Beginnings and travels to Namibia 2014

(This is the start of my year long adventure in Namibia.  I am here on a Fulbright Award and will be teaching at the University of Namibia and collaborating with university faculty in Education to develop a program to support first and second year teachers)

Beginning with a 12:55 PM departure from San Francisco and a 2:00PM arrival in Windhoek, Namibia, this trip was the longest in duration of any of my previous flights to Namibia. I believe it was 40 hours in total.  If you live on the West Coast, just subtract two hours from your current time, and then reverse the time of day to determine what time it is in Namibia.  (My dad says it is easier to add 10 hours, but I prefer the “minus two” subtraction method.  Anyway, my afternoon arrival in Windhoek was really like 4:00AM. ) I managed to sleep some on all four flights, so by the time we arrived at our house I had enough energy to unpack some suitcases and walk to the store for food and basic supplies before finally hitting a wall at 9:15 and sleeping until 6:00.

My journey to Namibia began as a “non-compliant” traveler—a Fulbright term for someone who requests a change to the original itinerary.  At the end of December, after returning from a great Christmas with my family in Lakewood, my mom took a fall and hit her head while climbing into a shuttle van at San Francisco Airport. She was admitted to the hospital and we all gathered in San Francisco and created a schedule for one of us to be with her and my dad during her recovery.  She’s now recovering well at home. As a family, we decided I needed to move forward with my Fulbright project, but instead of visiting Wales with Lindsey, Tony, Baby Beatrice, and the rest of my Welsh family, I requested a delay in my travel so that I could spend some time at home with my mom. Fulbright emailed me with the message that “Non-Compliant Travel Approved for EVANS, JANET WEISS MS.”  So here I am finally, after a crazy and intense three weeks, sitting in the living room of our new home, beginning a blog, and anticipating and trying to imagine what it will be like to live outside of the US for eleven months.

The house is amazing. 

It is a large two-story, four-bedroom house. Downstairs, in addition to the kitchen, living room, dining area and indoor barbecue, we have a study that is currently piled with books for my work and for UNAM faculty.

There are also two bedrooms downstairs with lots of built in closets—plenty of room to keep everything we brought to live here for a year.

The rooms are spacious, light floods in through the windows, and the kitchen is well apportioned. We are staying in the main house that belonged to the previous owners of the Casa Blanca Guest House.  University of Namibia now owns the Casa compound and so it a convenient and fabulous accommodation for Fulbright Scholars with families. Thank you, Lindsey, for choosing to join us for the year.