Safari Weekend!

There aren't really words to describe how amazing going on safari was. I think I had a gigantic smile plastered across my face the whole time :)

We went to Ngorongoro Crater which was unbelievably beautiful. There were several times throughout the day that I was on the verge of tearing up just because it was so awe inspiring. 

The crater is a volcanic caldera and apparently the largest unflooded and unbroken one in the world. We had to drive up the mountain before we could descend down into the crater. Watching the clouds roll in over the rim was so cool.

And then there were the animals! Too many pictures to post all at once so here are just a few....

The next day we went to Tarangire National Park which was a complete change in terrain. It was much taller grass and trees and there were elephants everywhere!

One of the animals we hadn't seen all weekend was a male lion and we happened to be able to see one right as we were leaving the park. We were able to get so close, it was pretty incredible (don't worry, I had a great zoom lens on my camera, we weren't actually as close as it looks)!

I'm so behind on blogging and its about to get even worse because Mary Grace and I depart for a 5 day safari to the Serengeti today, so excited!!! Good thing we go to South Africa in a week and will be able to be lazy and catch up on everything :)

Africa - Week 1 (Continued)

I love the colors in Africa, not just the green like I mentioned in my last post but the colors in town too. Besides the massive amount of Coca-Cola advertising there are these really great blue tones everywhere. 

And then there are tons and tons of sunflowers mixed in with all the fields of corn and of course there's Mount Kilimanjaro in the background, I mean how could you not love it!

I'm realizing as I write this that of course I would love the scenery, I literally just left the "concrete jungle" of NYC and am in an almost actual jungle in Africa :)

Ok, enough love fest, more story....

As part of our cross-cultural experience we have lots of learning activities planned. One was a tour of the local hospital with the chance to talk to local doctors. It was so interesting touring the hospital especially since I just spent the past year and a half working in a top notch cancer center in NYC.

It was a tiny bit different to say the least!

But it was also beautiful, I mean look at the views!

I know it sounds like everything has been so wonderful but I would be omitting a little info if I didn't confess that Africa, as much as I love it, is kicking my butt! Our days start much earlier than I'm used to and the kids have soooo much energy,  I am constantly exhausted and dirty.  

At the end of each day sometimes I'm so tired its hard to form complete sentences (which is part of why I'm so behind on blogging). One of my awesome roomies has been using the term "struggle bus" for those moments we aren't functioning adults anymore :)

Its all totally worth it though, I mean look at those sweet faces, love them!!!

Africa - Week 1

Africa is not really anything like what I expected. Granted I was told over and over to have an open mind and not go in with expectations so maybe its just that I didn't really know what to expect? The area I'm staying in is so green, not at all the dry landscape you usually think of when you think of Africa. It was even cloudy and rainy for a lot of the first week. I never really thought I would be cold in Africa, ha!

I'm volunteering with Cross Cultural Solutions in Moshi, Tanzania. One of the reasons I chose this volunteer organization was because of how organized and structured they are, they really take care of everything. The house we live in is fantastic and all of our meals are provided. They even try to throw in some American food every once in a while. 

Ok so maybe they don't take care of EVERYTHING, you do have to do your own laundry or pay to send it out. So far I'm choosing to send it out :)

My volunteer placement is at Mageraza Nursery School, its located inside a prison complex. I'm just going to gloss over the prison part because I try not to think about it too much. From my very limited understanding, the nursery school is for the police officers' children. I'm in a classroom teaching English to 2-5 year olds. 

Luckily I have another volunteer with me, I don't think I could do this on my own. Its so much more challenging than I had thought, mostly because of the logistics, not the actual teaching. The school has very few resources and/or teachers. There was one day we had over 80 children just in our one classroom! The other volunteer and I had moments where we looked at each other in sheer panic. 

The children are so precious though. They don't know much English but absolutely know how to say teacher and start chanting it when we arrive. It sounds a little more like "tee-cha" but walking up to school where the kids can't wait to run and hug you is pretty awesome :)

Hilton Head

Since I turned 30 this year and my baby sister turned 16 the very next day I thought we should do something special so we went to Hilton Head for the week :)

None of us had ever been to Hilton Head but it was a short flight for John and I and my family drove to meet us. My friend Michael came with my mom and sisters and was way too nice and ended up driving them the whole 13 hours!

It was such a great trip, we stayed in a great house close to the beach that had plenty of room for all of us. We did a lot of relaxing at the house and a lot of cooking too. John got a little excited over actually having a grill so he grilled several nights we were there. Since we were in the South and had access to Walmart we made all kinds of good Southern food, cheese dip, spinach dip, you get the idea :)

Everybody checking out the beach on the first day :)

My sweet family brought me birthday presents :)

We spent a lot of time going between the beach and the swimming pool. We ventured out a few days to do some sightseeing and shopping. In the historic part of Hilton Head there was a nice area with a lighthouse so we went to check that out. The weather was beautiful the whole time we were there!

My mom and I at the top of the lighthouse

Me and my sisters at the lighthouse

Everyone enjoying the rocking chairs overlooking the harbor :)

Everyone besides John and I had to leave a day early to get back to Little Rock so the day that John and I had by ourselves we went on a kayaking tour of the marshes. It was a really nice relaxing outing and we even saw a dolphin :) 

John and I did some kayaking

Our flight was actually out of Charlotte and not until late in the afternoon so John and I got to spend a little time in Charlotte before we left. We decided to check out one of the plantations. 

Magnolia Plantation Gardens

Magnolia Plantation was founded in 1679! Its over 300 years old, crazy! We didn't go in the actual house but we wondered around the grounds and gardens, it was really cool. I loved the Spanish moss everywhere.

Magnolia Plantation Gardens

So fun to get to hang out with my family and have a nice relaxing vacation :)

Puerto Rico, Part 2

So, I got a little side tracked and forgot to post the rest of the pictures from Puerto Rico, better late than never :)

These are from the day we went to the resort's private island. They had a huge beach with all kinds of activities. We of course decided to hike to the other side of the island where there was a more secluded beach. The picture above is looking down on the regular beach and then below is a picture of the secluded beach with no one on it. Yes, it was private but unfortunately there were rocks and coral in the water so you couldn't really swim :(

And just in case one hike wasn't enough, the next day we went hiking in the rain forest :)

The rain forest is managed by the US Forest Service so it had great paths the whole way. You could drive part of the way up the mountain and stop and check out different areas. We decided to drive as far up as possible and then hike about 45 minutest to the Mt. Britton observation tower.

When we first got to the top of the tower it was sunny and you could see forever.

Then the clouds started to move in and it was like we were in them! The wind was so strong the clouds were just swirling around us, it was very cool :)

On the way down I took my sweet time and took tons of photos.

I was having a blast, apparently John got a little bored (yes, he's texting in the rain forest) :)

The last night of our trip we went on a kayaking tour of the bioluminescent bay. This was by far one of the coolest things we did and probably something that makes the lifetime coolest things list! Unfortunately we couldn't take our camera out on the kayak and it wouldn't have been able to capture the illumination any way so I'll just have to tell you all about it.

We went with a tour guide and were in a double kayak; to get to the bay we had to navigate through a mangrove covered canal that opened into the bay. Our tour didn't leave until close to 9pm so it was pitch black and the majority of the tour group had never kayaked before. It was comical to say the least!

Once we go to the bay it opened up and we could really see what the fuss was about. The bay is home to micro-organisms that light up when disturbed so every time you paddled you could see a swirl of glowing water. If there happened to be fish around you could see them move in the water too! It was such a neat experience and a really awesome way to spend the last night of our trip :)

Puerto Rico

In another effort to take advantage of living in NYC and having cheap non-stop flights at our disposal, John and I took a quick trip down to Puerto Rico for the fourth of July. The night we got there the resort had fireworks over the ocean, a very nice welcome to Puerto Rico looking out from our balcony :)

The next morning it was pouring rain so we decided to drive around and ended up going to Ponce which is a couple of hours from where we were staying. On the way we stopped at a beach side bar for lunch. I could definitely get used to eating lunch overlooking the beach, even if it is in the rain!

Once we got to Ponce we took a tour of the family home of one of Puerto Rico's largest rum distillers, Don Q. Apparently its called the house that rum built, it was quite nice :)

The house was built in 1930 up on a hill overlooking the city. We couldn't take pictures inside but the first part of the tour was all in Spanish so even if I had pictures I wouldn't be able to tell you anything about them! 

There also happened to be a gigantic cross that is an observation tower above the house, it was kind of weird to be honest. The hill used to be a watch post so I think the cross is supposed to be a memorial of some kind. Again, all the plaques were in Spanish :)

John and I have been practicing take pictures when its just the two of us and no one is around to take one for us. This is by far one of our better ones and the unveiling of the John's launch beard! He isn't shaving until he and his co-founder launch their start-up, customer.io.

Here are a couple of pics from the resort we stayed at in Fajardo. Its perched up on a hill so you have a great view!

The view from our balcony had one of the pools below and then the ocean. Way off in the distance is the resort's private island! Since the resort is on a hill there isn't a beach so they ferry everyone to their own island all day long. It was pretty awesome :)

I'll post pics from the day we went to the island and the day we went hiking in the rain forest next. I've made up arbitrary rules about not putting too many photos in one post :)

DC Wedding

I'm a little behind on my blog so here's a little catching up....

About a month ago John and I went to DC for a friend's wedding. We took the bus again and didn't really have the smoothest trip there or back to the city but the time we were in DC was really fun. We actually missed the bus twice! Long story but it ended up being fine :)

The wedding was beautiful and had really great food and music. Clearly we had lots of fun in the photo booth they had at the wedding too!

The wedding was at a hotel in DC which happened to be on Pennsylvania Avenue so afterwards we took a stroll by the White House. I had never actually seen the White House in real life so that was pretty cool :)

DC Weekend

A few weekends ago John and I took the bus down to DC in the hopes of seeing the cherry blossoms. Ever since we moved to NY I've been dying to go to the cherry blossom festival. We finally made plans to go this year over Easter weekend because I had Good Friday off but because the weather has been so warm the trees bloomed early. We had to scramble and change our plans to go earlier but unfortunately we still missed the blossoms. Here are all of the trees that were supposed to be full of cherry blossoms :(

On the plus side, it was still a really nice break from the city and we got to visit with my cousin and her husband. We rented bikes and spent Saturday riding around DC which was lots of fun even though it made me realize how tremendously out of shape I am!

At least the tulips were in bloom :)

Biking around the memorials and monuments was definitely the way to go, we got to see tons of stuff, most of which I had never seen before.

Jefferson Memorial

 MLK Memorial (not quite sure how I feel about the pose) 

 Lincoln Memorial

On top of all the other stuff there happened to be a kite festival at the Washington monument :)

We had a great trip to DC even though it was really short. We had to rush back on Sunday to host a watch party for the Game of Thrones season premier. It was a little tight getting back in the city at 5:30 and having people over at 7 but it turned out great. I always love having people over but this time it was John's idea. He even had ideas for what he wanted to feed people!

We had our usual party food: spincach dip, deviled eggs, and of course introducing cheese dip to non-southerners is always a must :) John wanted to cook everyone dinner too so he made flank steak and I made brussels sprouts. We had so many people come over that we had to rearrange our furniture!

It took a couple of days to get everything back to normal after being gone for the weekend and then hosting the party but having Good Friday off last week definitely helped :)