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."