We are on our way!

We are finally on our way!

After meeting at Beth’s house and fighting our way through Seattle traffic, we made our way through security and onto the British Airways 777 that promises to take us to London.

Being the first blog post of the trip, allow us to introduce ourselves:

Starting at the top left and making our way left we have Joe Bailey (a 5th grade teacher at QAE), Ciara Leckie (2nd grade teacher at QAE), Beth MacLean (DH’s Director of Programs), Rene Yokoyama (QAE kindergarten teacher). And in the second row starting from the left we have Rachel Marks (also a QAE kindergarten teacher), Donna Verhasselt (DH’s Director of Long-Term Planning), and yours truly, Ryan Ward (concerned citizen and husband of Rene Yokoyama).

We are all so excited to embark on this journey in order to continue building relationships with Queen Anne Elementary’s sister school in Zambia, Dwankhozi Basic School. But before we do anything, alas, we have to get to Dwankhozi (not such an easy task)! Our itinerary is as follows: 9-hour flight to London, 7-hour layover, 11-hour flight to Johannesburg, a small layover, a 2.5-hour flight to Lusaka where we stay the night, and then just a short 9-hour drive in a van to Chipata!

Altogether we have quite the journey ahead of us, but morale is high and the chance to strengthen ties between our QAE teachers, parents, and kids couldn’t be more of a motivation.

Feel free to comment, share the link to the blog, and stay tuned for daily updates about us, our journey, and our friends in Zambia.

Cheers,

Ryan