this is me

Delhi, Delhi, Delhi....how shall I describe you? The first word that comes to mind: abrasive. The endless honking. The shoving in line. The chastising me when you're the taxi driver and you are upset that I don't know where I'm going...and yet - again, my colleagues are lovely. So much warmth, gratefulness for my time, willingness to drop everything in a busy schedule to get me the information I need. The 'no thanks necessary' when I show my gratefulness in return. The delicious food. Let's tell the rest of the story in pictures. Sunday sightseeing: India Gate ; elephants to greet me whenever I return to the hotel, along with a "namoskar" from a welcoming committee; a 50th anniversary celebration going on in front of the hotel; a delicious Indian meal with a friend who works for the British High Commission, followed by beer at a bar called Rodeo, complete with saddles for barstools; and the chance to ride a (clean, inexpensive, orderly)...

Oh, to live in a city surrounded by mountains. It's been cloudy most of time I've been here, but the cloudiness has made for the most gorgeous views. My work week is done, and I'm celebrating by writing a blog post, drinking a can of Everest beer from the mini bar, and probably ordering room service. I think I've finally beaten jet lag, but I have no desire to go out tonight - I'd rather follow my typical Friday night pattern, except this time it will include writing up my first trip report. So, back to those clouds and mountains - this picture is from the rooftop terrace where breakfast is served (including a view of Boudha ): This is from the rooftop of the office building where lunch is served: This was a great work trip - progress made on long outstanding issues, new relationships built, etc. - but i'm sure you'd rather hear about the touristy part. On Wednesday afternoon one of the office drivers took me and a colleague to Bhaktapur . I have ...

Work has sent me to Bangkok for a week-long meeting, and thus, the blog is revived. (No promises that these posts will be thrilling, though.) Check out pictures here , since I can't seem to figure out how to link Google+ pictures to Blogger. Dulles to Tokyo to Bangkok took almost exactly 24 hours, and I arrived at my hotel around midnight, which felt like noon thanks to the time difference. I had heard stories about Bangkok traffic, but wasn't fully prepared for red lights that lasted close to 5 minutes, and mopeds and people wandering through traffic. The hotel our conference is in is massive - I'm on floor 14 of 35. No complaints about my digs for the week - the suite has to be about the same size as my apartment. I successfully slept from about 3-6am, took advantage of my trusty Kindle until I got too hungry to stay in bed anymore, and after breakfast, went to the gym for a while in an attempt to shake off the inactivity of so many hours on a plane. By then it was lu...

airport, that is. This is a 26 hour trek home, and that doesn't include the SuperShuttle from the airport to my apartment. 8ish hours from Nairobi to Amsterdam, 9ish hour layover in lovely Schiphol Airport (i'm serious, it really is lovely), and 8ish hours to DC. I'm so ready to be home, even if it is too hot for early June and I will likely turn into a sweaty complainer as soon as I step outside. I look forward to colleagues receiving emails from me that say they were sent at 1am on a Saturday morning. Man, I'll look dedicated. Anyway, the airport. There is a store called Flowers & Bulbs that has the most beautiful tulips, and bulbs and seeds you can bring home, and all sorts of tulip souvenirs...which I would totally buy if it didn't feel ridiculous buying a trinket from a country I've never actually set foot in. I want to bring a bouquet of tulips with me but I can't imagine they'll survive the flight in any way that would be worth the cost....

Today we made it to the elephant orphanage! Well, it's really more than that - see here for more info. Viewing hours are from 11am-12pm only, and Martin decided he'd like to be my chauffeur, so we headed out after breakfast and got there just as the 'show' was starting. There were nine elephants under 18 months old being fed and having a good ol' time playing in the dirt. Some selected shots: From Nairobi, take 2 From Nairobi, take 2 From Nairobi, take 2 I've never seen that many elephants interact at once - so playful, so small yet huge...pretty awesome. And, we saw two of these guys on the way out (behind bars, don't worry): From Nairobi, take 2 And I bought a bag I really like, so that was icing on the cake. This concludes the 'fun' portion of my stay in Nairobi - from now til I leave it's work, work, work (mixed in with a trip to the wine cellar restaurant in this hotel, perhaps).

The new project manager owns this car: From Nairobi, take 2 which he purchased when he lived in Burundi and drove to Nairobi before he moved to Afghanistan. (Yes, it's a lot to keep track of). In any case, it's been hanging out at a friend's house the past few years, and he's made use of it whenever he's come to Nairobi on holiday. Yesterday in his search to find a house to rent during his tenure as my project's manager, he found a house he might like to buy. It's somewhere southwest of point B on the map below - i.e., very off road. View Larger Map He asked if I'd like to accompany him for a second visit, and I gladly accepted. This is the house next door to the one he might buy (and his inspiration for renovations): From Nairobi, take 2 and this is the view from there, complete with giraffe: From Nairobi, take 2 (can you see it?) So good to get out of the city for a bit. This was the view on the way back to the hotel: From Nairobi, take 2 Pretty clo...

From Nairobi, take 2 In my sleep-deprived state on my way to Nairobi last weekend, I found these souvenirs in the Amsterdam airport very amusing. I've always heard that clogs are sold everywhere in the Netherlands, but didn't quite expect these bright orange, seemingly plasticized clogs to be the first I saw. From Nairobi, take 2 Nairobi is famous for its traffic. Apparently the city's population has grown from 8 million to 40 million since the '60s, and the infrastructure certainly has not kept up. This was taken at about 5:15 on a Thursday. Most of the main roads have roundabouts where they cross each other. I've heard stories of it taking 2 1/2 hours to go less than a kilometer when it's raining. From Nairobi, take 2 The Fairview Hotel is a sprawling complex with gorgeous gardens - green, green, green, with flowering plants I've never seen before. Nairobi overall is very green - the north part of the city is flanked by the Karura Forest -- and vendors s...

I would write a poem about the range of emotions that one goes through while waiting for luggage in a foreign airport. Being a last minute packer, and this being my 3rd trip to Africa (with the first two being uneventful), I decided to chance it and not pack an extra set of clothes in my carry on. Fortunately, both bags arrived. I got through the visa/passport control quickly and waited over half an hour at the baggage 'hall' as they call it, but no problems at all. This rest of this post will likely be fairly scattered, so let's use bullet points: Someone wrote 'Obama was here' on the registration sticker in the elevator in our office building here. That made me smile. Everything seems really familiar, which is nice, considering it's been 20+ months since I was last (and first) here. My colleagues are all very kind, helpful people, and it's great to see those I email everyday face to face. The main purpose of me being here is to assist with the transit...

until I set foot in Nairobi again. So much to do before then! Excited for fun things to blog about coming up.

i love random things like this that give me hope on the days where i lose sight of how good my life is. today will be different : "

"They take pictures of mountain climbers at the top of the mountain. They're smiling, ecstatic, triumphant. They don't take pictures along the way, because who wants to remember the rest of it? We push ourselves because we have to, not because we like it. The relentless climb, the pain and anguish of taking it to the next level - nobody takes pictures of that. Nobody wants to remember. We just want to remember the view from the top. The breathtaking moment at the edge of the world. That's what keeps us climbing. And it's worth the pain - that's the crazy part. It's worth anything." Sage words from the writers of Grey's Anatomy. Who knew?

I've shared this on Twitter, Facebook, and my gChat status so far, but I love this commercial so much that I must post it to my blog for all to see. Also, I'm too exhausted to write anything productive. Enjoy!

this is surely one of thousands of blog posts about the snowy weekend in DC, but I wanted to share some of the sweet snapshots I was able to take. (i'm having trouble getting the captions in the right place, so i'll just number them below) 1. Near Eastern Market at about 10:30pm on Friday night. I would guess maybe 6 inches was on the ground at this point. 2. Saturday afternoon around 3pm. About 20 inches on the ground and still snowing steadily. 3. Smithsonian Metro Station. 4. the Korean War Memorial, which is eerie enough without the snow. Forecast shows 4-10" more are coming tomorrow night! Yeesh.

this week, i have experienced some 'you become like your parents as you get older' symptoms. let me explain. my dear ol' dad is the biggest fan of Doppler radar out there. my sister and i love to tell the story of the time (it has to be close to a decade ago, now) when he called from his office to see if it was raining at our house, because the Doppler said it was. my sister had picked up the phone in our dungeon basement that at that time doubled as our computer room, and the only source of outside light was through a small window that looked out into a grate on our driveway. when she responded that she couldn't tell, he asked if she'd mind going upstairs to check. i can't remember if sis complied or not, but remember thinking, didn't dad have anything better to do at work? then this week happened. we got a few inches of snow over the weekend. and a few more on tuesday night (which i took a walk in and it was the prettiest sight i've seen in a whil...

Here's how my Thursday started: About 5 minutes before I was ready to walk out the door, one of my contacts decided to lodge itself in the far reaches of my eye. After much coaxing and some cursing, and the addition of some eye drops, it returned to its proper place. My eye was bright red at that point so I opted to wear my glasses today. As I walked out the door, one of the buttons on my new winter coat popped off. The one that goes across my chest. So I was left with a button around my neck, and two around the middle, creating a nice gap in an obvious spot. The train ahead of mine malfunctioned, offloaded, and caused a 15 minutes standstill, followed by single-tracking. It took twice as long to get to work as it should have. The bright spot in my morning? The barista at Firehook put a coffee clutch with a smiley face on it on my latte. The kindness of a stranger brought some redemption to an otherwise hideous start to my day.

i'm not feeling terribly creative at the moment. I started a post about my tendency to be a bit of a sap and tear up at things like commercials for Extreme Home Makeover, but couldn't flesh it out. But i'm thinking about writing, which is a step. The words will come.

I didn't make any New Year's resolutions this year, at least not at the traditional time. Sometime in the past week, however, I decided that I needed to sign up for my 2nd 5k, and found one for March 13th . Then I decided my goal for 2010 will be to run three 5k's. And I will do whatever I have to in order to stick to that goal. Have I made it to the gym since? No. But at least the determination is there, and that's a start. This blog (and that post specifically) made me decide that I want to blog regularly again. I tend to only blog when I travel, but the only writing I do these days is in email form, which is less than satisfying. The world certainly doesn't need another blogger, but I need an outlet, and so I will attempt to write a weekly post, no topic off-limits. I have been happier these last few months than at any point in my adult memory, and I hope these two resolutions will deepen that happiness. Here's to a new year.

Coffee makes the morning OK : " Coffee makes the morning OK"

The chefes das brigadas (brigade chiefs - the ones in charge of the hundreds of locals working in the field) at training on how to effectively spray the insecticide:

things i'd like to remember from the past couple days: getting to see the faces of the people who go out to the field and ensure that the hundreds of people hired for the spray season get the money they deserve. it's a thankless job, arriving on-site by 5am and dealing with argumentative and dishonest people. i'm really impressed. sitting in the kitchen at lunch time, being given the seat of 'honor' and choosing my food first, observing the camaraderie among the staff. dinner poolside at the municipal pool - it's an amazingly well kept restaurant with gorgeous food presentation. wish i had brought my camera to dinner. not super excited that the red wine they brought me was chilled, but the stuffed pork i ordered for dinner and the fried banana with amarula and ice cream for dessert were awesome. watching Juno on TV after dinner and marveling at the power of cable tv to bring things i'd never expect to Africa one of the office helpers going out looking for ...

Monday morning began with a hotel breakfast promptly at 7am and a stop at the office before we headed out on the road. We rent the first floor of a house and all the necessary equipment and technology for about 5 months out of the year. There are 4 full-time staff that stay primarily at the office – an admin assistant, an office manager, a cook, and a cleaner. There is also an office for the finance staff, one for logistics staff, and one for visitors. Everyone was very gracious and I was happy to recognize most of their names since I manage the budget that has their salaries included! We then headed out to Mocuba, one of the 6 districts where we are responsible for paying the local staff hired throughout the spray season, which was about a two hour drive. A car and driver have been hired for the office staff throughout the season and he drove myself and two colleagues to various construction sites throughout the region. The driver looks like he can’t be a day over 20 (alt...

(wrote this Sunday night when I didn't have internet access...more soon. I've also uploaded more pics to Picasa which I'll label sooner or later.) Quelimane is such a beautiful and sad city. It was the first “big” city in Mozambique , but all the local factories shut down after the civil war following independence in 1975 and there is literally no industry here. Ten or fifteen abandoned ships line the shoreline, and the 19 th century church shown in so many pictures of this town has also been long abandoned, with everything inside stolen, including the altar. My colleague took me on a walk around the city soon after we arrived, and showed me where he saw his first movie, and told me that when he had his appendix removed as a teenager, this was the town where his family came, because it was the main city in this region. We sat for a beer at a restaurant right on the river that made Quelimane the main port in northern Mozambique , and he told me how the owner of the est...

with very limited access to email so for now just wanted to say i got to Quelimane just fine, things are good, and i´ll write more soon!

amazing what some quality drapes can do. i should invest in some for my apartment! in any case, I did go to Costa do Sol for lunch, and had more prawns (i may have reached my limit) and enjoyed the view of the water. The taxi driver on the way back played Celine Dion in his car. When I got back to my hotel, I grabbed a book and sat by the pool while the sun went down. I noticed on Thursday when I was exploring a bit that there seemed to be a small stadium next door, and I could hear a lot of cheering and general fun being had this afternoon. Tomorrow I fly up to Quelimane , where the field work of my program in Mozambique occurs. I'm looking forward to meeting more colleagues, visiting some of the work sites, and getting a better sense of the value of the work I do. Uploaded more pictures - the best ones should come next week: Mozambique

to a restaurant called Mundo's that has good pizza and was rumored to have a good wine selection by the glass, but turns out you can't choose what kind of wine you want by the glass, and i couldn't totally understand what the waitress said...so i ended up with something red and half decent. random guy who knew enough English to tell me that I should stay and talk to him and ask for my number followed me to my taxi...and a cop chastised me for only carrying a copy of my passport at a checkpoint about 2 blocks from my hotel. fun times. tomorrow I plan to head to this market and this hotel .

1. slept in. glorious. 2. did some work. 3. ventured out for a couple hours. had my first Mozambican beer (a Laurentina) and took some pictures. got doused with dust thanks to some strong wind. Mozambique 4. came back to do some more work. 5. got in bed to take a nap. all in all, not bad so far.

not a whole lot to report today - i seem to have caught a cold on my way over and am too sniffly tonight to want to do anything after work. lunch was great today, though - the country manager for our office here took me to Marisqueira Sagres , which is the restaurant attached to the only waterfront hotel in Maputo. (there's a road between my hotel and the bay, so that doesn't count.) more prawns and some yummy chicken and absolutely perfect weather. it's winter and their dry season, so every day is about 85 and sunny, with no humidity. The sun sets at 5pm, though, which is not super fun. tomorrow is Mozambique's Independence Day, so the office is closed and I'll have some time to explore. looking forward to not setting an alarm and wandering through downtown - there are a lot of pretty buildings within walking distance of my hotel, and I think I'll save the visit to the Costa do Sol restaurant on the water for Saturday.

not only did i order a plate of prawns for dinner, but i didn't even hesitate when they came served with eyes and tentacles still attached. (do prawns have tentacles? I'm not sure what those feeler things are called...) they were pretty yummy. and this hotel apparently pours glasses of wine to the tippy top. my dinner music included piano versions of From a Distance, Tears in Heaven, With or Without You, and other fine tunes.

Yep - you read that right. There's a KFC on the ground floor of the office complex. Who knew? I'll get more adventurous soon, but right now I just need some sustenance after 4 airplane meals, a granola bar, and some peanut butter crackers. The trip out here was long but not too difficult. I was ready and packed with 20 minutes to spare, and met some interesting people on the SuperShuttle that took me to the airport – a man flying to Paris to work with International Energy Agency and an Australian couple who had spent the last 6 weeks traveling through eastern Canada , then to NYC and DC and were on their way to San Francisco before heading home. No problems at the airport, and when I boarded the South African Airways flight, I found that my seat assignment was right next to Ed, the man my company recently hired for a new project in Namibia . Our tickets were booked through the same travel agency, but it still seemed like a crazy coincidence! It was nice to have a travel compan...

I think I will like this hotel... View Larger Map

decided to bite the bullet and pay the 6 pounds it costs to use internet for 90 minutes in this airport. oh how i look forward to the day when wireless internet is free everywhere. i am not even close to the first person to say this, but the whole airport security process is really excessive and often humiliating. on the way to Nairobi via Heathrow, i didn't pull all my 'liquids' out of my bags because I had no problem going through Dulles with everything inside, and then was held up for approximately 1/2 hour while they searched about 5 bags ahead of mine before they could look into mine. Today i was smart and pulled it all out into one little plastic baggie and got through Heathrow security in about 30 seconds flat. Nairobi was actually the most redundant security system of all - they scan all your bags before you even walk into the airport, then you go through immigration (which is much faster leaving than coming in, obviously), they have you put your carry on luggage...

is replaying the news as it broke on 9/11, as i understood it did in real-time yesterday in the US...i'm surprised by how overwhelming it still is to see these images and realize how vulnerable we were and still are. I was a junior in college and in class when both planes hit the Twin Towers, and missed seeing a lot of this footage the first time around. It's still shocking.

i didn't plan to pass 5 days without blogging while on this trip, but the second week has been drastically different than the first. after moving to the crazy resort-like hotel, my life was overtaken by the real reason i came here - to participate in a conference with the prime contractor on our project, which was scheduled from 8:30am-6pm every day and usually ran over. these days were tempered by sharing a bottle of wine or a couple beers with a coworker afterwards, then doing more work after that and heading to bed. it's been great, but i'm starting to feel drained and possibly getting sick. tonight the project manager based here took us to her house for dinner. her husband works for the state dept so they live in a government-owned and therefore bigger-than-necessary-and-quite-beautiful house that has a guard outside 24 hours. it was great to go 'off-site' a bit and see a bit of what her non-work life is like. her husband is great, too. last night was probably ...

and I saw more zebras than I could have imagined even existed! Makes sense, since they're essentially wild horses, but still - they were everywhere. We saw at least 25 rhino today - especially when they are laying down, they look almost fake. Fantastical creatures. 7 million flamingos at Lake Nakuru - you could hear the sound of their wings flapping wherever you were. Baboons EVERYWHERE - slightly unsettling, til you see the babies crawl on their mom's backs. So grateful to have a driver recommended by the company who was a great tour guide and had a great sense of humor - his laugh was contagious. He could point out giraffe a full 30 seconds before they came into my view, and see rhino from 100 yards away. He wants to take me to the airport next Saturday - we'll see if that works out. And yeah, I feel like i'm in Africa now. :) The Windsor is gorgeous, as expected - golf course out my window, everything has an 'outdoor' feel to it, and again, this hotel r...

this guy was close enough for me to get a solid shot this one ran by at the perfect distance this guy wanted to jump in our van female and male ostrich together Tons more pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/emilyrindone/Kenya02 #

I just made plans to have a driver take me to Nairobi National Park tomorrow and Lake Nakuru on Sunday! So excited to see the 'wilder' parts of Kenya.

Today's really the reason i came out here this week - our procurement manager is leaving the project, and our replacement arrives today, so it's the big hand off. As procurement is the majority of our work on this project, and USAID has very strict, specific regulations as to how procurement is carried out and files are kept, it's important that the transition goes well. I coordinate all the finance details from DC, so it's good that I'll be here. Plus lots of fires to put out with subcontractors in Ethiopia not performing, and other typical 'emergencies' that pop up on this problematic project. I'm never bored! It's almost the weekend! I need to make plans for exploring. I've gotten some good suggestions from various people who have been to/lived in Nairobi, and plan to spend one day in Nairobi and one a couple hours outside. There's a safari park near the city and some good shopping areas, so I can buy the requisite souvenirs and take ...

couldn't resist eating too much at the pool side restaurant tonight...white wine, beef medallions, cheesecake, tea....if only i lived on per diem all the time. :)

The Kenya office has an office assistant named Derek who's job it is to bring us all tea or coffee when we arrive, and at an appointed time in the afternoon. I can't get used to it. He's a sweetheart, though.

when i'm in the DC office i complain about getting interrupted all day and not getting any work done, but here in Kenya I don't get interrupted enough and miss the social interaction a bowl of fruit salad that would cost $6 in DC cost 50 Kshs, or less than $1, here avocado must be considered a fruit here since it's in my fruit salad i still don't like mango

It's been a while since I used this blog to document my travels, and I've posted lots of random stuff since then...but since I was sent to Nairobi for my first business trip, I figured I should start posting again! I arrived late Monday night, after a flight from DC to Heathrow and then to Nairobi, both of which went smoother than any of my domestic flights earlier in August - go figure. British Airways might be my favorite airline - quality food, fairly spacious seating, video screens at each seat. I sat next to a family with a baby on my first flight and was impressed that British Airways provides baby seats that attach to a fold-out shelf so that parents don't have to hold their kids the whole time. As is the custom for most of our international offices, the Kenya office sent a driver to pick me up at the airport and drop me off at a colleague's apartment, where I'm staying for the first week. The apartment complex is part of the Fairview Country Hotel ( www.f...