We have Visitors!

Our boss Tom, and his assistant/our friend Katie are here visiting us and Bernard as he transitions into his new role here in South Africa. Here are some pics from the fun touristy things we did with them!  :)

(We're visiting the farm right now, so I can use their internet to upload these photos. yay!)

             

There and Back Again (and then, there again ;)

I'm back to my blog attempts!
Sorry it's been so long, a few months =/

Well, here we are again in South Africa. Isn't jet-lag the greatest? We sort of slept for maybe 3 or 4 hours last night (after getting very little sleep on the 16hr overnight flight) and then decided we might as well turn the lights on at 2:30am. So I read, Jon worked, and I unpacked and organized all of our clothes in the closet (at least that's done!) we are going to be so dead tonight, I hope we sleep.

We had a great 2 1/2 months back home in CA, going back and forth between our families in Orange County and San Diego. Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years. I got to finally meet my sister Sarah's man and celebrate their engagement and participate in wedding planning, and we'll be able to get back to CA for the wedding in July! We spent good time with friends and lots of great time with family, even made it up to the McMillen cabin over New Years weekend which is always so great! (even though there was no snow this year :(  )

And.. so, at the end of Jan. we flew to Florida and spend just a few days at the International Office, which was great getting to re-connect with everyone and work in an actual office instead of stepping out of our bedroom to our desk. heheh

Then, we started our journey back across to South Africa on the 4th and arrived the next evening. And here we are. It's end of summer, and I'm currently sitting in our room with the windows open and the sound of thousands of humming, cricking, buzzing bugs is loud in my ears. I don't mind it at all though. It's sort of like white noise. And the smell of the misty air is lovely. It's helping me get in the mood as I'm reading The Help, set in Mississippi.

Anywho, we've got a busy time ahead of us. We hired a great guy from Zambia to come and take over as Operations Coordinator for Southern Africa. His name is Bernard. He is arriving on Wednesday, moving here to be close to the rest of the Regional team here.  Also, our boss, Tom and our friend Katie his assistant are coming on Friday for about a week to spend some time with Bernard and the team here. So, the next week will be very full, and the new version of our reporting system is being launched on Wednesday which is going to be a little wild I think (we're anticipating lots of emails from the field needing assistance), and we have a lot to do with Bernard in the next month and a half before heading to our next location.

Our plan is to spend 1 1/2 months here to train Bernard, another 1 1/2 based in Ghana so we can spend more time focused on English speaking West and French (west & central) Africa, and then another 1 1/2 based in Kenya finally meeting and spending time with the teams in East Africa. While we're in the other regions we will be traveling a lot throughout the surounding countries so that we can meet face to face with the national directors. We are excited about this. Last year it really felt like we spent too much time in one place, and if we're going to be this far from home we'd rather be moving around a bit more, and spending more time meeting with the amazing people on the ground who are doing all of the hand on work and sacrificing so much for it.

So, that's a little summary of what to expect in the upcoming months. We'll be back in FL in July for meetings and will be in CA briefly for Sarah's wedding, then the second half of the year is unplanned as of yet. Were we spend our time will be largely determined by our time in the other regions in the first half.

We are anticipating this year being very different from last year, with many new challenges, but we are excited about spending more time in West and East Africa, connecting more with the teams there.

We love you all and we're so glad we got to see so many of you while we were back home.
Until my next post!

-J&L