this is me

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...

watch at least til you get to where they give the spider the main ingredient in marijuana...then you'll understand why this video is so amazing.

my interest in blogging waxes and wanes. Today I am reading an article called Hearts of Darkness from the magazine City Journal, and there are parts of the article I wanted to put out there because they're making me reconsider the way I view international development efforts. "A recent Heritage Foundation study found that, of the 70 least-free countries on earth, nearly half have received U.S. foreign aid for more than three decades. The result is more poverty, more aid money, and more corruption. In Zimbabwe, for example, foreign aid enabled strongman Robert Mugabe to destroy property rights, introduce a command economy, and create a kleptocracy where the inflation rate recently reached 11,000 percent. Once southern Africa’s breadbasket, Zimbabwe now depends on subsidies to feed its people." "Kenyan economist James Shikwati agrees that handouts thwart the emergence of a culture of self-reliant problem solving and that they breed corruption to boot. When a drought ...

thanks to my best friend Google Reader , I read a lot of blogs fairly regularly. some are written by people I know, but many are just blogs by other people in DC that i stumbled upon in one way or another. some are useful in the sense that they give me ideas of things to do in the city, but many are just musings on life by other twentysomethings, and i find myself wanting to adopt their blogging style - expressing their thoughts, relating random experiences, no holds barred. a few things hold me back, however: a lot of the things i think about throughout the day and wouldn't mind blogging about are things i wouldn't necessarily want people who actually know me to read. that's definitely part of the appeal of the blogosphere - a sense of anonymity, and knowing/hoping that some random person might stumble upon some words you wrote and laugh or sympathize. and it's something that typing your thoughts into a random Word document that no one else will ever read will ne...

don't really remember how I found this blog but i can usually relate to what this other Emily has to say. especially today: "Like most overeducated and underemployed young adults in DC, I live paycheck to paycheck. I've never known anything else and, given my education and professional choices, probably won't know anything else for a long time. I figure I'll just marry rich and then justify my shallowness by calling it fourth-wave feminism. Perhaps I'll become one of those fabulous stay-at-home moms I see in Washingtonian who live in Georgetown and wear lots of Lilly Pulitzer. I'll run a "freelance lifestyle consulting business" where I charge clients several thousand dollars for advice such as "live in Georgetown" and "wear lots of Lilly Pulitzer."" EJ Takes Life

that you decide it is acceptable to wear a hair roller with your bangs wrapped around it out in public on your way to work? especially when your commute involves walking in/around/near Union Station, which is arguably one of the most populated metro stops during rush hour. i would guess the woman in question was in her mid-to-late forties. i like to think that no matter how pressed for time i am, and even if i someday end up using hot rollers regularly (which i doubt), let alone get bangs again (which i highly doubt), i will never leave the house with one still attached to my head. you never know when a stranger will find you intriguing and try to catch your eye, and then look up and realize you have a foreign object protruding from your forehead. then again, maybe she is 100% happy with where she is in life, relationship-wise, and has no reason to care what other people think of her as she walks to work in the morning. i, obviously, do not fall into that category. i made a class...

that may sound a little new-agey, but i think it describes what i'm trying to do with my life at this moment. the past couple months have been some of the busiest and most sleep-deprived of my life, interning 30 hours a week and working 3-4 shifts at the pizzeria. now that i've started working doubles on saturday, i find myself with more time during the week, but no idea what to do with it. i'm arguably in the worst financial situation of my life, dreading my first loan payment at the end of next month (happy new year to me), and therefore feel guilty doing anything that requires much money. but i also don't want to spend many more afternoons the way i did this past wednesday, napping and watching tv until bedtime. my internship has kind of stalled at this point as well. we're nearing the time of year where business tends to slow down, and my supervisor will be out of the office 4 out of the next 6 weeks. this week i have spent more hours trying to figure out ho...

family visits and work gets in the way. i'll go back to posting when there's exciting news to post. :)

today i have one of those sinus headaches that when really intense makes me feel insanely nauseous. not pleasant especially as I have dinner plans with a friend from high school tonight and my mom, cousin, and aunt visiting starting tomorrow. it's looking like i could be a salaried employee by December....here's hoping!

since i just found out about this today? don't know if i'll manage to post daily, but it's worth a shot. i could use more of a creative outlet these days. my friend Angel is at this moment interviewing for a position at my company where he would end up sitting right next to me. that would be beyond fun. here 's a link to a review of a concert i went to on Tuesday. if you haven't heard me gush about Ryan Adams, just ask.

"The three lead suspects convicted of murder and attempted murder [in the Madrid bombings of March 11, 2004] each received sentences ranging from 34,000 to 43,000 years in prison, although under Spanish law the most time they can spend in jail is 40 years. Spain has no death penalty or life imprisonment." (read the full article here ) I remember that day really clearly, and all the desperate phone calls and emails I received, as I was actually living on the outskirts of Madrid at the time and took those regional trains daily. I need to take the time to read what Spanish newspapers are saying about the verdicts, but that will have to come later...

yes, the girl who once said global warming was BS is creating a post in honor of environmental awareness. for those of you who had not heard, after viewing An Inconvenient Truth I retracted my previous BS comment and am now in the moderately concerned party that likes to keep aware of what's going on but has yet to participate in any specific action apart from recycling. While I doubt that I will go so far as to request that my cremated remains to be buried near my favorite tree so that I can become one with my personal tree , I was definitely concerned by the ridiculously hot weather during the first week or so of October and plan to deepen my awareness of what's going on environmentally as it comes up in the news. Check out Blog Action Day 's website for more information on their awareness-raising. and on a side note, crazy stat from last week - there are 54 doctors in the entire country of Liberia.

"A recent finding by the civil service of Yemen found that up to 30,000 of its employees (out of 473,000) were ‘ghost workers’ who never showed up for work, or ‘double dippers’ who were on more than one payroll...The Ministry of Education (MoE) is reported to be one of the top ministries in the employment of ‘ghost workers.’ Often, teachers and administrators who are on the MoE payroll simply do not ever report to work while collecting salaries." (from USAID's Corruption Assessment of Yemen) yes, this week I am learning about Yemen...

since i'm learning new things every day at my new internship at Crown Agents USA , I figured i'll start posting some of the interesting things I discover. from mcc.gov: Paraguay has an estimated 300,000 registered taxpayers, of whom only 1,500 actually paid taxes in 2004. which helps me understand why Brazilians tend to say that if something is cheap or poor quality, it must be from Paraguay....

a song to make you happy

did i really see an alpaca as soon as i got out of the taxi? (yes, i wrote "llama" on the original post) cobblestone roads? 4 soles (it´s about 32 cents to the Sol here) for lunch or dinner, and 2 for breakfast? People dressed in the clothes i´ ve seen in history books? I get to see Machu Picchu on Saturday? 15 soles a night for the hostel? Adorable children running down the hills in their school uniforms? After tearing up at Extreme Makeover Home Edition while waiting for my room to be ready, I may end up crying of happiness. Lord knows I was ridiculously excited when I saw the Dunkin' Donuts in the Lima airport this morning. Hard to tell if the nausea I felt upon landing in Cusco was sugar overload or altitude sickness. There´s a reason I´ ve been dreaming about coming to Perú since I was 13. A week from today I will be somewhere between Miami and NYC. Yesterday I flew from Recife to Rio to Buenos Aires to Lima, and after arriving at midnight got back on a pla...

that i haven´t blogged at all lately - that´s due to trying to detox while at the beach, and also to the fact that this site was down and deleted half of my blog entries, so i don´t exactly trust it anymore. anyway, i´m coming home 12 days from today (the 22nd), and will be in Havertown for a couple days, then apt hunting in DC and hopefully visiting my best friend in Charlottesville. since i last wrote, i moved from that hostel in the middle of nowhere outside Salvador to one in a great neighborhood super close to the beach, and stayed there 3 nights. on Sunday i took a 10-hour bus ride to Maceio and was amazed at all the palm trees while we drove (like, forests of them). Maceio lived up to its reputation (given to me by a friend from Georgetown) - i stayed 2 nights in a slightly stinky hostel and then 2 in a great pousada one minute from the beach, and got plenty of sun. now i´m in Recife, and will be here until i fly to Lima on the 14th. from lima i´ll go to Cusco from the 15th to t...

happy august everyone! i am finally in northeast brazil , which is the area of the country that originally got me interested in studying brazil in the first place. i arrived in Salvador yesterday, excited to stay at my hostel close to the beach....only to discover that really the only thing near the hostel IS the beach (and a supermarket) and it takes at least 1/2 to get to the center of the city. that ´s what happens when you book hostels online. :) i think today i will go to the Barra area of Salvador and check out two hostels that are in a fun neighborhood and transfer all my stuff there tomorrow. rio was uneventful overall - it stopped raining Sunday night, so i went out to dinner with Priscila and Edna, and then Monday went with Priscila to work, wandered the Jardim Bota nico a little bit, had lunch with Pri , wandered a bit around the center of the city that i got to know pretty well when i took classes there in January, and then took the ferry home to.............take a n...

http://picasaweb.google.com/emilyrindone/ParanaguaCuritibaSaoPaulo at fla's house in Sao Paulo - it's been great. have to run but will write more later.

so annoyed with myself because after reallizing that posting the long blog entry i just wrote was taking a really long time and copying it so i wouldn´t lose it, my tendency to multitask got the best of me and i hit ctrl+C to copy another link and lost everything i´d spent the last hour writing. so in summary... i took lots of pictures in florianopolis on a boat trip that was really fun. here´s the link: http://picasaweb.google.com/emilyrindone/Florianopolis amazing dance show in joinville - i even took the time to translate the description from the program because it was so unique. here´s the website for the dance company if you´re curious. http://www.quikciadedanca.com.br/index800.htm i´ve gotten sicker since i got to curitiba and got some antibiotics today. spent most of the day on a boring train ride to Paranaguá that lonely planet recommended instead of exploring beautiful curitiba and am annoyed that i spent $63 (twice what the guide book said it would be) on a ride i didn´t enjo...

yay for cyber cafes that let me download Picasa. here you go! http://picasaweb.google.com/emilyrindone

and while this super new computer let me copy the pics from my camera directly on to the computer, the security settings are set so that i can´t download ANYTHING that will help me upload pictures any faster than a snail´s pace. So, I will add a few pics to this blog (if i figure out how) and try to get you the rest later. so the falls....no words for them. I liked the Brazilian side better for the panoramic view, and for the fact that you can stand like 10 feet from the Garganta del Diablo (where the most powerful water is) and get splashed by it rather than just looking at it from above. may have been the coolest thing in nature i have ever seen. when i was eating lunch some butterflies hung out with me for a while so i took some up close pics of them too. the Itaipu Dam was pretty impressive - the sound and light show was short and cheesy, but there was a short documentary that gave the history of it being built and how it produces 90% of Paraguay´s energy and 20% of Brazil´s, et...

at 12:15 i embark on a 20+ hour journey to Iguazu Falls...and it will all be worth it. we´ll see if i can overcome my typical motion sickness and read some on the bus; if not, i will be watching lots of movies (provided they show more than one) and dozing off and on, and hopefully my ipod will keep its charge. Co rdoba has been relaxing...it was so cold the first day and a half that i stayed inside a fair amount - thus the pictures i uploaded - if you didn ´t get the link let me know - and finally invested in a scarf and gloves. of course yesterday it was a lot warmer and i didn ´t need either piece of warmth equipment at all, but they may come in handy until i get to sunny Rio. I took a few pictures as I explored the city, and realized that maps are often deceiving - walking from " nueva cordoba " where i am staying to the center of town takes maybe 10 minutes. i´m nearly finished Love in the Time of Cholera - they´ ve boarded the ship, for those of you that have read i...

officially. as in, it snowed yesterday and today. i´m wearing a longsleeved shirt under a shortsleeved shirt with a hoodie and a fleece over it and i´m STILL cold inside this internet place. i am going to have to break down and buy a scarf and gloves even though by the weekend i should be in warmer weather. but i´ ve been thinking that it´ll get warmer for the past few days and have been wrong, so it´s time to spend the pesos on the warm paraphernalia. the only problem is that today is Argentina´s independence day, so most stores are closed. please keep in mind as you read this that i haven´t had anything besides most of a pack of Maria cookies (i don´t really know how to describe them - they are thin and a little sweet and great with hot drinks) since about 7pm last night. you all deserve a proper update so i´ll do what i can before either 1)my fingers freeze or 2) my stomach starts growling out loud. when i last left you (before the 21 wines in 8 or so hours email) i was about t...

and the apostrophe key on this keyboard doesn {t work. (case in point). other than that, though, life is good! Sunday morning I went to the famous fair at Plaza Dorrego , but it was way too touristy for my taste, so i didn {t stay long. Caught the bus to the bus station and bought a ticket for an overnight trip to Mendoza - about $60 including dinner and breakfast, which i figured was a great deal since i was traveling and having a place to stay at the same time. Headed from the station to the Buquebus ferry terminal and caught a ferry to Colonia ...and had my first "apparently i don{t understand spanish as well as i think i do" or "i don{t ask enough questions" experience of my trip - i had thought that the combination ticket i bought allowed me to get off in Colonia , hang out for a while, and then head to Montevideo, but the bus to Montevideo ( MV ) was waiting directly after i got off the ferry....and figuring i was kind of exhausted for an afternoon of wander...