this will most likely be a very long post! Last Sunday I went to a bunch of places on San Cristobal to do snorkeling. I went to Punta Pitt, Leon Dormido (Kicker Rock), Isla Lobos (Sea Lion Island), and Puerto Grande. I was on a tour with a bunch of people who are also volunteering on Cristobal, but they were all quite a bit older than I am. A bunch of people on the tour had been out drinking the night before so a couple of them barely went snorkeling. I was lucky enough to sit next to a woman who got sick after about five minutes. I didnt quite notice at first, but when I did, I made a point of staring straight ahead!! A ... read more
Hi Everyone! This week was mainly spent getting more into my routine and figuring out all sorts of tours, scuba diving, and other bits and pieces. The school is still good.. it is called Pedro Pablo Andrade. The kids are crazy though and don't listen at all. It is apparently a huge problem here in the Galápagos. Whenever the teacher leaves the room to go do something, I am left with 22 of these 5 year old energizer bunnies who pretend that they don't understand my spanish even though I am not THAT bad! Jeremy hides under the table and throws paper at other kids while rubbing glue on Marcelo's arm, Kati runs around the classroom and makes this really grouchy, stubborn face when saying no, Katherine hits other children, Geraldine and Melanie run off to ... read more
Hello Everyone! Sorry I am been missing for the past week.. I got to the Galapagos on Sunday and just have not had the time to head off to an internet cafe. I am loving the Galapagos! At first I was nervous since I loved Quito so much and it was simply different from Quito. In the course of a day, I fell in love with it! My family consists of: Milton (dad), Norma (mom), Javier (brother- 26), Andres (brother-25), Jhosellyn (sister, 22), Hernan (cousin, 22), and Camilo (Jhosellyn´s son, 6). It is great. I hang out with Hernan and Andres mostly since they are currently studying to be guides on the Galapagos and so they dont need to go to work during the day. Every day I have school at 7:30 in the morning until ... read more
This week has been wonderful, yet I hate when things end so I am becoming a tad sentimental! I have been trying to see everything that I can before I leave for the Galapagos. On Monday, we had a very relaxing, uneventful day. On Tuesday, I purchased a book which I would then be unable to put down for a very long time! I read The Pact on tuesday and wednesday non-stop... along with a few visits to I-Road Coffee and Coffee Tree for reading. In fact, on tuesday, while I was reading away, A HAIL STORM STARTED. Mind you, I was sitting outside and was very quickly being pelted with hail. Lovely. Luckily it passed in 20 minutes or so and I was able to head on home. On Wednesday, I did take the time ... read more
