I am one day away from completing a dream that has been tickling my brain since I was 15-years-old. Today was spent with a loving family and friends who have been around since the diaper days. Thank goodness for the 78 degree weather in Chicago which led us to a cookout. Since the weather was […]
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Packing. An exciting process because you are one step closer to leaving for your trip. It is also a frustration: getting everything to fit, struggling to zip the bag close, trying to remember if you packed your deodorant, ripping apart the entire bag to find that pesky necessity, finding the deodorant, sighing in relief, and […]
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“Imkeli kaj oondoza ji etele iikulja” => “Peace fattens more than food” Cinco de Mayo brought more than the typical smell of tacos in the air. Today was the last meeting before we travel across the ocean to Namibia, Africa. The countdown of 20 days has begun and the room was filled with busy questions […]
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It is unbelievable to think that we arrived back from Namibia just over a month ago! Since “relaxation” doesn’t exist in my vocabulary, I have seen just shy of four days at home since arriving stateside. Work has me doing what I love and traveling all over to dance, giving me little to no time […]
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On Wednesday we said our goodbyes to the learners and teachers at The School For the Visually Impaired. It was bittersweet. I have no idea where the last three and a half weeks went, but I enjoyed every second of it. The day started very quiet, as the students knew later on they would have […]
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Today we said goodbye to the learners at The School for the Visually Impaired in Namibia. Our hearts broke, to say the least. I can’t believe the month is already up and that we are headed back to the United States tomorrow. The students have learned so much from us, but we have learned even […]
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Last week everyone rotated classrooms. We were all assigned a new classroom that did not have university students. We wanted all the learners to feel involved. As much as we were just getting to know our first class, we really did not want to make any of the learners feel left out. Our first […]
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For the past 20 days we have been working within the School for the Visually Impaired. Over the duration of this week we were able to tour Moreson, the School for the Mentally Impaired, and the School for the Hearing Impaired, all incorporated under National Institute for Special Education (NISE). These three special schools are […]
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To be honest, it has been an emotional few days at National Institute for Special Education (NISE). The learners are still a little riled up from their long weekend (“out weekend”) and the teachers are becoming accustomed to having us around, but today we got to see, for the first time, the depths of some […]
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When the 5 a.m. alarm rang on Saturday morning I don’t think any of us realized how indescribable the next 12 hours would be. It was the ever anticipated safari day and lucky was an understatement. We entered Etosha National Park, over 100 square miles of free range parkland, around 6:30 a.m. with all our […]
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