lumière des étoiles

Should we be responsible?
2008-02-11 5:36 p.m.

Outta sight: today, somewhere amongst a loooong meeting I shouldn't have attended anyway, a visit to my doc that didn't go well (need to find a new one, so add that to a to-do list) and grading students' abilities to communicate their responses to Thomas Jefferson's racist diatribes, I found time to find a flight to Addis Ababa for $1700!! This is both good and bad news:

1.We should sink as much money into our new home as fast as possible, for the more you're able to front in the first five years of home-ownership, the better*.
2. We really want to go someplace dusty/far, as we haven't done so in a few years (ok, two).
3. Ethiopia is home to several women's networks and organizations I could potentially study to get some quantitative research done for my grad work, and I bet it would be easy for me to rendezvous with them.
4. Steve will be getting a vice/principal job soon, and this alters his work schedule dramatically in summers.
5. I also have so much research left on this three-year grant that my only realistic opportunity to go away might be this year.
6. We may be toting a little one sometime soon, and I do believe our family would have us committed if we toted a little one to a dodgy east African country.** Though all would likely be fine security-wise for us + a future spawn, I'd feel mighty icky about having to subject a baby to even more vaccines required for developing-world travel. So now might be the time to go...

Argh. If we don't do this, we are thinking about the Yucatan Penn. & Guatemala, as there's an organization in Guatemala that needs volunteer English teachers (and I need to learn Spanish); also thinking about an organization in Tanzania (also found a flight for under $1800) that works with Women & sustainable development projects. But if one goes as far as Arusha in Tanzania, one would also want to get to Ngorongoro crater and Mt. kilimanjaro, and that's beaucoup bucks. While we want to visit both countries (and Guatemala/Mexico, too), here's how we've been thinking of it all:

Ethiopia -> living large on $30/day, little-no tourists.
Tanzania -> struggling to live on $50/day, many tourists.

Got any advice? been to any of these places? Wanna meet for burritos and talk it over? Help a sister out.

*has something to do with interest/principle/long-term...
** not pregnant, but we haven't ruled out having kids after all. Plus my univ. maternity leave + flexible schedule rawks.