Jambo!

I'm baaaaaacccckkk! Did ya miss me?

Per the request of some very persistent and curious friends (i.e. Alyssa Elliott and assorted others) I've been persuaded to pick the blog back up for my upcoming trip to South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana.

Just a note to pick everyone back up to speed. Sadly, the time of London has come and gone and I've been back in the States for almost two years to the day. I've had a couple of accomplishments since then, including, in no particular order: graduated college, drank a significant number of strawberry daiquiris, rewatched Greek from start to finish on Nexflix, got into graduate school, sequentially started and then finished my first year of graduate school (are you sensing a trend here?) and rekindled my love for the Oxford comma.

Now that we're all up to speed on the past two years of my life, onto the juicy stuff. As part of my master's program, we're required to complete a community planning studio. In essence it's a thesis for a degree that doesn't require a thesis. The 6 credit studio puts planning students in a real world situation where they essentially act as consultants for a community. We study the area and problem, come up with a list of recommendations and eventually present our findings to the local community. From there, the community can do whatever with the report that they please from implementing some of the recommended changes to sitting it on a bookshelf (ideally, the former). Past studios have been everything from a look at food deserts in the DC area, an economic development plan for a section of Baltimore, and the current summer studio is looking at a small neighborhood on the Purple Line route.

Every few years the university offers an international studio during the summer, and this summer the studio is in Capetown, South Africa. Led by Sidney Brower, a notoriously popular retired professor and native Capetown-ian, the studio will have us splitting time this summer between Capetown and College Park. Our months of abroad will consist of site visits, interviewing local residents, government officials and key stakeholders, collecting data and archival research for our project. There are 5 of us total participating in the studio, and we will break up the work into sections we're each responsible for.
When we come back in mid July, we then finish writing up our report before finally presenting it.

Luckily for me, we have two weeks between when our 4 weeks of study ends and we need to be back in the US, so I'll be exploring Zimbabwe, Botswana and hopefully a little bit of Zambia in that time. Another girl in my program, Mandi, and I are spending a few days in Victoria Falls before we head out on a Safari that will take us through various villages and game reserves in Botswana and Zimbabwe including Chobe National Park and the Okavango Delta.

My goal is to keep updating the blog with pictures and stories like I did in London, but that'll all be contingent on what I actually do and internet access. I should be fine in Capetown, but the later portion of my journey will likely be electricity free as I'll be camping and staying in small villages.
Also, hopefully some of you caught the Mean Girls reference in the title, which is actually very politically inaccurate as "jambo" means hello is Swahili and people in South Africa speak both English and Afrikaans, but I can't resist and appropriately timed Mean Girls reference.

My flight leaves in a few hours, and I was able to finagle a 10 hour layover in London, so I finally get to go back, even if just for a day. I can't wait to walk around my old stomping grounds and be able to show off my LDN knowledge.

Totsiens!
(Afrikaans for goodbye)