reactions to re-entry

Now that we've been home for a few days, it's starting to feel normal to be here, but we are all missing Africa. We find ourselves going on the Turtle Bay website to hear the sounds of singing in Swahili, (if you go to the Turtle Bay link and then look for videos people have posted, there is one called Chuck the Duck visits Turtle Bay and the music is great!) we have had trouble explaining to people how different life in Kenya was for us and we are rather overwhelmed with all there is to do to catch up here. Grant did a great job keeping the house together, so we didn't have to deal with lawn mowing, cleaning or buying groceries immediately, but now I have a "to do list" again that kind of frightens me! ( I can't figure out how to turn off the underline, sorry!)

Reactions to re-entry

We have to look for toilet handles again-opposite side

The showers are hot, strong and immediate

The beds are soft

The bird sounds are different

Yogurt and cereal taste “normal”

Driving is weird- we'd gone 3 weeks without being behind the wheel

Almost everyone is white and speaks “American English”- we really miss the diversity!

The medicine is stronger, fixing my itchy skin

The internet is FAST

we have independence, we can go where we want, when we want

there is lots of media NOISE

our alert level went way down

we have lots of space

we can be out of each other’s sight for more than a few minutes

lightening bugs

blueberries and strawberries taste delicious

toilet paper is soft

back to the states...

Well, we made it home and British Airways assures us that the remaining two pieces of our luggage will be right behind us and come to our house by 6 on Saturday If you're going to lose luggage, that last flight is the one you can afford to lose them on, so we're all good. During our 5 hours in London's Heathrow airport, we sat at Starbucks and debriefed. We made lists.... The top 10 things (actually, we had to make it 11 as we couldn't leave any of those out) funniest moments, interesting things we learned, most beautiful things we saw, most significant moments, frustrating things, surprising things, random wonderful things, etc. Once those are edited, we will post some of them.

It was great to see the boys again!!! They both met us a the airport with a surprise...new haircuts. They said that since the house was intact, they didn't damage the cars, Grant didn't spend all the money we left, etc. they needed some way to shock us.

Now we're just trying to get sorted out and back on the Central time zone. We managed to head over to the Harks house for a 4th of July get together and we even stayed up for fireworks, but now I'm awake in the middle of the night, sorting through the volumes of e-mails, etc. that have been ignored while we were gone.

Thanks so much for your prayers for our safety. We are very thankful to be home and together with all 5 of us here! more later...I'm going to try to get back to sleep before the sun comes up!

almost ready to leave

Our time at the coast was so relaxing and fun. We switched over to a beach schedule, woke to put on our swim suits and only really got dressed for dinner. We met so many interesting people from all over the world! Some favorite moments included Paige playing water polo, watching a group of acrobats who presented the evening entertainment at Turtle Bay, and the last morning we had a group of Kenyan young men took us on a walk on the reef at low tide. They showed us star fish, crabs, jellyfish, sea urchins, sea cucumbers and the highlight was the family of eels. If you put a piece of sausage on a stick, you can entice them out of their holes; that was SO fun to see. We went snorkeling in a marine park too! We worked on our Swahili phrases and just enjoyed this beautiful part of Kenya.

For our last full day in Nairobi, we did the more typical tourist things; we went to the Giraffe Farm, the Elephant orphanage and then ate lunch at the Carnivore.

This has really been a “trip of a lifetime” and when we look at the pictures from 21 days ago, it seems like ages, so much has happened. We’ve learned so much, met so many wonderful people, seen things that are beautiful, sad, thrilling, life affirming, fun and shocking. Condensing it into any kind of a manageable way to communicate it is going to be a real trick! We’ve taken over 2000 photos, hours of video and purchased a good number of things to remember our visit by. Somehow we will clip it down so we can share it with other people and not have them fall asleep or zone out. We do have our 109 favorite photos selected, so that’s a start!

We leave late on July 3 and arrive home the afternoon of July 4. It’s a trip of about 30 hours door to door, so we probably won’t be in very good shape to visit with for a few days!

Turtle Bay

We are at Turtle Bay, it's a beautiful all inclusive resort on the Indian Ocean. Ironically we just met the Crum's neighbors, the Bell family. They are staying here too. This picture is Saturday morning on a beach walk.

Indian Ocean now

This is a photo of the three of us with some children at “The Nest”. It’s a home for children run by a German woman and it’s just outside the Crum’s neighborhood entrance. Kevin is holding Paul, I’m holding Kate and Paige has Cynthia. There were 9 babies the first day we were there and 10 or 11 the second time we went. Most of them are available for adoption, the stories of their young lives were very sad, but they are happy well cared for babies now. Faith, the woman who takes care of the babies is amazing and obviously loves them very much. We had a long conversation with Salome, the nurse in the facility, about adoption laws and practices in Kenya and the US. It was fun to play with them in the sunshine and just love them for a while. It was also hard to leave!

This is a photo at the Ethiopian restaurant that is the Crum’s favorite. It was a new cuisine for all of us and I don’t know the correct names for everything we ate. You have this huge tray with lots of delicious food, and you use rolls of a bread like substance, tear off little pieces of it and then use it to pick up a bite of goat meat, or beef or a humus like mixtures, etc. It was interesting, filling and I’d eat it again.

We made it to Turtle Bay on the Indian Ocean. We had a flight scheduled to Malindi, which is very close, but they canceled that and put us on a flight to Mombassa. Then Kenya Airways put 14 of us on a bus to the Malindi, but dropped us off at the resort, it took about two hours and Paige learned that pineapples grow in plants instead of on trees! It's pretty here and we're getting oriented. The food is good, the people friendly, but we're starting to miss American English!

ok, a few more pictures.. the African night










This is one of the houses where we stayed overnight in the bush. It was full of goats, children, women, dogs, a kitten while dinner was cooking!







These loan acacia trees are so beautiful. We kept taking photos of them.

did I ever say that Paige got better? She's fine now. I have little red spots all over me, the thought is that they are grass flea bites. I hope they get better before we get to the coast and I want to wear a swimsuit. I might frighten small children! :)

Today we are going to a place called "the nest" to rock babies.

This is the church choir singing a special song











This is Paige and Rachel walking to the Mara river when we had a flat tire
















The animals all showed up for this photo!














This is dinner at the tent camp outside the Mara










This lioness got REALLY close to our car, and yes... we all stayed inside the vehicle!









This is the landrover. We've spent LOTS of time in this vehicle! Dan can make it go anywhere, the roads here are REALLY rough, most you wouldn't even consider roads!


Sorry that the composition of this page is kind of weird, but we're always in a hurry with our internet time! I'll straighten it up when I get home! You don't realize what a luxury it is to have safe water to drink out of the tap, electricity that works and internet that is always available!