Blogs from Minnesota, United States, North America - page 15

Oliver loves LEGO. He builds nearly all day, every day, and he's gotten really good. He does chores sometimes to earn money, and he saves up for sets. He's only 5.5, but he can build LEGO sets himself now--even big sets! We didn't tell him about the giant LEGO store in the Mall of America until we arrived. He was thrilled! And when he found out his Grandma and Grandpa would let him pick out a LEGO set, he asked if he could get Emmet's Construct-o-Mech. He looked at every set in the whole store, but he knew what he wanted! Jo was happy to pick out a Frozen LEGO set (Elsa's sparkling ice castle). She builds little things out of LEGO blocks, too, but obviously she can't do LEGO sets on her own yet. After ... read more

KARUCO's Water and Energy Team is back at it in their respective home countries. John Wade (MSAADA Architects) is back in Mwanza busy with other projects in Tanzania as well as moving the KARUCO project ahead; Albin Mathias (Powering Potential) is back home (near Arusha) and Christopher Jones (Inventoris) and Jan Hansen (ETI) are back in balmy Minnesota longing for the warmer climes of Africa. Albin submitted a report that outlines the next steps for ETI to take to get solar-powered computers and Internet at KARUCO. Our Tanzanian Partners at KAD complain that the Internet has been down since last fall. Albin is doing his best to change that. John and Christopher completed some impressive work designing the water harvest system that will enable KARUCO to open in October, 2016. They will continue to work with ... read more

#1: KARUCO Water and Power Team Heads to Karagwe* Welcome! Educate Tanzania is headed on another adventure to Karagwe, Tanzania. Sign up for the Travel Blog and we’ll keep you in the loop. If you are new you might want to visit a few old posts from previous trips to see why we are doing what we do. NOTE: We told you originally to go to the ETI website - http://educatetanzania.org- but a technical glitch kept us from being able to post on the site. We will use this site for this trip. On January 23, the ETI Water and Power Travel Team ’15 heads to Amsterdam, then Kampala, Uganda, then Kayanga, Tanzania. Two 8+ hour flights and then a 6 hour ride over some paved and unpaved roads across the Tanzania/Uganda border to reach our ... read more

Let's just say that the stars aligned for me to do Twin Cities marathon. Of course V gets dragged into it, hehe. I've been to Minneapolis several times for work. Every time I went there, I'd always felt right about the city (except the Mall of America). City isn't that big and crazy. It has nice lakes and neighborhoods with rustic cafes. When Mingji moved there last year, it was a no brainer to look into the marathon course. The course covered all the nice places there…it’s a go! Beginning of Oct should be nice in Midwest too. I’ll get in touch with my ex colleagues too. Since we signed up, so many articles named it one of the must-do marathons. It was a sign. Chicago, on a contrary, has never sat well with me. I’ve ... read more

The last two weeks gave been crazy busy! Our last full week at camp was amazing, I had the oldest girl cabin (aged 12-14) and it was awesome! Our overnight camp was at this island in the middle of lake independence so we had to canoe out there. It was beautiful and had an amazing view of the sunset and sunrise. This was our final week of camp and it was a sampler week which means it runs from Sunday to Wednesday. I has the youngest girls (aged 7-9) and it was full on. I helped at the horse barn and it was awesome! I wish I had a chance to do that more this summer. Each week we have a closing campfire where all the kids and counsellors put a friendship stick into a small ... read more