Lake Nakuru

The always-complicated process of getting tickets at the gate.  It's a different price if you are a tourist, a resident, or a citizen, and you have to show identification to show which you are, so it takes a bit of shuffling around.

On the Saturday of the Intermission Retreat, we got to go out and have a little fun.  We piled into safari vans before it was even light, clutching our packed breakfasts and lunches.  It took twelve vans to carry all of us, so we were quite a caravan!  It was about an hour and a half drive from the retreat center out to Lake Nakuru National Park, but it was an enjoyable trip.  I had purposely chosen to be in a van with people I didn't know or didn't know well, so we had a good time sharing stories and getting to know each other. 

The safari trucks and vans that are used here have a roof that lifts up so that you can stand inside and take photos without having to go through a window.  We headed into the park, which surrounds a large lake, in a long line.  

It was a beautiful day, if a little hazy.  Out in the open field on the hill above the lake, we saw a few buffalo, antelope, warthogs and zebra grazing, mostly at a bit of a distance.  We saw quite a lot a variety as we got down into the wooded areas that ring the lake.  The pictures I'm posting here are out of order, but it's rather a pain to rearrange them, so I'm leaving them as is.  I hope you'll enjoy them anyhow. 

We stopped for a break to stretch our legs on the lakeshore.  In national parks, there are designated areas that you are allowed to get out of your vehicle.  These are areas where the more dangerous animals tend not to go; you don't want to risk stepping on a lion's tail! 

The young boys quickly invented a game to play. 

Me on the shore of Lake Nakuru

Hello, friends!

There was a bit of a traffic jam trying to get photos of some sleeping lions.  They were so well camouflaged that it took a while for most people to see them.

It was a great day for giraffe spotting!  They are my second favorites (after rhinos, which are unfortunately rare at Lake Nakuru), and so photogenic. 

A dusty drive through the Kenyan landscape

Coming down the hill with a view of Lake Nakuru

Tiny baby zebra!

A family of warthogs in the foreground, with a buffalo herd in the shade in the background.

A closer shot of some Cape Buffalo.  They may look like overgrown cows, but they can be very aggressive and dangerous if angered.  

Antelope feeding along the shore.  It was also a great place for birds!

Zebras are so photogenic.  It's hard to take a bad picture of them.

I think Colobus monkeys are my favorite type of monkey.  They are so striking, and they have those great fluffy tails!

Look at this majestic bird!

Zebras in the shade, and flamingos in the water 

This big bushbuck was standing right next to the road, watching us.

He was so still and close that I got some great closeup shots of him!  What a beautiful bushbuck!

Flamingoes, Maribou storks, and other water birds on the lake, with the town of Nakuru on the hill behind.

When we stopped on the shore, we saw zebras fighting.  Carladean was the one who braved going to closest, so I got a shot of her taking a shot of them. 

Where are those lions?

The sleeping lions we waited around to seel

Mother and daughter

Impala crossing!

I loved the sight of the giraffes with the backdrop of the deep woods behind. 

It was such a great day for giraffes!

Okay, last giraffe, I promise!  But isn't he beautiful?

We headed home in the late afternoon tired and rather stiff from the jolting ride, but happy and with tons of pictures and memories. 

The view from the highway on the way home.

Intermission Retreat Begins

Heading into the dining hall

On April 19th, the Intermission Retreat finally began.  It was held at Brackenhurst Retreat Center near Nairobi.  It's late fall in this part of the world, or as close to late fall as you can get in a rainy season/dry season climate. The highs were in the low 70s, so it was in the 60s a lot of the time, which felt amazing and we hadn't had anything anywhere near that cool yet in Tanzania.  The first day of the Intermission retreat was pretty relaxed for those of us who arrived late the night before as we had time to explore the grounds and chat and eat (and eat and eat...the food at Brackenhurst is great!) while the rest of the crowd trickled in throughout the day.  

Intermission is a great ministry.  If you haven't heard of it, it is a mission run by four couple who are all former long-term missionaries themselves.  They realized that the lives of missionaries could be made much easier and more effective if there were more resources available to prepare them, encourage them while on the field, and help them work through reentry when they return to their home country.  It's a life with unique challenges, so it's nice to have people who understand and have studied intercultural communication, culture shock, the psychology of children who are third-culture kids (kids who have grown up in a culture that is different from their parents' home culture, and often end up with an interesting mix as a personal culture, and have challenges fitting in).  They do retreats in the US for recently returned missionaries that are incredibly helpful; so many people assume coming home is the easy part, but it can be really stressful as we have to start over again in a country we're expected to fit right back into but don't anymore.  I've been to two of the retreats in the US over the years, so I was really looking forward to this one. 

Besides the reentry retreats, they also do a retreat every couple of years or so in a different part of the world for missionaries in that area.  This year was our turn; at the East Africa retreat we had people who live in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Malawi.  It's incredible to build a network of missionaries in our area, especially as I'm still new to the work here and hadn't met most of these people before.  I learned a lot from hearing their stories and experiences.  These are people that truly understand my experiences as an American in this culture.  

If you want to find out more about the Intermission ministry, check out their website, intermissionministry.org.  

We started the program late in the afternoon on Thursday.  Over the next few days, we had periods of singing together, sessions with speakers and group discussions on various topics related to missionary life (furloughs, family relationships across continents, communication with a home congregation, how to deal with burn out, etc.), small discussion groups, one on one prayer time with the leaders, and plenty of time to spend in fellowship over food.  It was a truly refreshing time. 

It was an especially great weekend for the teenagers.  Being a teenager is hard anyhow, but especially when you are always the odd one when living in another culture.  

The Last Week of September

So much for being consistent.  For the past week, I have been out of school, so I've mostly stayed around the house.  I did quite a lot of genealogy work.  I don't know what it is; I've only had one or two contacts all summer about genealogy, but in the past week and a half I've gotten emails from five or six people.  Suddenly everyone is noticing the cemetery records I've had online for months.  The aggravating part is that, since my external drive broke, I was never able to put the most updated version of the database on my laptop.  It's too large to be uploaded to the internet or burned on a CD.  I'm trying to figure out a way to have mom break it down and then burn it on cds.  We'll see.

Last weekend (not yesterday, a week ago) was beautiful.  Perfect weather--warm without being too hot, sunny, breeze... That Saturday (the 23rd), Anna and I decided to go out and do something.  We both enjoy photography.  She suggested we find a bus that goes somewhere out of town, and take it all the way to the capolinea [end of the line].  She got online and poked around, and decided on Settignano.  So, we took the 10 bus from the stazione through town and up one of the large hills (small mountains) that surround the city.  On the top of this hill is the little town of Settignano.  It was a pretty little town in itself, but its real draw is the views of the valley and the city of Florence from there.

My favorite views, however, were as we walked out of the village into the countryside towards the Villa Gamberaia.  After walking past sloped groves of olive trees, with the valley rolling out behind them. I understand why there is poetry about olive trees.  The pale leaves seem to catch the light when they are stirred around in the breeze.

The Villa Gamberaia is supposed to have one of the most elaborate and beautiful gardens in the country.  However, there is a 10€ charge to go in, and we arrived only a half hour before closing.  It was a beautiful villa to see from the road as we approached, however.  The hedges were as tall as trees; I've never seen them so massive.

Just past the villa, the road ran through a little tunnel and through a wooded area.  We followed it up a ways, past orchards and olive groves, for a ways further before turning back.  Walking back down the hill towards the tunnel, we saw what appeared to be elaborately painted ruins in the woods.

We went back through the tunnel, and took pictures of each other at the end of it.  We also took pictures up--huge trees grew on the bank above the tunnel; it's not often you can get a picture of a tree from that angle, completely underneath it.  When we got back home, I realized I had taken over two hundred pictures.  They turned out well. Now, I'd like to go to Fiesole, another hill town, sometime.

The next day, Sunday the 24th, we took the van after church to Arezzo, a city about an hour and a half away.  Bernardo and Alfredo rode with us, and Tammy, Christina, and the Albanian lady (I can never remember her name) rode with Gary and Jennifer.  In Arezzo, we met up with church members from Rome and Prato.  Paolo Mirabelli, from Rome, had gotten us all together.  He is organizing people to go to cities in Italy that have no churches of Christ to pray for that city.

We had Bibles, in which we wrote the addresses and phone numbers of our congregations in, before passing them out.  We had a short devotional by the train station.  We sang "I Love You with the Love of the Lord" in Italian, English, Spanish, and Albanian to represent the languages of all of us who were present.  We read scriptures and prayed the same way, using the different languages.  We sang an African song that is apparently common here, as well.

We then walked through the old part of the city, winding our way up the hill the city is built on.  Near the top, we stopped and sat on the steps in one of the oldest piazzas.  There, we had a long devotional, singing together.  A couple from the Prato congregation who were originally from San Salvador shared there song book with me.  That was the best part of the day--meeting Christians from other congregations.

After the devotional, we needed to head back quickly in time for the Pepperdine devo.  Anna, Christina, and I ran through a little park on the top of the hill and had time to take a few picture of the beautiful valley view from there.

The rest of the week was fairly uneventful.  Gary and Jennifer are on vacation, so we were rather informal this week. I made birthday cards to send to church members, and I studied a little, though nothing like I should have.

And now today, I'm sitting in the Piazza Savonarola, which I expect to see a lot of in the next few months.  The University of Firenze owns buildings at the corner of it, and that is where my new language school will be.  I came this morning to take the placement test and pick up my schedule and student id cards.  I think it will be good.  I plan to take the trips with the class, and try to do all I can.  I need to spend more time studying this afternoon.

The view from the park near the main church in Arezzo

One surprising thing about the last few weeks has been that several people have complimented me on my voice.  I've never been anything special as a singer; I don't know why I am here, but I'm enjoying it.  I always wanted to be able to sing well.  It just seem easier all of a sudden.  I can sing louder and stronger than I've ever been able to.  Maybe it's because my allergies are better here (I always said it was Tennessee I was allergic to!), or that there are fewer people who sing at all here.  Anyhow, it makes me happy.