Flying + Photography = too many pictures taken out of airplane windows.
I'll keep it to a bare minimum here, but you can find more in the full album which covers this week of training.
Saturday, July 1, 2006
Mountains
Whoah! Are those sand dunes down there? They almost look like ocean waves!
Crop Circles . . . of the irrigation kind.
Could this really be the Grand Canyon?
Tell me I'm not the only one who sees a smiley-face down there.
There! Can you see it now? Uh... actually, now it looks a little more like a smooshed smiley-face . . . or a ghost.
I thought this was pretty cool. Check out this other 747 that's on approach (I think) into LAX.
Finally, we flew past downtown LA (looking a little smoggy) just before we landed.
Upon arrival, we had a bunch of little things to take care of; papers to sign and fill out; we had to find our room; I honestly can't remember what we were doing throughout the afternoon, but by the time dinner rolled around, I sure was hungry. . . which is why this was a pretty sweet sight. Apparently it was arranged for In-N-Out Burger to bring a tractor-trailer full of hamburgers to the campus to feed us dinner. Pretty sweet.
Here's everyone lining up to receive their California-style burger goodness.
At this point, I know I had already met my team, but I guess this was the first time I got up the courage to get a photo of the bunch. So introducing you to everyone, here's from L to R: Kortney from Washington State, Mandi from Missouri, Julie (Team Leader) from Nebraska, Ryan from California, and finally, Melia (Assistant Team Leader... and her name is pronounced meh-LEE-uh) from Missouri.
Ryan and Melia are psyched to be here. They had both been to Hanoi once already through Camp Vietnam (the same program that we were all doing here).
Mandi and Julie are clearly also very excited. Like me, this was Mandi's first trip to Vietnam, though she had been to Africa before. Julie, on the other hand, was on the very first VTF (Vietnam Teaching Fellowship, the 10-month program I'm doing 2008-2009) team a year or two before. It was great to have a team leader who knew her way around the city and through the culture and customs and all that. There are so many strange things that would have been very difficult to figure out otherwise.
Finally here's me and Kortney. Kortney had been to China the previous summer with Camp China. So I was the only one who had never been out of the country before this!
Ever wondered about this gray t shirt I wear with this weird calendar that has July 1st circled? They gave us this shirt which marks our very first day of training; our first step toward teaching and living in Asia. So now you know. And now you can stop asking me 0;-) I'm kidding!
Ok, that wraps it up for now. Stay tuned for further updates!
