She's Hard to Spot

Good morning, Amboseli!

We are ready to roll.  Shout out to Lakeview Middle School as we take Leo the Lion with us.

First sighting: a family of elephants.  They were magnificent.

One of my favorites: the Crested Crane.  They say these birds mate for life and when one mate dies, the other always dies within seven days.

And then, the elusive cheetah.  We were just riding along and there she was!

Along with her two adorable cubs.

They were following her every move.  Momma walked, they walked.  Momma sat, cubs sat.

And all of that happened before breakfast.

We Interrupt this Program

I know we are right in the middle of the most exciting safari ever taken, but I have to tell you what happened in Class 6 today.

We have been reading the novel The Phantom Tollbooth as a class, and it's quite hard to grasp.  Most of the plot is figures of speech that become literal in the "Kingdom of Knowledge" with tons of puns.  The Humbug is a grumpy character assisting the main adventurer. To help with understanding, after we've read it together, the students break into Literature Circles and answer discussion questions. 

Except today no one was discussing.  They were all trying to figure it out without help from anyone or anything.

I finally stated that I had given permission to do everything they usually weren't allowed to do: "cheat" by looking in the book and asking their neighbor for answers, move from their normal seat and talk while working.  "This is every student's deepest desire," I urged.  "Get on it!"

Pretty soon, the class was a quiet, controlled roar of conversation.  One group was really going at it over a question.  Ezekiel (above in glasses) stood up so he could argue his point better against his groupmates who were avidly trying to convince him of their position.  Finally, Margaret asked him, "Ezekiel, why are you so disagreeable?" to which he replied with great flair: "I'm the Humbug!"  The whole class laughed together.

This may not make sense to you or even be funny, especially if you haven't read the book (Get on it!  It's great!).  But to this young teacher's heart, hearing this class make intelligent, accurate jokes from the book they are reading...well, it did me good.  This is the class that struggles with starting sentences with capital letters and adding punctuation at the end.  This is the class that hasn't been able to consistently pass reading comprehension quizzes.  And now they are making good jokes?  It's a great day in this teacher's life.

Into the Storm

Having checked lion off of our to-see list at the very beginning of our first safari ride, we settled down assuming we would take a leisurely tour of the park.  Yeah, right. 

First, Alex-of-Awesomeness heard over his CB radio that a cheetah had been spotted.  Except we didn't understand because the conversation took place in Kiswahili.

We were going about five mph and then suddenly without warning about 50 mph.  Looking ahead, we saw haziness.  We were heading right into a sandstorm.

Everyone else was speeding out of the sandstorm.

Even the animals were on the move.  These are wildebeests.

A zebra seemed shocked at our passing.

It was hard to see far at all and the animals would appear as if out of nowhere.

And then...the sun and clean air and beautiful sky on the other side.

But no cheetah.

Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!

Ok, so Kenya doesn't have tigers or bears.  But we do have lions!  We were told that we would be fortunate to see a lion in the two days that we safaried in Amboseli.  Our hunt was on.

First things first: we had to open the roof of our safari van.  It was fun to ride around standing up across the park.

Hark!  What is that I see in the distance?

A shaft of light falling on two sleeping lions!

Hello, Handsome!  What have you been dreaming of?

Oh...I see...

Don't Feed the Monkeys

Here we are!  Just in time for lunch.  Whew!

The entrance...

...and the very neat lobby.  We waited out a sandstorm here, so we looked around quite a bit.

Super fun chairs.

Super fun...ummm...

...swimming pool!

Our room and...

freaky bathroom.  The toilet and shower are behind this "frosted" glass wall and door.  In the wall of the shower was a huge plate glass window (NOT frosted!), but with a wooden fence built behind the room.  It still felt weird to take a shower even though you knew nobody could peek in.

The rooms were these quadruplexes.  This is our porch and Elizabeth's is the one behind.

This is the view from our porch.  You can see the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro in the picture, and we could see the top several times during our stay.

And these were our constant neighbors.  Cheeky fellows!

Getting There

My very first official blog follower, Elizabeth Johnson, arrived from America Sunday a week ago.  We have been plotting our fun for months and have most anticipated going on safari.  So this past Friday morning, Richard, Elizabeth and I were picked up by Alex, our safari guide, in his safari van.  We rode south for five hours to Amboseli National Park and the Ol Tukai Lodge. 

I was amazed at how often and how frequently the landscape changed in just a matter of minutes.  I was also amazed at the huge herd of camels that I did not manage to get a picture of.  It was one of those surreal moments when you stare and forget you have a camera handy.  Anyway, I did manage to take lots of other pictures and I will share them with you in installments. 

This post is all about getting there.

This is right outside of Nairobi.  We passed herd after herd of cows, goats and sheep.  And the elusive camels.

Jagged hills abounded.  I won't call them mountains because we stayed at the bottom of Mt. Kilimanjaro.  Now that's a real mountain.

Small villages showed their faces along the way.

We stopped for fuel and I couldn't resist snapping this photo.  Those seats look like they were taken out of a bus.

We also stopped at a tourist trap to use the toilet and look at souvenirs.  You can tell we were in Masai country because their red fabrics were everywhere.

Liz demonstrated the proper way to use an African mask.

An hour outside of the park and the landscape changed rapidly.  Here, grey and blue...

...changed to red and blue.

Red and blue plus our first wild animal: male ostrich.

Now yellow and blue.

Now green and blue with a side of elephant.

More to come.

Eating Your Words

I went to the big kitchen in the dining hall and made two double batches of french bread dough.

After it had risen, the class 4-6 students met me in the dining hall to hear about our project.

I gave each one of them a letter to shape so we could make a sentence.

Some of them played with the dough before shaping it.  I don't really blame them.

After all the letters were formed, we put them together and let them rise for an hour.

The students formed the name of Jesus we studied on the last day of GAMES.

We baked them in the big oven

The students got to eat their words for dinner.  I love the exclamation point at the end!