Wednesday, March 29, 2006
LMI Team Update
Here's what the LMI team has been doing over the past week:
On Friday I participated in a Skype conference call with Jutta, Colleen, Brian King, and Sabou de Almeida. Brian is from USAid and is the coordinator for the Leland Initiative in Africa, the brains and bucks behind our project. Sabdou is the LMI coordinator in Guinnea-Bissau. Ashley couldn't make the call because she didn't have Skype installed yet. Sabou tried to join us, but he was having problems with his internet connection. This online meeting of sorts was quite helpful to me because it presented the big picture of USAid's activities in Africa. Brian talked us through a slideshow, but I had to leave half way through it to get to class.
Ashley, Jutta, and I had lunch on Sunday so Jutta could fill us in on what we missed. We ate at Sella's and had a good time.
We met again on Tuesday with Colleen and Candace Chenowith at the Study Abroad Office in Bryan Hall. We talked a lot about the travel aspects of the trip - what to bring, how to prepare, how to change money, etc. It was a lot take in, and I realized that I'm going to need that whole month from May to June just to pack and get prepared. We handed in our forms, talked about Rwandan culture, and even got a list of Rwanda books to read.
That's it in a nutshell (I'm leaving out a whole bunch of details, though). I think we're going to plan on a Sunday lunch again, so I should have more to write after that.
On Friday I participated in a Skype conference call with Jutta, Colleen, Brian King, and Sabou de Almeida. Brian is from USAid and is the coordinator for the Leland Initiative in Africa, the brains and bucks behind our project. Sabdou is the LMI coordinator in Guinnea-Bissau. Ashley couldn't make the call because she didn't have Skype installed yet. Sabou tried to join us, but he was having problems with his internet connection. This online meeting of sorts was quite helpful to me because it presented the big picture of USAid's activities in Africa. Brian talked us through a slideshow, but I had to leave half way through it to get to class.
Ashley, Jutta, and I had lunch on Sunday so Jutta could fill us in on what we missed. We ate at Sella's and had a good time.
We met again on Tuesday with Colleen and Candace Chenowith at the Study Abroad Office in Bryan Hall. We talked a lot about the travel aspects of the trip - what to bring, how to prepare, how to change money, etc. It was a lot take in, and I realized that I'm going to need that whole month from May to June just to pack and get prepared. We handed in our forms, talked about Rwandan culture, and even got a list of Rwanda books to read.
That's it in a nutshell (I'm leaving out a whole bunch of details, though). I think we're going to plan on a Sunday lunch again, so I should have more to write after that.
