Beginnings

Today was my sixth day in Egypt!  I am well aware that I am overdue for an update.  Allow me to start with orientation.   I spent a week in Akron, PA at the headquarters for MCC USA.  This week was really good for many reasons.  It helped me to slow down after 3 weeks of crazy preparation.  It surrounded me with a group of Americans and Canadians who are all crazy enough to travel for a year to countries all over the world and with a group of people from something like 25 countries who are traveling to the US and Canada to serve for the year.  The best times of the week were when we spent time together outside of the orientation sessions.  There were always people singing, playing games or dancing.  We had some amazing times of worship representing each of the regions MCC does work in.  Overall it was a pretty great week.

I left orientation last Thursday afternoon and traveled to Philly where I jumped the pond!  I do not have any super crazy adventure to report as of yet.  I am settled into my apartment.  I am starting to get a feel for the neighborhood.  I have met most of the other staff here and the others I should be meeting at a party soon!  I have had three days of Arabic and ilhamdiallah it is actually coming back to me!  Hopefully I will have something really exciting to post soon.

Also if I may suggest something to do with 20 minutes of today, it would be to watch this video.  We watched it during one of our sessions during orientation and it spurred some wonderful discussion.  I hope that you enjoy it as well!

The funny way things change

I am currently in a van on my way to Pennsylvania.  I week from today I will be leaving for Egypt.  In the last month I went from thinking that I might not make it overseas this year to being a week away from a return to one of my favorite places.  MCC called me a couple of weeks ago and told me that they had an opportunity for me with the same program that I was working with before (SALT)  that would be in Egypt.  I immediately accepted and have spent the last three weeks packing and saying goodbye.  While this whole process was not as smooth as I would have liked, but I am confident that this was God's plan all along.   So here I go,  only one week of orientation with MCC stands between me and the beginning of a great adventure back in Egypt.  I will be doing my best to update this regularly.  Put you email in somewhere over here -> in order to receive email updates when I update my blog.