Safari Shmafari

Put your arms straight out to each side of your body. Stretch them out as far as possible. Look to the left hand…look to your right…that’s about how much we loved our Spring Break this year (yeah…THAT much!) It was amazing. Kara and I were trying to remember what we did last year for Spring Break...still working on that one and if you happen to remember for us, please remind me by sending an email to bslatercwu@hotmail.com

Alright, on to this year’s Spring Break. Close your eyes (don’t really, because then you won’t be able to read this.) I want you to envision Lions, Cheetahs, Leopards, Elephants, Giraffe(? Plural ?), Gazelles, Black Rhinos, White Rhinos, Zebras, Ostriches, Flamingos, Eagles, Cranes, Vultures and a zillion other different types of birds, Hippos, Crocodiles, Hyenas, Topy, Waterbuck, Jackals, Water Buffalos, and an assortment of beautiful landscapes. No…you’re not in Disney World’s Animal Kingdom (although they do an awesome job of replicating what an actual safari is similar to). You are in Kenya with Bryan, Kara, John and Pam (Kara’s parents) in the Sanburu region, Lake Nkuru, and the infamous Maasai Mara.

We left on Friday the 6th of April on a red-eye flight to Nairobi, Kenya (Site of Bin-Laden’s first attack on America when he bombed the US Embassy.) When we arrived, we met John and Pam (who arrived a day earlier) in the lounge of the beautiful Sarova Stanley Hotel, built at the turn of the 20th century. We ate a quick breakfast and headed off to the Sanburu Game Reserve just North of Nairobi.

Along the way (approximately a 5 hour drive or so), we passed the Equator and saw the Coriolis Effect up close and personal. It was pretty cool. As we moved 20 meters or so away from the equator North to South, the water drained clockwise to counterclockwise. It was pretty impressive. Right on the equator, the water drained straight down. Both John and I had our GPS devices out and it was a few feet off, but not too bad to say the least.

We finally reached Sanburu. I don’t want to go into too much detail about the animals as Pam will be doing a presentation on the animals we saw and I don’t want to steal her thunder. I will, however, post her notes online when we get a copy of them after they return from the remainder of their “Spring Break” (Retirement must be awesome) in Switzerland.

You do need to know, before I go any further, about the “Big 5”. The “Big 5” are the 5 animals that take some people several safari’s to see: The Lion, Leopard (the hardest of the Big 5 to find), the Elephant, Water Buffalo, and Rhinoceros. After our 5 hour drive to Sanburu and our first game drive that evening, we had the hardest of the Big 5 checked off of our list after seeing not one, but TWO separate Leopards.

On a side note, the 200mm-500mm lens Kara and I got over Christmas Break was AMAZING!

Our tour guide, Mohamad was awesome having been a safari guide for over 18 years. We rode around in a van that had a pop-up top so that we could see 360 degrees and take pictures from any angle we needed to.

Sanburu was amazing, for Kara and I, our favorite spot of the entire trip. The landscape reminded us of an area very similar to Wenatchee without the Evergreen forest. Dry, rolling hills, lots of trees, just not the evergreens we’re used to. We stayed for 2 nights there and then headed off to Lake Nkuru to see thousands of Pink Flamingos. On our second day in Sanburu, we were driving along, minding our own business checking out some Gazelle when all of a sudden, every single Gazelle’s head shot up, ears at attention. They heard something we didn’t. So our guide told us something was coming. We waited and sure enough, two female lions come sauntering around the corner. We were in a perfect spot as we could see the lions and the Gazelle, but the Lions nor the gazelle could see each other. When the lions came into sight of the gazelle, they shot off and escaped. The lions just kept on walking, almost disinterested in the small creatures. (On another side-note, we didn’t see anything get eaten or even hunted, that’s for the next safari).

Lake Nkuru was pretty cool…Flamingo’s stink and Rhino’s are huge. That’s about it for that stop. The animals were very easy to spot, so there wasn’t really any sort of challenge…kind of like Animal Kingdom in Disney World. The thing we liked so much about Sanburu was the hunt (so to speak). Animals blended in with the surrounding vegetation so well, so when you found animals, it was like “YEAH!!! FOUND ONE!” We had a game drive where we literally joined a pack of elephants…that was one of the more scarier moments as the elephants were roughly 3 times the size of our van in both size and weight. The lumbered by glancing over at us. A few of the males were duking it out for male dominance so that was fun to watch; so long as we didn’t get stuck in between them.

There I go getting off track, please forgive me if I do that a few times. The elephant story was actually from Sanburu.

After Lake Nkuru, we headed off to the Maasai Mara…famous for the 7th Natural Wonder of the World, the Great Migration of the Wildebeests in July as they move North from the Serengeti Plain in Tanzania. We saw a few Wildebeest but not enough to classify as a “Great Migration.” In the Maasai Mara, we saw a lot of Lions, Zebras, Thomson Gazelle, and Elephants. We also saw the leftover carcass from a Leopard’s kill hanging from a tree, horns and all! Pretty cool huh? We missed a pretty cool event on our last day that we found out about from some friends me met from Vancouver, Canada. They saw a lioness get attacked by 11 Hyena’s. She was fighting them off when all of a sudden, 3 or 4 of her sisters came to her aid and jumped in the fight. Gangfights don’t just happen in Tacoma apparently. We later found out that often times, Lions will kill Hyena’s and not even eat them…just kill them to kill them. We also found out, when we visited the Maasai tribe that there is a fear triangle. The Maasai have domesticated dogs to help warn them of predators. Here’s how the triangle works: The domestic dog fears the Cheetah. The Cheetah fears the Hyena (don’t ask me why because I don’t know.) The Hyena fears the domestic dog (once again, don’t ask). Thought that was interesting enough to write…learn something new everyday.

Anyway, we stayed in the Mara for 2 nights, and enjoyed the sights. We saw 3 cheetah brothers just after they killed a gazelle. They were sooooo fat. When we left, we drove 5 hours or so back to Nairobi to stay in our suite (Yeah…how awesome was that. We had 2 bathrooms, 2 tv’s, a living room area, huge bed, and tons of closets and we didn’t even have to ask for it! Luck of the draw I guess.)

We’ll definitely be going on another safari…it was too good to only do once. We’d like to tell everybody that if you’ve never been on one, it’s the trip of a lifetime. Truly life-changing and awe-inspiring. It gives you hope for the big cats (as the Discovery channel often portrays them nearing extinction). They are doing just fine and are well protected by the Kenyan authorities. Kara will be doing a blog later to fill in some of the gaps that I left out and once again, we’ll be posting Pam’s journal on here when we get a copy of it! Thanks for reading and enjoy the pictures as much as I enjoyed taking them!

P.S. The pictures are in no particular order. If you want higher resolution copies of the pictures, you'll have to catch us on skype so we can transfer them to you or send us an email and we'll upload the pics. We're looking forward to hanging out with a particular family in Vancouver this summer and enlarging some of these on the new Hewlett Packard Canvas printer (the wedding picture is amazing John, thanks so much for that!) Talk to you all soon!

A what...to where???

A field trip to Italy??? Who does that? AISL does and I was one of the chaperones. Sorry the blog took so long to update. I kind of had to go on a field trip to Italy with 29 students. When I say had...I don't mean that my arm had to be twisted, but I must say, it was a lot of work. Anyway, needless to say, I came back to a beautiful wife whom I missed so much, and was super duper exhausted. Here are some of the pictures from the trip in no particular order. Also, as a side note, I was wearing different shirts everyday but only had one jacket, so don't be thinking I wore the same clothes for all 10 days!

P.S. If you want to see the travel blog that I did for the school, go to www.getjealous.com/aislitaly










Here I am at the Roman Forum. This was on the first day of our trip and it was pretty amazing! The weather was freeeeeezing though and so you can see the storm clouds in the background.





We went to St. Peter's Basilica on the second day, and it was HUGE! If you've never been, it's a must see. The funny thing about the Basilica was that they have markings down the center of the floor showing where each of the major cathedrals in the world end...that's the Roman's for you, having to upstage everybody all the time!








We climbed to the top of the Basilica...all 600 steps or whatever it was. The view was breathtaking from the top and the climb was well worth it. Here's a view from inside as we approached the top.









At some point in Rome, we went to the Colisseum. This was nice because we got to go out on our own. So I wandered around the Colisseum and bumped into Don King. Pretty cool huh? I put my dukes up and he laughed.







A shot of me inside the Colisseum.

















We ended up taking a bus trip to Pompei (or Pompeii as we American's spell it). So we saw all of the plaster casts of the people caught in the eruption back in 42 AD. I can't put words to it, you'll have to see it for yourself...it was amazing. So we had a view of Mt. Vesuvius and I was like, "That volcano was huge!" I didn't think we'd actually be climbing to the top of it later that day. Seriously, I had no idea it'd be so easy to climb! This picture was taken as we hiked up.







This view is from the top of Vesuvius looking out to the Mediterranean. Pretty cool huh?












Looking down into the crater. The last major eruption of Vesuvius was in the 1940's. Since then, it's been steaming. It smelt like rotten eggs up there...sulfur for you scientific folks out there.










Another view from inside the crater.









We hiked around the rim and then found where Pompeii was. You can see the city off in the distance. Pompeii is the ruined area between the large city in the distance and where we stood on the mountain. Who in their right mind would build a city this close to a volcano (Does Orting ring a bell???)







This picture was taken in Florence, on the top of one of the campanille's (Bell Towers). We climbed to the top and I got this picture.












A view of Florence from the top of the bell tower. Beautiful isn't it?











We went on a Gondola ride in Venice. It was kind of overrated without my wife there. I can't wait to bring her back so we can kiss as we pass under the Rialto. Supposedly it's good luck or something!












Who goes to Pisa and doesn't take one of these pictures!














Sorry it's out of order, but here's another picture of Vesuvius from Pompei. Look at how huge that mountain used to be. You can see the rim of the original volcano and then the larger peak on the left is the new cone that we climbed to the top of later that day. The volcano was HUGE!

We went to Murano and Burano...on our way into Burano (or was it Murano), we saw this campanille. You're not seeing things...it's really leaning. It's not the leaning tower of pisa, but still pretty impressive. One day this things gonna tip over and hurt somebody. Nevertheless impressive.

I can't remember what ceiling this was, but one of the 6 or so cathedrals we went into. It was beautiful.

View of Florence from a huge hill we had to hike up. It took forever to get to this spot and I was dead tired when this picture was taken. As a matter of fact, I can't think of a time where I wasn't dead tired on this trip.

Our group in front of a cathedral in Florence. I'll look up the name later when I take Kara back to see these places.

Bruneleski's dome was really impressive. Doesn't it look like the Gods painted near the top of the dome are looking down on us/ That was on a 2 dimensional surface...it looked so real!

So that was my trip in a nutshell. I saved a couple things for Kara and we'll probably go to Florence and Venice on our way back this summer. For now, we probably won't be updating this blog until after our trip to Kenya on Spring Break (Starting this Thursday!!!). Anyway, hope you enjoyed. We'll talk to you soon!

No Steward...Big Wahala

Wahala = Problem

We had to fire Emmanuel our steward. Details aren't necessary, it was a tough thing to do though.

So now we've had to do the whole "real life" thing and cook for ourselves, clean for ourselves, iron for ourselves, shop for ourselves, make our water for ourselves, do our own laundry...you'd think we were living in the stone age or something. We've just about had enough of that so we went and hired a new stewardess. Her name is Regina and she's awesome. She spent all day today just cleaning our flat. It seems our steward wasn't doing too good a job of it before we had to let him go. Since she's been here, I've already stopped sneezing less and she seems to be a really honest person. Nevertheless, not having Emmanual around here when we come home from school has taken some getting used to...it was almost like a bad breakup for the first few days after.

Anyway, we've been really busy lately. We had to work this weekend at the Nigerian International Schools Conference hosted by AISL. I taught two 90-minute seminars on Lesson Planning with the Big Picture in Mind and have to say that Nigerian's are some of the most grateful people in the world. It was amazing how many head-nods and appreciative comments I got afterwards. We also have to commend Kara for her excellent work on helping to organize and plan the event. Because our weekend was so short, we're absolutely exhausted already this week. It's not going to slow down either; I'm taking 29 kids to Italy for a field trip. It's going to be 10 days of chaperoning 29 Jr. High kids. We'll be in Italy though so that should make up for it. Field trips are the worst thing ever as a teacher. It's great to go on field trips as a kid, but it's horrible for teachers. I see now why we rarely went on field trips in school...too much liability for the teachers!!!

Anyway, I hope everybody is well. Thought I'd throw a picture of my 2nd batch of tortilla chips. I learned how to make them from Emmanuel...tonight Kara and I made some Nachos from scratch!! It'll be fun to come home and show off our chip-making skills! Have a great day.

No Bullhorns Here

Earlier, in the Fall of 2006, we featured a young man with a bullhorn who ushered us into the first Saturday of the AISL Saturday soccer season. It is now baseball season at AISL, and needless to say baseball season is in full swing (bad pun intended). We have yet to be woken up by a boy with a bullhorn, and I have to say it's kind of fun walking around on Saturdays seeing kids wearing all types of professional baseball team uniforms. We have the Cubs, the Twins, and even the Mariners!! It's an immediate conversation starter with the parents of the Mariners who "sport our team uni's." I like this picture of Emily standing on third mostly because it's a great father-daughter shot. You can see David in the background...proud father, snappin' tons of shots of Emily. What he didn't realize at the time was that I was just phishing and caught a one-pounder! "Scotched!" See...scotched is another one of those terms that you'd hear in Nigeria...we're going to have to save that and "getting mo'd" for a rainy day. Maybe soon we'll take you through the various expressions you'd hear only in Nigeria...until then..."care you go."

No Shakin', Nothing dey happen

Kara and I have taken our first steps into the world of Nigerian Rap Music...and it was AWESOME. The other day, I sent our driver and steward out with 500 Naira (roughly 3 dollars) and told them not to come back until they had 3 Nigerian Rap CD's in their possession. About an hour later, our driver came back with 3 CD's and no change - Yes!

So I proceeded to put the cd's into my computer to upload them to my ipod. The first cd was a guy named D'Banj. After listening to a few tracks, it was just kind of, "Blah." I must say that the US Recording industry knows what they're doing when it comes to mixing and mastering tracks. The second CD was actually a CD single by a guy named P-Square. The first Nigerian song that caught my attention over here was a song called Bizzy Body - So I downloaded it and learned the chorus. It goes something like, "Witchyo Bizzy Bodyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay...Witchyo Bizzy Body yay yay yaaaay." So naturally, my job is to teach and at times, irritate 7th graders, so I sang some of it in class. The kids were laaaaughin...I didn't think it was all that funny until I found out what Bizzy Body means here.

The CD Single was just a bunch of different versions of Bizzy Body. The final CD I put in was by far my favorite. It's by a guy named Tu-face (or Tuface, or 2Face) Idibia. The CD is titled "Grass to Grace". It's great. His style is kind of a cross between Bob Marley and Wyclef. He raps/sings in Broken/pidgin English, so I'm using this cd to perfect my broken english skills. One of his songs is called "No Shakin", hence the title of this blog. Kara and I have been listening to that cd pretty much non-stop and will have it available for iPods when we get back home this summer so get your ipods ready.

Like I stated earlier, I see my job as two-fold. I must teach Jr. High Students Social Studies...that's a given and I do that with success. I must also, along with Mr. Rainbolt, figure out ways to irritate them and I'd say we do that with success as well. Case in point: Phishing.

If you've read The Rainbolt's blog recently, Mr. Rainbolt briefly mentioned one of our new Expat Enrichment Activities, or EEA's as we call them. Phishing is simply our way of turning sometimes boring expat activities, into fun, enriching experiences. The goal: get into as many pictures as possible, without both those in the picture and those taking the picture knowing about it. If you pull it off with success...you simply count the number of people that were posing for the picture and that is the "weight of the phish" you caught. Example: If there are 16 people posing for the picture, you just caught a 16 pound fish. The record so far is 18 pounds, just caught on Friday by both myself and Mr. Rainbolt. (On a side note, the most fun part of this activity is when the kids get their pictures back from the photographer and realize that their super cool picture with the straight faces and gangster look was ruined by two bald white guys in the background with the goofiest faces they could muster.)

We don't do this often, just whenever there are camera's around. Nobody's picture is safe. If we are lurking, look out (why am I visualizing both our wives heads shaking right now Rainbolt?); which brings me full circle - Irritating Jr. High Kids and Phishing go together like Toast and Butter. FLASHBACK - Friday, February 16th, 2007 - The Jr. High Valentine's Day Dance. Prime Phishing opportunity. Cameras abound. We mastered the modified art of "Staged Phishing", which is similar to going to a fish farm. Our webmaster was there with his camera, and he went around asking people to pose for pictures, and Rainbolt and I would hop in the background and do some crazy pose. The dance still felt like a typical dance, but Phishing definitely made the evening a lot more fun. Ironically, as the dance progressed, students began phishing. Apparently, this is because Mr. Rainbolt and I are THAT cool and obviously major trend-setters. Here is a link to the website where pictures from the dance are posted. You'll find me in most of the pics, and Rainbolt is in his fair share as well. You will also see some students phishing in each other's photos. Sometimes you have to look very closely and you'll see either Rainbolt or I in the distant background. Anyway, just another EEA.

Alright, thanks for reading! Quick news, I've posted a link to Eric and Boo Bakke's blog about their two new daughters they adopted from Ethiopia. I STRONGLY suggest reading it, the story is amazing. It's in our Links column to the right. We hope everybody is well!

Frolic in the Snow with Kingston Maurie

Over Christmas break, Kara let me buy a new toy...a Tamron 200mm-500mm lens. We'll get amazing shots on our safari in April with it, but when we were home in December, I thought I'd take it out for a little test drive; and who better to practice on than the most willing participant I could find: Kingston Maurie Slater. So he took me down to the end of the driveway at John and Pam's place (Kara's gracious parents who let us relax on their awesome 5.8 acre Rochester Oasis). King proceeded to sit and pose first telling me to get a picture of his "good side"...
Then telling me he wanted a picture of him saying, "You want a piece of this?"

Then after his "tough dog" pose, I caught him laughing...I told him I wouldn't put this picture on the internet so not to tarnish his reputation, so don't say anything to him.

A few days later, we woke up to snow in the front yard. King was sure to let us know he wanted to go out and chase phantom animals in the yard, so of course that's what I did...let him loose.

After running like crazy, he stopped to check on things. He then proceeded to announce, "11 o'clock and all's cleeeeaaar." At this point, I snapped a picture of him.

After giving us the "all clear", he proceeded to pounce around in the snow. He claims he learned how to do this from watching Polar Bears pounce through the ice to catch seals on The Discovery Channel.
After frolicking in the snow for 10 minutes or so, taunting the neighbor's Emu's, and chasing snowballs around, he decided to pose once again telling me to, "get my good side papa." I wasn't sure if he forgot that a few days earlier he stated his good side was the other side, and he then proceeded to inform me that he "doesn't have a bad side."

After one last pose, he took off sprinting around the yard, darting from north to south, east to west, and every direction in between. He told me before I was done taking pictures that if any of these pictures end up on the internet, "You can expect a call from my agent."
I'll be expecting the call anytime now!

ITBS Testing

I think the ITBS (Iowa Test of Basic Skills) should be renamed to the ITBS(I Think Bryan's Sick) because wow...I have been sick for the last 2 days and it was bad. So here's the story. Monday, I went to school feeling just fine, had a professional development training afterwards to go to until 4:30 and then after that, went out to tennis. While out at tennis, I felt really exhausted...but thought it was just because of the heat. So I came home at 5:30 and took a shower, and was really really tired, so I thought, "I'll just take a nap." So I fell asleep around 5:45 and didn't wake up until 6:00 AM. When I woke up, I thought, "hmmmm...that's odd. I just got 12 hours of sleep! So I got up to go and make a nice breakfast for Kara and I since I had the time. I went out to the kitchen, got a drink of apple juice. Went into the bathroom to run a shower, and that's when it hit. I fet soooo tired and I got really nauseaus. I thought I was going to pass out, and then I proceeded to...well...I won't go into those details because, well, let me just say I won't be drinking apple juice anytime soon.

So I knew then that something was wrong. Naturally, Kara came in to see if I was okay, and I wasn't, I was sweating like crazy, really achy, and just not doing well, so I went back into bed and she called in sick for me. Luckily, we're taking the ITBS test all week, so I didn't have to worry about major sub plans, so I was able to sleep and rest more. So I rested...and rested...went to the doctor somewhere in between resting...and basically slept all day yesterday. Went to bed at 9 last night, woke up at 9 this morning...still resting at 10:38. I think I got hit with...big money...c'mon....big money...and STOP...A DOUBLE WHAMMY. Do you remember that game? I think it's called, Press Your Luck...reminds me of my Grandma Handley. Anyways, yeah, I think I got hit with both a cold and a bacterial infection. So I'm coughing, sneezing, throwing up, and you know, the other stuff. So...that's what I've been up to...just recovering. As long as it's not Malaria, I'm fine. I have to admit I was worried for a little bit yesterday, but have been taking my malaria medication so it would have been pretty wild if I got Malaria.

So anyways, thought I would share that with you. Oh...in other news...I hear the recruiting video I worked tirelessly on for the past few weeks is available for download at www.aislagos.com. I guess it's somewhere in the employment tab or something, so go check it out! I don't think they have the AIS Cribs on there yet and that's by far the best part of the video. Check it out if you get a chance.

I hope you enjoyed! I'm going back to sleep. Byebye.

Just a random blog

So last night, I decided not to watch the playoffs. I can't even stand that the Seahawks were knocked out by the Bears. I have a lot of respect for the Bears, but c'mon...Da Bears? On another note, we wanted to say hello to everybody. We haven't been able to access too much of the internet lately; they have this new web filter on our network, so we're on lockdown. They've actually fixed it recently so that we can get on Skype and things like that only after 4:00. So anyways...we'd also like to say "Happy Birthday" to my mom - the BIG 5-0 on January 23rd! Whoo hooo. Finals were last week and so we were pretty slammed with those and grades are due this Wednesday so I'll be cramming those in when I get a chance. In between finals, grading, and everything else, I've been working on the Recruiting Video non-stop. It's coming along very nicely and that's due on Wednesday as well. When I'm done with that, it'll be a nice break from the post-school-day job (Been going strong for 2 months now on this video). Hope everybody is well and we'll talk with you soon!

Our trip in a really big nutshell

Alright, so we're back! We made it. Our Voyage was Bon (French?). We had an amazing time and would like to talk about some of the highlights from our trip so here it is in a nutshell...a really really big nutshell. If you have an hour, read this now. If you don't have an hour, print it out and read it when you have little bits of time. It's really long so take your time and enjoy. If we looked really tired over break, here's why! We really had a good time and thank you to everybody who took the time to see us or went out of their way to see us, that was really great.

For those of you who we didn't get to see over the break (all 2 of you), here's a quick run-down of what we did.

Dec. 15th;
4:10 P.M. - Left AISL for the airport. Strangely enough, our flight left at 11:00 P.M. and so I wondered why we would leave roughly 7 hours before take-off. We would soon find out.
6:10 P.M. - After 2 hours, 5 bags of plantain chips purchased in the Go-Slows, and one mean hand-carved game of Mancala bartered for from the bus, I found out how long it can take to get 20 miles in Lagos as we arrive at the airport.
8:10 P.M. - After waiting in the baggage check line, which is actually a "thorough search and seizure of anything super valuable in your bag" check line for an hour or so, we make it through the security checks and get to wait in the lobby of the airport while millions of expat children without nannies were running wild.
10:00 P.M. - Our flight was supposed to leave at this time...but nothing ever leaves on-time in Nigeria. (Another note, worthy of attention - In the US, you board from the back of the plane forward, so they usually seat first class, then start the regular passengers. Nope, not in Nigeria. They give you colored cards and seat you by color, but apparently that doesn't matter either. It's "everybody pile up against the jetway and not listen to a single word the airline attendants say and just hope they go away while we pile around them" seating.)

Dec 16th -
5:30 A.M. - Arrive in Amsterdam, Netherlands. We have a 7 hour lay-over so we decide with the Rainbolts, Westerburs, and Maria Ridenour, to go into Amsterdam and eat some breakfast.
11:00 A.M. - Get back to Schipol-Amsterdam International and find out our flight was delayed until Sunday which really irked us because we were so excited to get home.
3:00 P.M. - After getting our free hotel arrangements made, eating a Big Mac, and finding our luggage lockers (which took an hour to locate) so that we could get our carry-on stuff, we made it to our hotel.
4:00 P.M. - Shower and a nap
8:00 P.M. - Wake up and eat with the Rainbolts and M. Ridenour
10:00 - Went to bed.

Dec. 17th -
5:30 A.M. - Woke up and got ready to fly
6:00 A.M. - Got to the airport and made it through the checkpoints without problem. I would like to add that the day before, we had our passport stamped a good 6 times as we left the airport, re-entered, left again, and then this morning, re-checked in for our flight.
9:00 A.M. - Finally, we leave Amsterdam on our 10 hour flight back to Seattle.
10:30 A.M. - Make it through Customs at Sea-Tac in record time, get to the baggage claim to crying mothers and happy fathers and sisters and of course, our dog King was waiting for us in the parking garage in our car!! Talk about a great homecoming. We weren't super tired, so we went to go see our neice and nephew, Anna and JB sing in their Church play and it was just awesome!! We were so proud.

At this point, I'm not going to hour-by-hour describe the trip as it was merely for effect earlier to emphasize how grueling the first part of our trip was.

Seeing our family was a pretty exhilirating experience as was the entire flight home just waiting to see them. Neither of us slept a wink and hoped to power through that first day home. When we got home, we had jackets waiting for us as we had just made the transition from 33 degrees Celsius to 33 degrees farenheit in less than 24 hours. It was really cold to put it bluntly. We didn't have any cell phones, so we decided to drive down to Kara's parents place and back up to my parents place that night and we were successful; helping us to power through the rest of that first day back.

Dec 18th, 2006 - I had my last immunization! Whoo hooo. Then we went to Sumner High to see my sister teach and get 1500 Naira stolen from us...BAD SUMNER KIDS.

Dec 19th, 2006 - My dad's and John Wright's birthday. We celebrated that night. Kara would like you to know that she got her hair done that day...she was so happy!

Dec 20th - We made it to Mt. Tahoma this morning to see our old students and colleagues and it was just a great welcoming by all of the above. We really enjoyed ourselves, and Kara then went to hang out with Andrea Parker and had a great day. I hung out at the 'rents place all day and just relaxed! That night, we went to the Bakke's place and had Christmas with their entire family and shared stories and presents. It was a really nice night.

Dec 21st - Kara hung out all day with Jen in Seattle and I did a bunch of Christmas shopping. That night...I don't know what I did, but it wasn't much!

Dec 22nd - This morning we ate breakfast with a couple of former students, Kim, Catie, and Tabethia. It was fun to hear stories from their experiences in college, work, etc.

Dec. 23rd - Went down to Kara's parents' place, but before that, went to Kits Camera's to pick up one mondo 200mm-500mm lens for our safari we're planning on in April. When we got down to John and Pam's we waited for Dave and Andrea to get there so we could eat Swiss Fondue...a Haberlin family tradition and of course, one of my favorite family traditions as well now. P.S. If I could have this every night and not have to worry about dying from way too much cholesterol, I would.

Dec. 24th - I don't even want to talk about this day - The Seahawks lost and we were there...enough said. When we got back to my parents' place, my dad's side of the family was there and so we had our Christmas Eve dinner and hung out with the Slater side of the family. I got a great gift card to Best Buy, and Kara got some starbucks coffee stuff. It was cool to see the family and show them pictures of our trip and also to give Tammie her wine ornament thingee.

Dec. 25th - CHRISTMAS!!! OOOOh, I love Christmas, and Santa was SO GOOD to us this year. We thank everybody for those and are truly appreciative of them. Favorite gifts - Kara - Her new watch, a great super-soft robe, her #12 Seahawks Jersey Bryan - My I-Pod player, the office Seasons 1 and 2, and the box of beef jerky to bring back to Nigeria, the laser pointer pen, the Jelly Belly bin, gift card to Simon retailers, Picture frames with pictures of Kara's side of the family including a great picture of Kara and I at our wedding, and pretty much everything else, it was an amazing Christmas. This evening, my mom's side of the family came over and it was a blast! We were really excited to see Shane and Mandy (Who drove clear from Spokane to be at the party and left early in the morning) Trevor, Dana, and Camryn (could she get any more adoreable?), Uncle Mike sans new girlfriend Young Kim who we have yet to meet. My uncle Mike is currently watching the very spoiled, extremely overweight son/cat of Kara and mine, Julio. He's not big-boned, he's just fat. Uncle Larry and Jeff came and it was great to see Larry up to his usual harassing of my mom for the #12 Seahawks bag they got with their season tickets. He'd been working 17 hour days since the major storm so it was good to see him on one of his few days off. We also saw Jodi, Nick, and Andrew and were going to have to wait until the 2nd of Jan to see Alex, but looked forward to that. Megan's boyfriend Neal(who moved up from pending to approved status that morning with our cool teaching book he got us) stopped by and spoiled my sister even more than she already is already by getting her a Coach wristlet (I didn't know what it was either) and some shoes. Spoiled!

Dec. 26th - Haberlin Family Christmas. It was so great to see all of our Neices and Nephews...we had been looking forward to this day since August 7th of this year when we had to leave. The kids are getting so big and Ben was a little apprehensive about me holding him so I didn't get to bond too much with him, but it sure was great watching him walk, and listening to Jessie's stories and playing laser tag with JB and watching Anna play with her American Doll bed stuff. We ate well, having Prime Rib (which made it two nights in a row) and playing Nintendo DS, Microsoft Flight Simulator, and passing the time in enjoyment. This is exactly why we came home!

Dec. 27th - Alright, we realized our time was winding down at this point but continued to make the best of our time. We met up with Eric and Boo this evening for dinner at Claim Jumpers, updates on their two new children who are now officially Bakke's as per the courts. We then went to that new Will Smith movie which was AWESOME, Pursuit of Happyness (yes, that's how it's spelled).

Dec. 28th - Kara hung out with her mom in Seattle all day, and I played video games with the guys (Josh and Dave) ALL DAY LONG...and it was AWEEEESOME. Thanks guys.

Dec. 29th - This evening, we hung out with the Haberlin's and Wrights before they left for Florida. It was another enjoyable evening with the neices, nephews, and brothers and sisters.

Dec. 30th - Went down to Kara's parents' place and relaxed...peace and quiet...very little movement on our part, just quiet, 6 acres of peace.

Dec. 31st - New Years Eve, we (Kara, myself and Dave) went to Josh O'brien and Rency's place and caught up with a ton of our friends from Spanaway. It was so fun, after that we went to my cousin Shane and Mandy's place and had our first kiss of the New Year and first New Years kiss of our married lives at the stroke of midnight!! The neighbors were blowing off fireworks so we went out and celebrated with them and made as much raquet as possible to let everybody know we were happy to start the new year.

Jan 1st - Slept in today, were supposed to go to North Bend and only made it to the Auburn Supermall and got some cool stuff and ran into who of all people but my Uncle Mike!! We still didn't get to meet Young Kim as she was shopping in the Nordstrom's Rack and there was no way I was going in there again after being in their when we arrived and getting lost in the sea of shoes and women's clothing. The funny thing was we went to this imported from Africa store and saw things that we could buy for 20 dollars over here selling for hundreds. These guys are making a killing over there! P.S. I made the best chili ever for dinner this night. YUM.

Jan 2nd - Busy day started with going to Mexican with our cousin Alex, seeing Julio our FAT cat, seeing Uncle Mike (2 days in a row!!), Going to Cold Stone Creamery (awesome), and then off to Ms. Gill's house for dinner with our former administrators from MTHS. It was a long, but really fun day, we left my parents' house at 11:30 am and didn't get back till 10:30 pm.

Jan 3rd - Started this morning off with Robert and Denise Erechar having breakfast with them. It was so good to see them before we left. We also said our goodbye's to my family and made our way south to Rochester to spend the last few days at Kara's parents' place. That night, we got to see Dave one more time and just generally spent the evening with family and friends. This was one of the tougher days of the trip, but also what we signed up for when we took the job and decided to come home for Christmas, so we dealt with it and took it in stride. Still a really hard thing to do.

Jan 4th - Went down to Kara's parents house after a morning of errands including getting all of our prescriptions filled (which was a huge pain with Tacoma School District being closed for what seemed like every day over break. Since when do the big wigs up at the district office get days off like teachers?) Anyways, today was probably the hardest for both of us because we had to drop King off at my parents' place and he didn't want us to go. We were petting him and he put his paw up on our arms as if to say, "Nope...not this time." So yeah...talk about a tough one. That night we packed, ate a GREAT dinner at the Ram with Kara's parents, got some shopping done for last minute things we hadn't purchased yet, packed, and watched The Office which is the single greatest show of all time. I don't care what you think really, I don't think it's humanly possible to watch season 1 on DVD of that show, and not be hooked. If you don't believe me, try it. Season 2 is on DVD at Best Buy also, so when you get hooked, you'll have 26 more episodes to watch.

Jan 5th - Back to the airport...ugh. Fiasco city. We got there with 3 hours till our flight. It took every minute to get to the terminal. We got stuck with some guy named Don from Northwest who refused to check our 5th bag of luggage that we purposely made a point to request earlier this year. Seems KLM and NW, the "Skyteam Alliance" isn't so allied and forgot to communicate to each other that we were going to Lagos, not Amsterdam. So our 5th piece of luggage was only guaranteed to get to Amsterdam. Now you would think that if the luggage was tagged to LOS (Lagos), it would make it there. But Don seemed to think that the guys who put the luggage on the plane were going to count everybody's luggage, and regardless of what the tag said, take off their 5th piece. I told Don to tag it but he wanted to drag the process on for an hour or so. Finally a supervisor told him to, and he did, but not before telling us that the baggage guys were going to make sure that our luggage would be left in Amsterdam and we'd have to find another way to get it from Amsterdam to Lagos. What a liar. But for 26 hours we were stressed that our luggage would not make it to Lagos.

Saturday night - We got into Lagos around 7:30 P.M. or so and from there fought our way through the airport, waited an hour for our bags, fought our way out of the airport, almost got hit by cars, fought our way through the parking lot, almost got hit by cars, fought our way to the bus, had to convince a guy with no legs that I could take care of my own luggage and didn't need him to carry it for me, and finally, made it onto the bus at 8:30 or so. 45 minutes later, we were safe in the comfort of our flat, unpacking all of our cool new stuff, and getting situated. We made it home and it felt good. We stayed up for a few hours, trying to adjust to the time, and fell asleep around midnight.

Sunday morning- I woke up around 4:30 to listen to the last 2 minutes of the Seahawks game (AWESOME VICTORY!), and then fell back asleep only to wake up again at 7:30 at which time I went in to work. I got a ton done and adjusted very well to the time difference. We hired a driver and will see him for his first day of work on Tuesday. All in all, it was an amazing vacation. By the end of Sunday, I was good to go, Kara was still adjusting a little, but on the whole, was doing alright. Fell asleep at 8:30 and woke up on Monday and went to work!

So that was our trip, in a nutshell!! I hope you enjoyed the reading. We'll talk to you again soon!