For the
last few weeks, things have been pretty slow aside from the occasional trip to
the hospital. Okay there was just one.
This
week is our last week of research (Oh Happy Day!). The objective this week is
to just take water activity all the time to get as many points as possible for
the charts. That means a lot of work with really short break times.
This
week we have been getting up early to take water activity at 6am. At the
beginning of the summer, that wouldn’t have fazed me much but lately I have
started sleeping in later and later. I even slept in until 9 one morning! It
feels good to sleep in, especially when there’s not much to do during the day.
However, there is at least one benefit to waking up so early.
That
benefit is that when it’s 6am here, it’s 10pm at home. That means that
everybody is still awake enough to want to talk to me. I’ve message my family
during the day before but that only works if they can message me while they’re
at work or they’re home. If I wanted to call them on Skype I would have to wait
at least until 5pm their time which is 1am my time. I’m not willing to walk
back to the hostel by myself that late so I’ll just deal with getting up early.
The first attempt to Skype was yesterday. I was going to get on while we had
the water activity meter going and it would be all nice and casual. The
internet would be fast because nobody was up yet and I would have something to
entertain myself while we took water activity for an hour. It was the perfect
plan until I was up and ready to go at 6am and the internet wasn’t working. It
didn’t end up working until 8. Fortunately, my family was still up so we could
Skype a little before they all passed out for the night because they had to get
to work the next morning.
Day two
was much more successful. The internet was working but we didn’t Skype. We
messaged each other on Skype and Facebook. My sister has a friend visiting and
there have been attempts from multiple parties to hook them up. I’m not sure
how well any of it is working but I like meddle. Messaging three people at a time makes taking
water activity go by so much faster. I could get used to waking up early as
long as I get a nap in the afternoon which may not happen if we crack down and start
taking water activity every two hours instead of every three.
As this
week slowly rolls by, I get more and more excited for the final leg of our
journey in Malawi, our final push at the end of the summer before I go home and
collapse. This is our last week at SAFI. After this we will be back once to
pick up all our luggage so we can fly to New York. We won’t even have time to
do laundry so it all has to get done this week! Next week we brave the public
bus system and travel to Zambia to see Victoria Falls. The week after, we kayak
Nkhata Bay and rough it for a couple of days. Only after we are finished at
Nkhata Bay do we come back to SAFI (On Sunday or Monday) just long enough to
gather up our stuff and maybe do a little bit of last minute laundry so we have
something to wear on the ride home and head back to Lilongwe to wait for our
flight. Emily, Whitney and I are definitely excited for our layover in New
York. There is just so much to do and see still.
We have been putting off our
adventures for a couple of weeks but we are making sure to squeeze them in
right at the end to make this trip memorable. This trip has been nothing if not
memorable. Everything that has happened here from seeing real live elephants to
the trips to the hospital has made this the most unique experience I have had
up to this point. I have loved every minute. Okay maybe I haven’t loved it all
but I will love talking about every minute. Every experience, especially the
more unpleasant ones makes a story to tell your kids later. I’ll enjoy pulling
out the story about the time I was sick in Africa when my kids complain.
I have
definitely made some great friends here that I will probably have for a
lifetime. It has been a long, hard emotional journey but I wouldn’t trade it
for anything.
Here's just a few pictures of my adventure this summer
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