First Post

So, I'm about to be off again. It's been a wild couple of weeks. Let's recap, shall we?

-Spent 5 weeks in West Virginia, working at a community health clinic, minus one week for a conference at Disney World. Worked full time, kept up with school (kinda) and explored the state.
-Came home for a week, took finals, finished up a TON of work so I could actually graduate.
-Whole bunch of family for graduation! Then graduation.
-Next week, review class for boards.
-Beach for a week with the family- I even read a book that doesn't have anything to do with nursing.
-Next week, studying for boards, getting the house ready for my new roommate (who moves in while I am gone) and packing for Kenya.

Which brings us to today. I took my nursing school boards this morning (seriously hard) and I leave in 14 hours for Kenya. I am about to spend 10 weeks in Africa, 8 of which will be doing research with Emory's Global Health Institute. There are 3 other students going- a Public Health masters student, a student from the college (Economics) and another nursing student. We are going to be studying the effects of Dairy Intensification on women in Eldoret, Kenya. We will be working with ILRI (http://www.ilri.org/) , funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. We are looking at Nutrition, Time Allocation and Economics. We are doing qualitative research, which is new for me, and I will let you know more about what I am doing as soon as we get things ironed out...a great learning experience.

After my 8 weeks of research are done, I will be heading south to Tanzania. Home. I am hoping to see a few old Peace Corps friends who refuse to leave, spend a little bit of time on Zanzibar, then head back to Kifumbe, my old home for 2 years. I am so excited to see my old friends, home and village.

As I packed for my trip, I found this scrawled in a notebook:

I miss the sound of children laughing and yelling next to the train.
I miss the sound of bells on goats wandering through the fields with their shepherds.
I miss people- now everyone walks so fast and never looks. They all have a goal, a target and nothing gets in their way.

I am ready to get back to a different pace of life, especially after a pretty intense two years. Nursing school was harder than living in Kifumbe was. I lost sight of many of the values I swore I was going to hold on to. I feel like this is going to be my second chance.