The Ethiopia Chronicles

Finally here!

After a 24 hour trip I’m finally in the hotel. The flight was one hour late but the immigration and customs process was pretty smooth. We took the hotel shuttle from the airport, with Megha.

I didn’t sleep much… Just connected to the internet in the room now and sent a few emails to tell everybody I’m alive.

Heading to the shower next..

Megha is in the same flights with me. She is also saying hi.
I’m posting from my phone so no much writting. Tried to post a picture but it failed . Using the Wordpress iPhone app.

On the Ethiopian Airlines flight now, in Dulles. Next stop: Rome.

Well, it seems I’ll be able to finish preparations before I’m picked up by the airport shuttle in 4 more hours..

Just finishing deflating a new soccer ball that I’m taking for the kids there, and could fit it in my luggage (Neil is taking another ball and a pump). 

I hope to sleep on the plane tonight, as I haven’t slept much the last 2 days.

Oh, I got a travel book on Ethiopia, “Ethiopia”, by Philip Briggs, from Bradt Travel Guides, that I hope to read during the long hours I expect to be awake. And I hope to learn more about the people, history and culture of the country.

I started to add some links to online resources about Ethiopia on the right nav bar for our reference. Plan to add more to try to have in one place useful info for the team.

Here is one map of the area by the way

Let’s get started.

Just updated the About page (link on the left bar), in case you just landed here and don’t know what this blog is about.

We are all today very busy with the program trip preparations, besides our normal work and family/personal life. I expect no much sleep ahead of us until we are on a plane..

I think I have my classes slides and research completed, but I still need to complete the installation/configuration of some open source tools in my macbook for the hands-on part or the classes.

I have the air travel set up and the hotel reservations in Addis Ababa also.  My flight leaves this Thursday night from SFO. A 23.5 hours looong trip.

Got my 4 immunization shots since 2 weeks ago, including the required one for entry, for yellow fever, and I started taking the Malaria pills this past Saturday. Lots of fun.. The malaria pills start one week before until 4 weeks after the trip.

Something interesting about the malaria pills: one team member, Scott, mentioned of a friend having pretty bad loss of sleep, nightmares, etc. due to this pill, so when I got it from the hospital they gave me similar warnings, and then I read in the leaflet I got for it things like “.. may cause… strange dreams,… seizures, loss of coordination, vision changes, unexplained anxiety, mood changes, depression (sometimes severe including thoughts of suicide), hallucinations…” ,etc. So let’s say I was a little concerned when I took the first one this past Saturday.. But it seems everything went fine and I’m still here