I'm Off...

Thanks to all my friends who showed up to John Harvard's last night. It was a great send off and I will miss you all so much. Thank you for all the calls and good wishes from everyone else!

So I have my visa and I'm ready to go. I have to fly down to JFK in New York first. I then fly out Friday night to London on a 7 hour ride. After a twelve hour layover in London a group of us will board a plane for a 10 hour journey down to Cape Town. All in all the trip will take about 40 hours. Can't wait!

I will see you all soon enough and I'll keep you updated as much as I can. I'm not sure about the internet access for the first two weeks so hold tight for updates. I will put up a post as soon as I can.

US Training

This past weekend was spent up at Dartmouth College at an orientation session for GRS. I was able to meet all of the other interns that will be doing the same thing. Everyone was super cool and it made the weekend extremely fun. We shared all sorts of stories, played some soccer, and really got to know each other.

A few former interns ran the training which was filled with everything from awkward ice breakers and dancing to accounting and HIV/AIDS education. I wanted to say thank you to Anndrea, John, Carolyn, and Kim for setting this all up and making it so enjoyable. They each gave presentations about the different sites where we could possibly be posted including our GRS involvement as well as activities we might get involved in outside of work. There are five possible sites now: Kimberly, Port Elizabeth, and Cape Town (all South Africa); Lusaka, Zambia; and one location in Malawi. Each one seems to offer a unique situation both in and out of work. We are not sure of our assigned locations yet. We will find out about a week after we get down to Cape Town for more training.

Kilo!

Video and More Information

We were showing a video at the party the other night and a lot of people did not get to watch it or could not hear it that well so here is the link. The video will give you a good idea of how important soccer is to the people in Africa, and an idea of why they have chosen to use soccer as their avenue toward AIDS prevention. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyplef2Hi6Y

Here is the link for more videos about Grassroot Soccer:

http://www.youtube.com/grassrootsoccer

For more information about Grassroot Soccer and HIV/AIDS visit the website at www.grassrootsoccer.org

If there are any problems with these just let me know and I'll try to help you out

Thanks!

After Party

Just wanted to say thank you to everyone for joining us at the party. It was a huge success. Also, thanks to all others who could not make it but sent donations and nice notes in the mail.

It is great to see all the support from family and friends and it really means a lot to both Eren and myself as well as Grassroot Soccer.

I just set up this blog so if you have any questions about it let me know...

Thanks again!