Ciao, Ciao

About a month ago, Whitney and I took off for an incredible adventure, but also very relaxing vacation to Italy. There is way too much to say about this trip which is one of the many reasons why I haven’t set out to do it. But I thought I would give it a bash (new phrase courtesy of our British friends, to us Americans “give it a try”). And the best way I thought I should do this would be a top ten because that may actually limit my rambling. So…

10. Finding our Hotel in Florence: This wasn’t exactly one of my favorite things because we took the bus we were told to ride but it was going the opposite way we wanted to go. When we got going the right way we missed the stop because we saw the street sign too late and so we had to walk a long way to get to our hotel. And on top of all that it was raining and I was extremely hungry. But on the list because it was an interesting adventure.

9. Streets of Venice: Well they aren’t actually streets now are they? Venice is sitting on water so their streets are actually canals. We walked a lot around Venice and just really enjoyed the colors and the old buildings everywhere we went. And no, we didn’t ride on a gondola because if we wanted someone to sing (the best part of the whole experience) we would have had to pay more when it was already really expensive.

8. Baptistery in Florence: I enjoyed the way they painted the octagonal ceiling with stories from the Old and New Testament and the fact that they made Christ the focal point of it all. He is the promise (Gen 3:15) being fulfilled that someone would come to defeat Satan which carries through to Him becoming the perfect sacrifice for our sins.

7. Vatican City and St. Peter’s Basilica: The Hub of everything Catholic. Being able to actually go into the Sistine Chapel and see the ceiling in person, seeing something that you hear about all the time, was pretty awesome. And St. Peter’s Basilica was massive and opened your eyes to understand a lot about the Catholic faith.

6. The Piazza in Siena: The most beautiful blue sky at sunset was all I needed, but sitting on the ground, enjoying some gelato after dinner and watching little kids run around was great too.

5. Feeding the Birds: There are a whole lot of pigeons in Venice and there are people selling seed to feed them and so we (well actually Whitney) decided to do this. Whitney enjoyed it a lot and it is one of my top ten because it was fun (maybe more funny, I laughed a lot) watching her do it. I, on the other hand, did not enjoy it mainly because all I could think about was the movie, The Birds…it really freaked me out when I was a kid and I guess I’m still not over it.

4. The Colosseum, Roman Forum and Palatine Hill: There was so much to see just walking through these places…you really have to go see it to understand. But being able to see it, stand in it and know the history behind all of it was…well there aren’t any words to describe it.

3. The food, of course: One, there was McDonald’s – great fries, fountain sodas and fast! Two, there was Hard Rock Café – amazing burgers, actual appetizers (spinach artichoke dip, yum), incredible desserts, and free fountain soda refills! And three, all the fantastic pasta, pizza and gelato you could want!

2. The David: This sculpture by Michelangelo is also something that you just have to go see. You just stand there in awe of the detail that he put into. You can see the veins running down his arms, you see every little bone in his fingers, etc…incredibly realistic. The statue pictured is just a replica...the original is in the museum and you are not suppose to take pictures of it even though most do.

1. Just Being There: There really is too much to say about this trip that I think “just being there” sums it all up. We stood in a place with so much history…it was the Roman Empire, really do I need to say more?

back to beautiful zanzibar

We got back from our trip to Mikumi and a couple of days later we took off to Zanzibar. Now, if you have been reading my blog you know that I have been there a number of times. It is a regular destination for those of us around Dar. It's so easy to get to and it's absolutely beautiful...a place you just can't resist. It was a trip full of time to do nothing and that's what we did. We laid on the beach, we walked and explored a little, we swam in the clear blue Indian Ocean, we ate, we relaxed. It was time that we needed, especially after we sat in the Dar airport for 4.5 lovely hours because our flight was delayed. Besides all the guys wanting to hang out with us, it was uneventful. Don't worry Dad, we had guards at the hotels who kept them away.

I don't think he was a guard at our hotel, he may very well be one of the guys that hung around wanting to talk to us, but this would be what our guards looked like...they are part of the Maasai tribe, these people live in northern Tanzania but travel around for jobs like being guards.

the roomies...me, whit, and katelyn...for those of you who don't know katelyn has been staying with us for her summer break, she has been helping us with some plans for the coming semester; it has been a blessing for us to have her around, unfortunately she has to go back to school soon and so she will be leaving in a few days, unless of course her passport mysteriously goes missing

definitely not the zoo!

We had some friends come in to visit us and so we took the opportunity to go on a couple of trips. First we went to one of the national parks in Tanzania...no, we didn't go to the Serengeti as much as we wish we could have, but we did go to the Mikumi National Park. I'm sure we would have seen a heck of a lot more animals if we had gone to Serengeti but Mikumi was good for us. So we loaded up into a safari vehicle with our driver Abel and headed out to Mikumi one morning. It was nice to have a driver and not have to worry about anything especially when right before we entered the park area something on the car broke. We made it to where we were staying for our time there and then Abel got the car fixed. And we headed out on safari right on schedule. We were able to see all the usual animals, elephants, impala, zebras, giraffes, hippos, etc, but the best part was that we got to see lions, tigers and bears...haha, just kidding we didn't see any tigers or bears, they don't even exist in this park let alone in Tanzania, but we did get to see lions a couple of lions. We drove out into the field and got up close and personal with the lions. One of them even got up and started roaring at us (I think it was Simba working on his ROAR). Honestly besides the great company of good friends and the enjoyment of the greatness of God in His creation, seeing the lion was the highlight. So I won't bore you with pictures of all the animals we saw.

Here's Simba working on his roar...shortly after he started our driver said, ok hurry up with your pictures so we can get out of here, i think he was scared...well i'm sure he said in a different way but i can't remember his exact words

the beautiful sunset...if any of you know me out there you know that i had to take a picture of the sunset and really you know that i probably took dozens of them

this is us with our driver...we had fun with him, he didn't really tell us much about the animals or anything but he found us the lion and drove into the field for us to see him and he would say the cutest things

ideas from africa that should be done in america

While many people think that Africa has a lot to learn from the Western culture, I am beginning to think that we have a lot to learn from Africa and today I'm going to give you just one example...

Have you ever been stuck in horrendous traffic and really needed to go to the bathroom? I know I have...for all the Houstonians and those nearby, I believe you will recall a time where you were stuck in traffic, if not on your way to work then I know most of you were stuck trying to get the heck out of Houston when Hurricane Rita was heading our way. If you weren't one of those trying to get out of dodge of Rita, I think you may be lying because it took me 20 hours to get to the Woodlands when it should have taken me 45 minutes (yes, almost two years later and I still have a vivid memory of that awful day) so more than likely you were there too. Back to the point of this story...this morning I was stuck in traffic and Dar traffic is insane. Unlike "home", there is usually only one way to get from point a to point b, alternative routes are very hard to come by. And then there are traffic lights which have been working more often than not these days, but for some reason the police still like to get out there and direct traffic. Now I know that they think they are helping the situation but they really aren't. They stand there and let one side go for like 10 minutes and then they let the opposite side go for 1o minutes and then they go back to where they started in case more people lined up. Now if they would just let the lights go, yes less cars would get through but there wouldn't be as much build up. This is logical to me, but I guess that's the point-it's logical to me. Again I'm rambling and I apologize, I blame my roommate because I believe I do it more when she is gone for a few days. So this morning we were sitting in traffic and I saw a woman get out of one of the cars in front of me and I'm thinking what in the world is she doing?!? The trunk opens and she pulls something out of it and I notice that it's a little potty training potty. I'm going to trust that she had a child in there but then again I couldn't see who all was in the car. But somebody needed to go and they did and then the door was opened and the pee was thrown out. Now that is an idea that we need to take to America. We definitely should start keeping little potties in our trunks so that if we ever get stuck somewhere we can pull it out, use it and then throw the pee out the door. I guess though that there are laws against throwing waste out of a car and I'm sure the other people stuck in the same traffic would be grossed out by it. But here it is a normal occurrence and no one has a second thought about it. Life in Africa, many times it doesn't make sense to me, but hey it does to them and who am I to question it. I love it here even with all it's quirks.

My Beautiful Nephew!

For the past 9 months, I have been waiting for this day! It has finally come and I'm proud to announce that my nephew, Remy Clayton Koks (sounds like cokes) was born on May 10! My sister, Desiree, went into the hospital that morning and at about 1030 pm, central time, my nephew was born. I will be honest...I'm pretty sad and well jealous that I'm not able to hold him right now and the rest of my family is, but I'm so happy that he is finally here! Here he is...

Little Remy...he's absolutely adorable!

That's the proud mother

And the proud father, Glenn

And the definitely proud grandparents

And this is just one of my favorite pictures...already sucking his thumb

Women's Retreat and Contentment

Our last week in Nairobi was for the women's retreat. Cynthia Heald was our speaker for the week and she talked all about being content. It was a great reminder, but I also learned a lot. It went right along with what I believe God has been teaching me for the past few months about how I must CHOOSE. I must choose to believe that God is who He says He is. I must choose to believe the I am who He says I am. I must choose to believe that He HAS made me holy so I CAN live each day in holiness, my first inclination is no longer sin. I must choose to be content. So each morning it is my decision on how I'm going to live. Will I choose to believe God, that He is right and that He is good or will I choose to believe I can do it all? I know the outcome of both. I have chosen to believe that I can do everything in my own strength and I have seen myself fail. Yes there have been many times where I've chosen to do things in my own strength and I have made it through, but then my strength decreases as I continue to do things thinking I have control. But God, His strength never changes. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. His strength never decreases. So why would I choose to live by my own power when it steadily decreases? Why would I do that when I know that if I choose to live by His power, I will always succeed because He never fails?

The Weekend Between...

We were in Nairobi for two weeks. Our first week we had meetings with others living in Tanzania to touch base on what has been going on over the past year and the second week was a retreat with all of the women located in our region (all 250 of us). But before the retreat we had a few days to relax and do what we wanted. So we went into town and did a lot of shopping. Nairobi actually has pretty nice malls with tons of stores and food courts. It was great to have so many options for food and they actually had good beef, which is hard to come by here in Tanzania since the cows are pretty thin from eating trash. And I was very excited about being able to go into a dressing room and try on the clothes that I was thinking about purchasing. We did all of this and then went to the bowling alley. As usual I was great on the first game but the second game went sour. And we also went to one of the parks...they actually have parks in Nairobi! It was beautiful and the day was perfect for it. And that's about all we did...we shopped, we ate and we enjoyed.

Us silly girls expressing our excitement about being at an actual park on a perfect day.

Alison, Whitney and me...we had a lot of fun together during the weekend...we're sad that Alison and her husband, Brad will be returning to the states all too soon.

A park must have a fountain, why not us?...oh wait, there already is a fountain there. Oh well, others are already staring at us because we're white why not give them a better reason to stare?!?

on the road again...

A couple of weeks ago everyone from our organization that lives in Tanzania had to head out to Nairobi for a meeting. So all of us in Dar loaded up two SUVs and took a road trip across Tanzania and into Kenya, which we did in 2 days. It is absolutely beautiful driving through Tanzania. The terrain changes quickly going from flat land to mountains, green to desert-like, etc in a matter of seconds. We had a lot of fun driving through the country. We thought of games that we played on road trips in America, like the license plate game (that one would be quite difficult here) or the alphabet game using words on billboards (that one would be too easy, they have signs everywhere). Since we couldn't think of a game we just talked about anything and everything. I'm not exactly sure what all we talked about for almost 9 hours (that was just day 1), but the time went by fast. The only thing that was eventful was when we had a blow out. Whit was driving one of the Beasts (as we so affectionately call them) and somewhere along the way the tire was punctured and we had to pull over and change it. At least it all happened in a beautiful spot and we could reflect on the beauty of God's creation. So we were there trying to get this tire changed which took a good while because the jack wouldn't raise the SUV high enough to get the old tire off and put the new one on. And while all 10 of us white people stood there, kids started coming out of the woodworks to watch us. I think by the time we left there were about 10 kids and 15 cows watching us. But the men got it changed and we moved on to Moshi, the town we were staying in that night. And the next morning we got up and finished our drive to Nairobi. I can't remember anything taking place during this day. We headed to the border, stopped there to do all the paperwork, which was a lot...exiting Tanzania, then registering the cars, then entering Kenya, then signing the car in and making sure we had Kenya insurance for the car, and I'm sure there was a lot more, but thankfully I didn't have to do it all. We did have to say no to a lot of persistent people trying to sell us things while we were at the border. Finally we were registered and on our way to our meeting, which was held in Brackenhurst, a little outside of Nairobi. But we made a pit stop at Java House for our very late lunch. It was well worth the wait though. I ordered a burrito and it was amazing, tasted like home. It was nothing like a Freebirds burrito but still incredible. And then we arrived at our meetings...somewhat late, but hey we live in Africa.

A bit of the scenery on our trip through Tanzania. It was very green for a lot of the trip, but would change constantly.

One of the many mountains we saw on the trip. Nope this is not Kilimanjaro and although we drove by it on our trip we could not see it because it was too cloudy.

As we were waiting for the tire to be changed. It was Whitney's first blow out. We didn't change it though.

They changed it instead. We had to keep telling Paul to pull his legs in so they wouldn't get run over by another car. Everyone would drive by and flash their brights like we could do something more to get out of their way, or maybe it was just to tell us that they were coming by and were not going to slow down.

One of the many kids who stopped to watch us. That's a goat in his arms.

Some more of the kids watching us. They were on the other side of the road, too afraid to cross I think.
Yes, everywhere we go we make new friends. He jumped in our picture and then tried to get us to pay him for being in it.

Fellowship Night with the Students

This past weekend we had a group of the students over for fellowship. We are trying to do this once a month during the school year so that the students in our Bible studies will get to know each other, become friends and be able to encourage each other in the Lord. So this month we decided to host game night, praying that the games we came up with they wouldn't think were silly and they would cross the cultural barriers. Well, not too many people showed up at the beginning which is expected but we thought more would have come late than did. So about an hour into it we had like 7 people here, all girls, (we're not really sure where our guy leaders were or the people in their studies) and had to start playing some games. The first game they liked well enough, but it would've been better if there had been more people. The next game we played was a hit and we ended up playing that a few times, going to another game and then coming back to it. We played Bible trivia Jeopardy which I've been told that some of the students are taking it back to where they are from and introducing it to their church. All in all I believe they had fun playing the games and I don't think any of the games flopped as we had feared they would. Many of them talked about how much fun they had days later so we are very happy that it was a success. Whitney couldn't stop talking about how much fun she had either...I think I heard her talk about for 3 days. But the best part of it all was that a few of the girls that live in the same hall exchanged numbers and are planning on spending time with each other and that is exactly our desire for these times. So we're excited to see what God is going to do with that!

Mad game of Gorilla, Man, Gun...choose your weapon...gorilla beats the man, man beats the gun, gun beats the gorilla...looks like the gorilla beat the man this time

Another gorilla beats the man...it's not a very scary gorilla though, maybe the man should've won.

This really was a mad game of spoons even though it looks like they are very calm as they grab for a spoon...I believe Whit won out on that one, pulled it out from under Angela's hand, but Angela got her back in the second game by being the ultimate champion.

This game was crazy...everyone had a partner and there was an inner circle and an outer circle (partners were in different circles) and they walked opposite ways. A caller called out two body parts and the partners had to find each other and touch those two body parts, the last partners to touch were out. This became very crazy but it was a hit, they loved it!

My friend Angela. We have a lot of fun together and I think we were picking on her because her boyfriend was on his way. We were all very excited that we were going to meet him.

The group of women that came. A couple of guys finally showed up after this but it was like 2 hours late so they only got to play a few games.

Oh the Nerve of 'Em

Sorry it has been so long since I have said anything on here. Not too much has taken place over the past month that has been earth shattering enough to feel the need to inform you of it. And well our internet had been so horrible that every time I would get on it, it wouldn't work and if it did work it would just long enough to look at my email. We finally decided to change providers and it has worked splendidly! It was an exhausting couple of weeks of running around from one place to another to get it all set up, but so far it has been worth the frustrations. All that to say, we are much happier with the internet and maybe, just maybe I'll actually post more often. Here's one story for ya...

A couple of weeks ago we went out and bought some pasta noodles because we wanted to make some alfredo. Well as we opened the noodle bag and put them in the water to boil we found that some friends decided they wanted noodles for dinner too. So we sat there and picked out as many of the ants and other bugs that we could and then we cooked what we couldn't get out (they're good for protein right?!?). We figured out that our houseworker must have poked a hole in the bag while she had a conversation with Whitney earlier that day. She was demonstrating something, not exactly sure what, but it required her taking a spoon and hitting it on the counter and well the bag of noodles was in the vicinity of the spoon and so she must have hit the bag a couple of times to poke a hole in it. All of this put an already silly Whitney into an even sillier mood and I became silly with her. For the alfredo sauce we used a mix that we had to add butter and other things to it. We didn't measure the butter out...we hardly ever do because it isn't soft enough to measure...we found out that was a mistake this time. After it cooked there was a nice layer of butter on top that we had to try and remove. We got most of the extra out but it was still a little runny. So we took cornstarch and added it to the sauce because that thickens things. And it worked, it was still a little buttery but not bad. But do you remember that I told you Whit was in a silly mood? She decided to take the cornstarch and put it on my face so I chased her around the house and got her back. Yea we can be like little kids sometimes, but we are having fun. I must say God knew what He was doing when He decided to put us together. I think about all of the people I lived with in college and how we all had different schedules and hardly ever saw each other, but it's totally different here. We see each other all the time, when we aren't spending time with our friends on campus we are together. So I'm thankful that God knew that we would be spending a lot of time together and He knew that at the end of the day, whether we got frustrated with each other or had the best time together, I would still be thankful for her.

Our New Cinema

I think I've written before about how they were putting in a new cinema across the street from us. Well they finally finished it. The "mall" that it is in was to be completed in November and well the "mall" was finished but with only a few stores open. And when they opened the mall, they put a sign where the cinema is saying it would open January 2007. It didn't open by the end of January, much to our surprise...ha, we knew it wouldn't open. But it finally did open a couple of weeks ago! Unfortunately it is run by the same company that owns the other cinema located about 10 minutes away (5 minutes without traffic, yes we have two cinemas that close together and they are the only cinemas in all of Tanzania) and so they aren't competing, meaning the prices are the same, they just show different movies. Which can be a good thing because that means we will have the ability to see more of the movies that are shown in America, but then we think about how long they run each movie and most of the time it's only for two weeks so it may be difficult to go and see every movie we want to see. It just opened though so we'll see if they lengthen the amount of time they show a movie. None of that really is the point of this blog though. Last weekend we decided to go to the new cinema and see The Prestige. It was a pretty good movie and well I didn't know what was going to happen, Whit says she figured it out, but then her brain does work a little faster than mine does. So we got there after a 2 minute drive to the place, 2 minutes only because we had to open the gate to get out of our "driveway". We walked in and looked around a bit...the "lobby" area is a little smaller than the other cinema but it does look a lot nicer. We got some drinks and headed into our theater. There's carpet on the floor and up the wall and that's something you hardly see around here...carpet. It smells all nice and new. They had stadium seating and the seats were comfortable...they didn't recline any though. It was all really nice...we felt like we walked back into America. But we were brought back to Africa when the fire alarm decided to go off in the middle of the movie. Whit and I looked at each other and were like should we leave? We decided not to, that if there really was a fire someone would come and get us out or we would smell the smoke. Some people did decide to leave and were gone for a few minutes so we thought about leaving again, but they walked back in as we were thinking that. The alarm continued to go and we continued to watch the movie. Every once in a while we chuckled at the fact that the alarm was going and we still sat there watching the movie. About 30 minutes after the alarm started going some people came in to work on it. What did they do you ask? Did they turn it off? Nope! Why would you do that when you can just muzzle it so it's not as annoying?!? Shortly after that, well shortly meaning 15 minutes or so later the alarm stopped and we finished the movie in peace. This is Africa and what it can be like living here. Random things that would drive you crazy if you were in America don't bother you at all here. It is its own world and I love it...most of the time.

Morogoro

A while back, basically the beginning of February, I took a little trip to Morogoro, a town about 2 hours northwest of Dar. My friend, Nancy, grew up there and she has been wanting to take me home with her for quite a while. I kept telling her to pick a day and we'll go and so finally she did and we went. It was really cool to be able to go and visit one of my friends' homes. I'm excited about the break from June to August and having the ability to do that more, at least I hope that I will be able to go home with some friends for the break. So we took a bus out to the town and met up with her boyfriend, got on a daladala (bus) and went into the town, then caught a taxi and headed out to the mountain where her house is. We spent some time there and I met her father and one of her brothers, talked a little bit of Swahili and then headed out to the university where her boyfriend studies. He wanted to take us up to the rock garden. I thought it was going to be a short walk but it wasn't...took us probably 2 hours to get there. But finally we got there and enjoyed the refreshing view. Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera with me so I don't have any pictures of the view. We headed back, the walk was quite a bit shorter this time, we went a different way. And that night I watched a little TV which was quite weird for me since I hardly ever watch TV at my house, we always just put in a movie. I caught up on some celeb gossip and movies that are out and took note of some that I want to see when they finally come here. I saw a few commercials that threw me off, like McDonald's...there definitely isn't a McDonald's anywhere near here...maybe they'll put one in, ha! We went to bed and as we laid down a storm blew threw. It sounded pretty fierce that night. We found out how fierce the next morning...their banana trees fell over, tin roofs came off of houses and buildings...it was crazy. Anyway...there really wasn't much to the weekend, only that it was great to meet a family and spend some time with them.

This is Nancy hanging up another sheet to block the rain from coming in too much. It helped a bit but the rain stopped pretty quickly.

This was up the mountain that Nancy lives on. They live at the bottom of the mountain, you go up a little ways and you get to the teaching college there. Go past that and there is this river.

This is at the teaching college. I'm looking up to the mountain. Although when you look the other way there is another mountain in front of you, but it's further away.

SuperBowl XLI

As you all know, the SuperBowl took place a week ago. Well a couple on our team has cable here and gets ESPN so they are able to watch a few games live if they want to stay up in the middle of the night or they wait until it is rebroadcast the next afternoon. Most of the time we watch the rebroadcast...it can be very difficult though because we don't want to know what happens before we watch it, but when you get online you see all the headlines. Well for the SuperBowl we decided to watch it live...yes LIVE!!! That means we had our party at 2 in the morning instead of at 5 or 6 in the evening. But we got to watch the SuperBowl! We didn't really care. Unfortunately we missed all the amazing commercials...the whole reason you watch the game in the first place. Also unfortunately we didn't miss the halftime show with Prince. Who choose the performer for this year in the first place?!? It did keep us awake with laughter. And way to go Colts for finally getting past the Patriots and winning the Bowl. After the game was over we ate. No we didn't have all the foods you would normally enjoy throughout the game...no hot dogs or hamburgers or chips and dip...we didn't eat anything until the game was over. And we ate pancakes and eggs and toast when it was over. It was 630 in the morning after all. Then we went home and went back to bed. I was exhausted that whole day, but it was worth it...would've been better if we were able to see the commercials, but we got our dose of Amazing Games instead.