We’re back in Nairobi now, hanging out and waiting for Saturday to arrive so that we can go back home. Good thing that Jocelyn and Judah are willing to hang out with us, so we’re not bored. :) We had lunch with them at the mall close by and now we’re hanging out at our guesthouse until we meet them (and Josh) for supper at an Ethiopian restaurant.
Our short holiday this week was only a few days, but I’ve rarely had such a packed-full, wonderful, exhausting few days. Today I just feel weary. Part of that is being tired of packing, unpacking and repacking as we have been moving around, and it makes me even more ready to get back home.
Here’s another few photos of our safari. The girls loved almost everything, and were overall very patient and quiet when we were looking for animals. I hope that they remember at least a few details for always.
Just popping in from the gorgeous Masai Mara to say a) we're having a wonderful time, b) it's possible to blog from the middle of nowhere, and c) I have tons of pictures to show you at some time.
Caitlyn has been waiting and waiting to get her hair braided, and I finally arranged to have it done. It took almost 3 hours and cost me $5. She's very pleased, to say the least, and the other 3 girls are begging to have theirs done, too. :) We'll see. She has 15 braids, in case anyone is wondering.
We're back. Tired, happy and a little bit sunburned. It was a good time away, if you overlook minor details like the hotel not having recorded our reservation. Ahem. And not having a bungalow big enough for our family. And Larissa being made to sleep in a crib because of said oversight. Oh well. We overlooked it and had a good time. :)
This is a tea plantation that we drove by on the way to Jinja. It was beautiful.
When we got to our hotel, we parked under a tree and right away I heard birds. We got out and looked and the tree was FULL of birds and nests. I've never seen anything like it. They were Little Weavers, and they were building nests and making a huge commotion while they were at it. It was amazing. There were hundreds of birds and hundreds of nests.
We ate lunch almost right away after we got there, and while we were waiting for our food, the girls played "Mother May I."
The cute little "Mother" who likes being in charge.
We swam for awhile after lunch and then we went for a boat ride. The hotel was on Lake Victoria, but very near the beginning of the Nile. The hotel had boats for hire, so we found another couple there who also wanted to go and we all went together. Unfortunately, our camera isn't really good enough to take pictures in a situation like this, but we went onto the river and for one hour we just went up and down the shoreline. We saw about 12 different kinds of birds, monkeys and 2 monitor lizards. It was all just so fun and so amazing.
This morning after breakfast, the girls swam again before we had to check out. You can imagine that a pool like this was a big hit. :) They are getting very comfortable in the water now, and like to try new tricks all the time.
When we left the hotel we drove over the dam (hydroelectric dam in the Nile) and went to find the Bujagali Falls. The photo above is the dam, and the photo below is the lower side of the river.
Here we are at the Bujagali Falls.
In this photo you can see the rafts and kayaks getting ready to go over the falls. It looked like so much fun, and the girls begged to go. Someday. That's the sort of thing that makes me look forward to having teenagers. :)
We stopped at a little cafe called the DeNile Cafe. :) We ate fish and chips and couldn't resist the passionfruit cake and ice-cream. It was delicious! I think I might have to figure that recipe out now. I saw this tree as we were walking to the cafe, and thought it would make a good picture.
Larissa was so tired on the way home, and convinced her Daddy to stop the car (proof that he's wrapped around her finger...) and get her blanket out of the suitcase. :) She was asleep soon after this was taken.
We stopped for groceries on the way home, then came the unpacking/sorting/cleaning up that comes after a weekend away. Now the girls are bathed and in bed, and we are relaxing. :)
Caitlyn (she got a few spares and a strike with that thing!)
Aimee (I think she got a spare or two as well)
Sierra (she also got a few spares)
Larissa (she got two spares...she is aiming the ramp in this photo and she had a pretty good eye for it.) Unfortunately this is the best photo we have of her, and I had to crop my head off because I clearly didn't know that anyone was taking my picture at the time. :)
So, last night didn’t turn out quite like we’d planned. The Italian restaurant we were going to was closed, sadly. It was quite a disappointment, to say the least. We started heading towards the mall, but the traffic was very bad. Then we ended up eating at the American club, just a 5 minute drive from our house. (We’ll try not to think about the time and diesel we wasted up to that point.) We had a nice dinner there, even though we weren’t eating till almost 8:00, I think.
Matthew flew yesterday and today, and has the next two days off (barring unexpected flights). We’re thinking of driving to the equator tomorrow and having a picnic there. I’m mostly not really so hyped up about being at the equator, but at the same time it seems like an opportunity that should be taken when possible.
Today Matthew had a flight that made the rest of us a little jealous. He had to go pick up some people at Murchison Falls. Unfortunately for the girls and me, he found it a little hard to take pictures and fly at the same time, but he saw elephants, hippos, crocodiles, buffalo and a bunch of some kind of deer.
23 April 2009
Yesterday we went to the Equator! It was kind of fun to think of being on the Equator, for real. We ate our picnic lunch as we drove along, and I laughed at all of the funny signs along the way. (We passed the Comprehensive Hotel, the Hotel Stallion, the Best Hotel, the Blessed Supermarket, the Hallelujah Car Wash, Sofa World [it was a small world, after all], Microsoft Phone Center, Kampala International Hair Salon [housed in a refurbished shipping container] and many more.)
At the Equator, we took pictures, looked in the shops and then had a snack in a cafe run by Aidchild. The muffin we had was the biggest muffin I’ve ever seen, and our smoothies and coffee were also jumbo-sized. (Whispering:: I think there must be some Americans around there somewhere...) The drive there and back was beautifully green and I tried to take pictures. Our camera doesn’t take the best landscape pictures to start with and then there was the small problem of not finding any of the pictures from the drive on the camera when we got back. I’m not sure what I did wrong??? The ones from when we’re stopped are there. (More whispering::Matthew left the camera inside the cafe when he paid, and while he went back in to find it, I was debating if finally being able to get a new camera would be worth losing the day’s pictures. He found it. And I still don’t have all the pictures.)
Matthew and I had a date today – lunch and grocery shopping. Truly a married people’s date, eh? :) I had a great salad, which I’m determined to order often since a salad like that isn’t to be found in Mada. Going grocery shopping here is a funny thing. I have to keep stopping to gawk at all of the things that surprise me. Today it was canned soups, barbeque sauce and canned pumpkin. Oh yeah, there were also individual pudding cups for $1 each. Of those things I only bought the barbeque sauce, but it sure is interesting to shop with those options. :)
As I type this, Matthew is working to get an internet connection working at our house. I confess that my faith is small...not because of Matthew, but because apparently the whole scheme isn’t well tested. There is a possibility that I’m guarding myself against disappointment, too. :)
This morning I went flying with Daddy. It was fun and I got to see the Nile River. It’s long. We stopped lots of times, and some of them were interesting. I only got out one time and I saw lots of flat land that was dirt. And it had a lot of little sticks and plants with thorns coming out of it. And another time I stayed in the airplane while Daddy got out to help the people who were going to be dropped off there. There was a huge rock right beside the runway. Around the rock on one side was lots of houses which were a hospital. And on the other side a wall went around the rock and then came around and went around the houses and it had a door at the front beside the airplane. The lady who was sitting behind me told me that the houses were a hospital and in front of the hospital outside of the wall used to be a refugee camp. The refugees slept in the hospital and the people who ran the hospital built a wall around it so that the refugees could be safe from a bunch of rebels. When we got off the airplane at the airport in Kampala, Daddy got off and talked to the people who were being dropped off there and then helped me unbuckle my seatbelt and he reached his arms up and I leaned over and jumped into them. Then he did some papers and stuff and then he called Mommy on his telephone and gave it to me so I could talk to her. And then while we were talking I told Mommy that we saw a couple of airplanes taking off after we landed and she said that was cool. I talked to her a really long time and then Daddy took my picture beside the airplane and then I hung up and we drove home. I took lots of pictures while we were on the airplane. And I took two pictures of some kids who saw me when we stopped one time, and Daddy wanted me to take pictures of them. Lots of times on the airplane I was really hot, so Daddy had to keep turning the air condition on. I don’t know why he didn’t keep it on always. I think it was because we kept stopping always right after I asked him to turn it on. Mommy gave me a hat to wear, if it was hot. But I didn’t wear it except after we landed at the airport in Kampala, because I always stayed in the airplane. Mom said she bought that hat for a camping trip when she was 15 or 16 so it’s really old. There are snaps on it and they don’t work. Every time we stopped at a different runway, different people were being picked up. Only sometimes people were being dropped off. One time I thought we were going to get too many people.
My brain is too full to keep it all inside...here's where the excess leaks out.
I'm a wife of 1, mother of 4, sister to 3 and friend to many. Life is hard, but good because of God's grace.
