Uh huh. Oh ya.

Farewell beers with the church staff!

Data stress

I am not sure if 2MB of data is enough to make receiving emails in Africa work... Smart phones have so many options, and really just do their own thing without letting you know what's going on. I do not want Rogers to screw us over with an enormous bill somehow. If we even receive an email with one picture in it, that has the potential to completely use up our monthly allotted 2mb, or at least that is what some sources say. But I thought blackberries had some sort of special data compression that made things actually smaller!?...

Ahhh I need help. I am supposed to be packing and instead i'm screwing up my phone, stressing about data, and getting nothing done by writing this blog post.

10 days and counting

Hi Friends!
This is my first blog post, EVER! Just testing things out to make sure they work properly.
The countdown is on... 10 days left...
Today's Africa task: visit the local tanning salon (not that it seems to be working, at all... I'm still pasty white!)
Until next time...
-Allison

IMG00043-20100425-0007.jpg

Sexy

Hello Two Koops Fans!

11 days until I bless the rains!

Email posting test

If this post successfully displays, this means that Greg and I have successfully figured out how to keep in touch with you all while we're in Africa!

We are each purchasing 2MB of international roaming data per month for use on our blackberries. Although that is a relatively minute amount of data by today's standards, it will allow us to send approximately 1000 text-only emails per month while we are away. If need be, we will also be able to surf the web, send pictures, and use blackberry messenger.

I have set up this blog to receive email post updates. That means we will be able to update this blog by simply emailing a secret address, and then it will automatically turn the email into a blog post!

This is my first attempt! Here it goes!

Africa Prep

A few months ago my friend Allison asked me if I wanted to volunteer with Music for Life, the supporting organization of the African Children's Choir, volunteering in Uganda with children.  I decided that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity, simultaneously a humanitarian effort, a mission trip, a vacation, and an opportunity to hang out with old friends and make new ones so I accepted.  Music for Life is an organization that believes in using education and Christianity to help Africa's children grow up to become Africa's future leaders.  Our team of 7 people will be providing day camps for children in Uganda.  Each day we will have a Bible study, a health and wellness seession, crafts, games, and music.  We will be offering camps in different locations over the course of a three week period.

Finding cheap flights to anywhere in Africa is hard.  Our first attempts would have left us paying upwards of $3000 each for flights.  Allison decided to google "missionary airfares" and, sure enough, a company from the states poped up.  Thanks to EconomyTravel.com we ended up paying about $2000 for our flights because we are going to do mission work.

Now, you can't go all the way to Africa without going on a safari, of course!  So we have a 3 week safari booked too!  We did a fair amount of research and decided to book with African Budget Safaris.  We scoped out a bunch of different options, but chose these guys.  So far they've been really great to deal with.  We're headed to several different countries: Zimbabwae, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzinia and Kenya.

Things that need doing before going to Africa:

• Last Wedensday I spent $550 on vacinations and today I spent another $370 on Malaria medication. 
• Doctor check up (to make sure Malaria meds won't kill me)
• Dentist visit (because I don't want my teeth falling out while in Africa)
• Contact Lens appointment (because I think contact lenses are hard to buy in the Serengeti)
• Buy supplies: sleeping bag, power converter, new camera with 20x optical zoom (because if there is a hippo on the horizon, I want a good picture of it...), tons of memory cards, etc, etc, etc
• Pay for mission trip, pay for flight, pay for safari
• Book hostels and hotels
• Figure out bus schedules
• Shave my head
• Figure out travel insurance, health insurance
• Try and calm my mom down
• Take my dukoral
• Plan out VBS stuff, figure out supplies
• Inform credit card companies of overseas use
• Get my life together so when I come home I am not overwhelmed
• and the list goes on.........

There is so much more to do before departing (including taking 25 teenage girls to Ottawa for a week - click here to learn more about that adventure).  I have been to Wal-Mart about a dozen times picking up this and that (btw, how much pit stick does a guy bring on a two-month African adventure?), I have been to the mall trying to find clothes that will work when dry, wet, dirty, stinky, ripped, etc.  Deciding on a camera has been really hard.......  I have been to Mountain Equiptment Co-op in Caglary once already, and it looks like I need to make another trip there before departure. 

My po-ang is my official Africa packing pile.