Summer Update

I don’t usually have time to update the blog during the school year, so I’m using my spring break week to catch up!

 I’ve finally uploaded all the pictures to the blog!  It took me forever, and believe it or not, that’s just the modified version. If you would like to look around at all the pictures, you can search through the group room I made on Snapfish. http://malawi2008.snapfish.com/snapfish

 

I came home and did absolutely nothing but sleep, watch TV and unpack for about a week.  I went to my beach house in Ocean City, MD because I needed a vacation for myself. I’m not an extremely social person so after spending a month with 18 people, I needed to sit on the beach and just listen to the ocean for a few days.  I found myself wondering “What would Macdonald think of this?” all the time. What would he think of Ocean City, the beach, the grocery store, parasailing?  I can only imagine his priceless reactions!

 It was time I started tackling the long list of things I wanted to get done before I went back to school.  I uploaded all my pictures to Snapfish and created the group room for everyone on the trip. That way we can share pictures.   We took pictures of all of our students using a disposable camera.  I kept the negatives and got them put onto a CD so I could upload them digitally. Little did I know that uploading those pictures would fill up my hard drive and cause my operating system to stop working. (You have to have at least 10 GB available to run your operating system)

 This was my worst nightmare. I panicked and rushed my computer to the Apple “Emergency Room”.  They told me I could get my computer back, I just needed to purchase more hard drive and make an appointment.  Well, when I went back a few days later, they told me they couldn’t get to my hard drive and  I needed the experts help at Mac Heaven in Chantilly.  Anyways, long story short, I spent the summer getting a new hard drive, new memory, transferring my life and getting an external hard drive.  On the plus, I learned a lot about computer’s hard drives and now I am always checking my hard drive space and backing up my data. Had to learn that the hard way!  Thankfully I had most of my stuff on my dad’s network and my Africa pictures were all on Snapfish.  I only lost a semesters worth of work.  1000+ African pictures was to much for my hard drive to handle and that was before the 5 hours of video. So a tip to students going on big trips...check your hard drive space before you upload all your pictures! 

 Between my computer troubles and babysitting, before I knew it, it was time to go back to school and I hadn’t gotten any scrapbooking done! So that is the reason it took me months to upload the pictures to this blog.  I had to download them from snapfish back onto my computer and organize them. It’s a very tedious job and I hadn’t gotten around to it until this week.

 My mom was nice enough to go back through my blog and edit for grammar and punctuation. Thank you mom!  It was a daunting task because I wrote so darn much, but she was happy to do it for me! I actually have never gone through and read my blog word for word after I got back. I have read parts to help me remember certain days but I wrote so much...who would ever read all this! haha   I am so glad I took the time to be so detailed. It was a pain and probably seemed pointless, but it is more of a memory for me. I just happened to publish it for others to read. 

 Over the summer, I did write my final paper and turned it into Dr. Kelly to earn my undergraduate research credit.  I basically compiled all the conversations, advice and observations I experienced before and during my trip to write how I came to my own conclusion about  Americans involved with Africa. I talked about how torn I was and what persuaded me to form my own opinions.  I included many of the topics and encounters  I wrote about in this blog.   I got an “A” on the paper and this was Dr. Kelly’s comments:

 Lexi: I liked the personal analysis you did that was based on not only research (gathering information from a variety of sources) but also observation. What you discuss is very complex, but you weighed evidence and came to conclusions for yourself. The "story" of your journey to those decisions was thoughtful and well organized. You were a super member of the Tech Team on Study Abroad. It wouldn't have been the same without you. Dr. K

 

OLYMPICS

 I knew Malawi would be participating in the Olympics, but I didn’t know what sport or how many athletics.  I watched the opening ceremony and literally jumped out of my seat and cheered with excitement! There were about 10 people representing Malawi!  I found myself cheering for all the African countries throughout the Olympics, I felt like they needed some more fans!

There were 4 Malawian Athletes participating in the 2008 Olympics.  Two for Track & Field and two for swimming. They didn’t make any records, but I’m glad Malawi was represented!  Malawi first participated in the Olympic Games in 1972 and has had 6 appearances since.