Our summer 2017 journey has finally begun! We are currently in Oxford, England after a long whirlwind journey. We will be in Oxford for the next three months, then (newest development!) we will travel to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for an additional 2.5 months. Our journey started a couple weeks ago when we left our jobs for the time being, packed up all our belongings and put them into storage, and left Rochester with two suitcases each and a personal item. As much as we love home, we couldn't pass up the opportunity for another adventure now that it has come our way. I'm excited to live more simply with less possessions over the next few months (although there are quite a few wedding gifts I'm excited to reunite with when we return). Our plans in England: Like I mentioned, we will be living in Oxford, England for three months. My husband Liasor (it feels great to say my husband! #newlyweds) will be working on a translation project for an anthropology professor emeritus of the University of Oxford who is also a family friend. She lived for many years with the Uduk people of Sudan (which is the group Liasor is a part of) and she collected many stories and oral histories. Her recordings describe the daily life, history, and culture of the Uduk people. Liasor will be translating these recordings from T'wampa (the Uduk language) to English. These recordings date from the 1960s to the early 2000s and cover narratives from before, during, and after the Sudanese Civil War, describing life at home in the Blue Nile region and life displaced. Liasor has already been translating some of these recordings remotely, but this summer we're excited that he can work on this project full time. My plan is to rest! I applied for a few jobs in Oxford because I initially wanted to work too. I was accepted to one position as an English as a Second Language teacher for international teens studying in Oxford, but the organization wasn't able to provide me with the necessary work visa sponsorship that I need to legally work in the U.K. So for now I will be focusing on some personal passion projects (like blogging, language learning, editing our wedding video, and strategic planning for Uduk Hope Inc. which is an organization that I help Liasor lead that focuses on supporting refugees in East Africa). I also downloaded a list of diverse dance classes around Oxford and I'm so excited to potentially start dancing again. For those who don't know, dancing is a primary passion of mine that I've somewhat neglected this past year. I'm also hoping to learn more about cooking, meal planning, and budgeting since we'll be living much more modestly without me working. It's actually quite freeing to take a break from full-time work. It'll give me the opportunity to assess where I want to go next professionally. If you read any of my blog posts from last summer (when we were living in Doro Refugee Camp in South Sudan) I was so excited to have left the stress of grad school at that time and move at a slower, more life-giving pace. I wanted that climate of reduced stress to continue when we moved to Rochester. However, this past year in Rochester was far from restful, to say the least! I'm thankful for all of the learning experiences I had while teaching full-time this year and the logistical management that wedding planning taught me, but I am beyond exhausted mentally and physically, and there are so many things that make me uniquely Christine that I haven't invested in recently. So perhaps God has a plan for this period of time without a job, because I have a tendency to be an anxious, stress-prone workaholic. And that's not healthy. This past year I feel like I experienced panic attacks and high stress situations continuously amidst so much work, lack of clarity professionally, wedding planning and transition, and my whole being screamed for rest. Well, I believe rest has finally come in the form of a new adventure. What a paradoxical beauty, finding rest in adventure. And what a gift, because the Lord knows how much I love adventures, traveling, and languages! (Speaking of languages, I'm hoping to listen along while Liasor does some of his translations so I can learn more T'wampa. Fingers crossed!) I want to focus on being present, growing spiritually, reflecting on this past year, and giving up streams of thankfulness because God has been good in our lives even at our hardest moments and even in the midst of tragic news regarding our family in Doro Refugee Camp. It would behoove us to pray and to seek God as we think of ways to be of support to them and others in Doro where violence has recently hit. Which leads me to... Our plans in Ethiopia: In October we'll leave Oxford and fly to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. I'm super excited because it's been a long-term dream of mine to visit Ethiopia. Until a couple weeks ago, it didn't look like traveling to Addis after Oxford would even be feasible due to finances and logistics. However, thanks to an incredible gift from a close friend, we are now definitely traveling to Ethiopia, and we won't just be passing through but staying from October to mid-December. Liasor and I are humbled by this gift and opportunity. The purpose of our time there is to make some strategic connections and partnerships on behalf of Uduk Hope Inc. For those not familiar, Uduk Hope is an organization started by Uduk members in Rochester, New York who desire to mitigate the challenges that their loved ones face in refugee camps in South Sudan and Ethiopia. Liasor is currently running the organization and I help to support by serving on the Board of Directors. Last summer, we spent six weeks in Doro Refugee Camp visiting family and completing research to determine the organizational strategy of Uduk Hope. Since then, we have synthesized a lot of the research and have been meeting with a social entrepreneurship institute in Rochester to help us further develop and design the organizational scope and makeup of Uduk Hope. We currently have a few programs in operation that focus on needs that were expressed during our summer 2016 research. But now we are continuing to refine and design Uduk Hope, and this trip to Ethiopia will greatly help with that. Our goal is to develop partnerships with a few key organizations and institutions in the area and to do a lot of strategic planning. We will not be returning to Doro Refugee Camp or South Sudan at all during this trip, because there is too much unrest and insecurity. We'll primarily stay in Addis, the capital of Ethiopia. Please be praying for our connections and meetings, and for a smooth trip. The highs and the lows of traveling: Once we left Rochester in June, we traveled to Cleveland to visit family for a couple days. It was super nice to see everyone in Cleveland and spend a lot of quality time together. Then we flew to New York City after long delays in the Cleveland airport. We arrived in NYC tired and exhausted, only to rise early the following morning for a day-trip to Washington D.C. to visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture with friends for the 4th of July. It was a wonderful experience that would require an entire separate post to fully describe. What a great museum; I highly recommend it to everyone. We'll have to go back because we were only able to see a portion of the exhibits. We spent a couple more days in NYC then we took off for London with a layover in Reykjavik, Iceland. Our flight from New York to Iceland was delayed by four hours, and two of those hours were spent sitting in an unmoving airplane waiting for a long line of other planes to take off. So we ended up in Reykjavik, Iceland later and longer than we expected, because our connecting flight had already left by the time we arrived. We were rerouted to a new flight, but when we finally flew into London, we found out that the airline left our checked bags back in Iceland! We were told that our bags will be shipped to us in the next couple days so please be praying for that. We were already sufficiently stressed, and then it took us a while to figure out how to get to Oxford from London because we arrived late at night and the bus we needed was no longer running. In the end we decided to take a taxi to Oxford. Finally, after so much movement and stress and exhaustion, we arrived in Oxford last night and we couldn't be happier to settle down for a little bit and sleep. Where we are staying in Oxford: As part of Liasor's working arrangement, we have been provided with a lovely garden house during our time in Oxford called "The Annex". I had no idea what a garden house was before this trip, but essentially it is exactly what it says it is. It's a house in the backyard garden of someone's estate. We love our home for the summer! It's small, cozy and surrounded by nature. I already had one embarrassing blunder trying to figure out the stove in our home. Below the stovetop, it has both an internal grill and an oven and I didn't recognize at first which was which. (I was so accustomed to the typical American stove which only has an oven below the stovetop). After playing around with some knobs, I figured out that the oven is the lower of the two and now all is good. Oh, silly American moment. We cannot wait to explore Oxford. Liasor has visited before so he's super excited to show me some of his favorite (or should I say favourite) places and discover new ones together. Today we got a brief tour of some nearby streets and we got to visit a couple shops. I still haven't been to the city center yet, so hopefully that will be tomorrow's adventure. Oxford seems like a very bike-friendly city (I've seen countless bikers already). I'm sort of hoping to rent a bike for the summer because I LOVE biking around town! I biked nonstop when I lived in Cordoba, Spain and I biked a bit when I lived in NYC, but that was kinda scary. Anywho, I'm looking forward to spending some great quality time with Liasor this summer and hopefully we'll find a great church and make some new friends. We are also hoping to take a belated honeymoon trip (maybe back to Spain where we first met), but time and expenses will tell. Either way, I plan to keep my blog updated regularly so I'll keep you all in the loop. Thank you for your prayers and support! A special shout out to our family for giving us a place to stay in Rochester and Cleveland after we left our apartment and stored all our things, and for spending a wonderful time with us before our long 6-month journey. We made it to Oxford safely and we love you all! Until next post! Much love, Christine
4 Comments
Aimee Custodio
7/9/2017 06:13:04 pm
Glad you have arrived safely. In our prayers for traveling mercies throughout your new adventure. Also, praying provision and time for the belated honeymoon in Spain.
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Susan Bulling
7/10/2017 05:44:02 am
Christine, first of all, the city pictures are beautiful and I'm so pleased you are settled and well.
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Brian Babcock
7/10/2017 09:37:40 am
Thinking of you guys. Say hello to Wendy for us. Looks like a great place to hang out for the summer. Carol and I were in Oxford in 1993 for onr breif day and overnight.
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Lula
7/11/2017 05:50:42 am
Glad you guys made it to oxford. Check you airline's baggage delay compensation. When American airline didn't deliver my luggage while I was Australia , they were required by law to reimburse my expenses. Not having your luggage really sucks and very frustrating having to deal with the airline.
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