While I hurry up and wait...

So my feelings about this trip change hourly, but right now I'm feeling good. The following article explains the plan for the transitional government, which should be set up in the next few days (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-30046413). This is very good news and their plan of action sounds good to me. Maybe if they can get a stable government going, the rest of the country will prosper? I hope so.

If anything, at least now more people know that Burkina Faso actually exists right? Well, maybe not because most news outlets in the US aren't covering that, which is really frustrating. I feel like we have a very skewed view of the world in the US. Maybe I shouldn't generalize, but I can promise that 90% of what I know about the rest of the countries in the world is from 1) Playing Sporcle and 2) my own research (I'm kind of a documentary and research nerd but what else is new). I think we'd all be better off if we realized that the world is bigger than our country, or our town, or our school, or ourselves. There are 7 billion other people on this planet, do you care about their lives? Do you have any interest in the way they live? Their cultures and language? I could go on, but that's a paper for another day. This is why I think every. single. person. who is able should travel or study abroad.

How many do you know??

 Ok, rant done.

Anyways, with all this cold weather, I'm looking forward to the warm already :)

Got anymore travel tips for me? Also, if anyone needs gift ideas (cough cough mom) I need some long skirts, sunscreen, and stuff to do while traveling (24 hours each way!!)

Take care <3

Holly

PSA: I'm waiting this out

So I'm sure you've heard about what's going on in Burkina Faso at them moment. If you haven't, please enlighten yourself, BBC News is a fantastic source. The cliff notes version is that the president of Burkina Faso wanted to seek another term (he's been ruling for 27 years) and protests forced him out. The government was dissolved and the military took over. The African union says that they have 2 weeks to get their act together.

At the moment the US has placed a travel alert on the country (http://travel.state.gov/content/passports/english/alertswarnings/burkina-faso-travel-alert.html), this basically means you should wait and see what happens before you travel. I am hoping that everything will be cleared up by January because I want nothing more than to go. My heart is broken because the trip is in jeopardy, though I hope that a new government will help get Burkina on its feet again.

I am optimistic about the trip but I realize it the current situation travel is impossible. Please pray that this is resolved quickly and peacefully and that I can go come January. I don't think very many people understand the time and energy and love I have put into this project, and it really is like loosing something or someone important. (Thanks for understanding Tiffany!!) I'm literally exhausted from trying to figure this out and trying to stay positive after waking up each day to bad news, though today things are looking up. And hey when there's a will there's a way, right?

I'll leave you with some good news of Burkina (it's a fantastic read):
http://melissa-brooks.blogspot.com/2014/11/burkinathe-story-of-today.html