Steve & Lindsay - Medair

Greetings from Aleppo!  Steve and I arrived safely and easily to Damascus on Tuesday 18th, thanks to a very helpful driver who assisted us with navigating all the bureaucracy at the border, both out of Lebanon and then into Syria, several miles further along the road. The flights from Birmingham to Istanbul and then to Beirut were great, and by the way, Middle East Airlines is fantastic, especially the safety video which was extremely entertaining. The road travel was interesting – this is a completely new part of the world for me, with lots of craggy hills, olive trees, and the occasional horse-drawn cart. The road from the border into Syria is relatively unscathed, and in Damascus itself, you would not know there had been trouble in recent years. The temperature is pretty warm (hovering around 40°C), and we are grateful to be staying in a hotel (for now) with fairly constant electricity to keep the AC going.  We were initially based in the Medair Damascus office, which is just across

By Lindsay Hello! Greetings from Nottingham - it has been over 1 month since returning home from South Sudan, and we are thoroughly enjoying being back. There is a lot to be grateful for from our time in Juba - although not an easy year in lots of ways, a very valuable experience and I've gained a lot personally from that time. Our send off by the team was very lovely - I even have a name sake care of our colleague, Asiki, who gave his baby daughter a middle name of Lindsay!  Medair's Base Team on our last day We had 2 weeks at home when we got back to Nottingham at the end of May, and then went to Switzerland to join the Medair ROC (Relief and Recovery Orientation Course) team. Applicants to Medair come for this training week as part of their application, and Steve and I were part of the team delivering scenarios - it was great fun! We then travelled to Zermatt for a few days to enjoy the Swiss mountains, which were incredibly beautiful. The Matterhorn AKA the Toblerone mounta