Sri Lanka Bound

I leave tomorrow, I am looking forward to this trip; it will allow me the opportunity to cover programs that have never been covered before because of the security situation. I am keeping my fingers crossed that the situation does not deteriorate to a level that it will be deemed impossible to travel.

I will arrive in Colombo on the 24 March and will be attending a conference until 31 March. After that, I will join the team and spend the next three weeks getting to know the issues facing the delegation as well as covering our programs. This will be my first trip under my new title as regional communication delegate so I am incredibly excited and anxious to start.

On 19 April, I will depart for Washington, DC, for a series of meetings and a few “brown-bags” (non-formal presentations). Returning to DC will be really energizing for me. I still vividly remember arriving in DC alone and with only enough money to manage a room in a group house (money that came from my parents). I was starting grad-school and getting ready to live with a friend from Peace Corps. Three years later, I was leaving DC with my Masters, a friend from PC that evolved into family, my first consultancy under my belt, a true love found and lost and job that was taking me to Indonesia. I went from broke and alone, to leaving a world that I fought tooth-and-nail to build. It will be a great homecoming.

Following DC I will take a few days of personal time and fly to Omaha (around 27 April). I will spend the week with my family visiting and decompressing from (literally) a world of travel. I do not need to explain all the reason visiting my family is exciting and necessary for my heart and mental health. After that, I will leave for a conference in Portland, OR, from 3-6 May, and then it is back to Aceh around 9 May. I will have been gone for almost one-and-a-half months so I will have a ton of work to catch-up on…two weeks later I will leave again.

I will try to update you all from Sri Lanka. My love and my best.