5Crawfords

Graysen in the Portland airport, proud to be a Ducks' fan! This past week, for my birthday, Graysen and I flew out to Portland, Oregon to see the #1 ranked Ducks' football team play UCLA in front of a nationally televised audience. My parents picked us up from the airport and drove us to Eugene, where I went to the game with my dad while Graysen stayed back with Grammy at their RV. It was just a quick overnight trip, but we packed it in with a lot of fun and had a great trip. Most importantly, the Ducks' won big and we were loving being at ground zero of Ducks' fever! Now this week, I will be travelling to Asheville, North Carolina to attend the eMi Volunteer Conference and Disaster Relief (DR) training seminar. Attending the conference was a last minute decision but one I am excited about. I will be learning about water purification in a disaster relief context, as well as completing a course on structural assessment of buildings after an earthquake. Beyond that, it wi...

Part IV of IV At the end of all eMi trips, we try to have a day or two of ‘closing time’ where we spend time together doing something fun and also have a chance to talk through and process some of what we’ve experienced on the trip. On my past trips, this has typically been an overnight at a lodge or something small like that. Other eMi trip leaders have done larger scale activities, such as 3-day safaris or other sight-seeing trips. Well, since we were going to be in the same country as one of the seven wonders of the world, I thought the team would be mad if I didn’t get us over to see Victoria Falls. Since it was around 1200 kilometers from the project site, we had to add in a couple of travel days. But when I went to purchase our airfare, the travel agent told me that we would save about $400 per person if we waited to go home the next day! So, we ended up with a four-day closing time that included two full-days of travel! Note: In lieu of pictures in this post, I've uploaded a...