Our Home in Moshi

Eric and I arrived in Tanzania about 4 days ago and are trying to ease into life here in Africa. We will be living with a married couple, Hannah and Freddy. They have a beautiful home a little outside of the town of Moshi. It takes us about an hour to walk from home into town. They are so nice and Hannah is an amazing cook (African food is delicious). Our yard has banana, mango, passion fruit and pomegranate trees in it. It is a really cool place to live because we get to meet all the locals and see how they are living. Everyone calls us mzungu (white people) and are really excited to talk to us. Our Swahili is coming along, but we still sound really funny speaking it. This is what we see when we step out of our "drive way". It is so beautiful!

From our bedroom window, we can see Mt. Kilaminjaro. It is massive!! The tallest peak is called Kibo and the smaller peak (you can't see it in this picture) is called Mawasi. This picture is actually taken from a farm just down the road, but it's awesome. On our walk to the orphanage, we have one of the best views of the mountain. Yesterday, the bottom half was covered in clouds, but the peak was sticking out. It looked enormous.

This is a "dinner party" at our house the other night. Freddy and Hannah invited some of the guest pastors over to their house for dinner. It was great getting to know everyone. They were hilarious. Their church is really dynamic and has welcomed Eric and I like we've never experienced. Eric has been invited to speak to the youth this Sunday...be praying for that! In this picture, Freddy is standing second from the left in the striped shirt and Hannah is the woman in the yellow t-shirt. We are loving it here!!!...Katie

Dogs are fun

Pan

While we were on the island of Koh Kradan there were a ton of dogs that belonged to the island. No one really owned them but they never went hungry. They were strange though. Very unattached from people. They would not even get excited when we would come near them at first. Not even the slightest wag of the tail.
We named the brown one Pan. He was by far the coolest of them all. He even had a ridge of hair going up his back just like the rhodesian ridgeback i want. This is the one we got to know the best. It took a couple days but he ended up warming up to me and would even give a little wag of the tail when I would approach. He even followed us out into the water when we were going on in the kayak. We tried to put him in but he was having none of it.
The black one was named marbles. He was way cool too. He would just come lay in the shade right next to us and not really pay any attention to us unless we made the first move.

There were other dogs there too. One that we named Edna and one that we named peter. Unfortunately we never had the near arround when they were around. I will be posting more pictures of more dogs later. time is short and internet is expensive here in africa. I will also be putting up some africa stuff soon! so be on the look out!.....eric

FUN PIC

This is one of my favorite photos that I have taken so far. Just thought I would share this with you as we are leaving the islands and heading to Kenya!......Eric

KRABI...Not Too Shaby!!

A few days ago Eric and I spent some time in Krabi!! It is basically the rock-climbing heaven of Thailand! People come from all over the world to this tiny peninsula to climb the "dripping" rocks that cover the land. It was a really fun place to visit. We didn't do too much rock climbing, but made it to some beautiful beaches and completed some pretty gnarly hikes. This is a view from the look-out we made it to. It was awesome!

One of the beaches we went to. It was a little crowded but swimming under those rocks was pretty impressive! You could swim into caves and go explore through all these giant boulders...no getting bored on this beach!We ate dinner at this small restaurant every night and watched the sunset over the water. Instead of setting in the ocean though, we were able to watch it disappear behind these crazy looking islands! The food was delicious and the company was excellent!
We wanted to introduce you guys to our finest traveling companions...Anna and Diar! They are from Germany!! We've had a blast (as you can see) traveling with them and will miss them dearly!!...Katie

Ooooh, We Live A Hard Life

We just spent the past 4 days in paradise! It was so beautiful, the water was crystal clear and so many shades of blue! From our island we could see many different islands just jutting out of the water. We traveled with our new German friends Anna and Diar! We had such a great time soaking in the sun!

We went on snorkeling trips 2 days that we were there! Each time, we took a long-tail boat like this one. It was just Eric, Anna, Diar and I the entire time! We got our own private tours somehow...lucky us!
Sunset Beach was just a 10 minute walk through the jungle to the other side of the island! We caught 3 amazing sunsets! The best part about Sunset Beach was coming home, on the way back. The jungle is lacking in lights and we had to use our little flashlights. We were screaming the whole way...very brave! More than once, we thought we were going to be attacked by giant crabs or jumping tree frogs!
This was the beach we walked out to every day from our wee bungalow! There was never more than 10 people in the water and the beach was so peaceful. That's right, be jealous!!Our beautiful shower!! At first, I was kind of scared of a shower that had no roof, but it was actually really cool! If you took a shower at night, you got to see globs of stars in the sky. The whole island used ground water, so all the water was a little brown...it was very nice to get back to the mainland and take a real shower!One of the amazing limestone islands that just pops out of the ocean! On one of our snorkeling trips, our guide brought us to an island (a little bigger than this one) and we followed him through a cave. We were swimming through pitch-black darkness...I was thrilled, it was so fun! We finally came out into this crazy lagoon. We were surrounded on all sides by massive limestone walls covered in jungle straight out of Jurassic Park. It felt like we were at the bottom of the mouth of a volcano, and the only way in was to swim through this cave! It was one of the coolest things I've ever seen!
The water was crystal clear and the snorkeling was amazing! We saw so many colors and different fish! Eric had a blast with the sea cucumbers! I never knew Thailand had such beautiful islands!...Katie

Thai National Anthem

We get to witness the craziest thing in Thailand! Everyday at 8am and at 6pm loud speakers all over Thailand play the national anthem. First, there is a tick-tock that happens and then the anthem is played. People can be grocery shopping, running or trying to catch a bus, but when they hear the national anthem...they stop in their tracks until it is finished. Eric and I had no idea what was going on the first time, but since then we've kind of caught the hang of it. This is a video of a huge park where people go to exercise after work and we happened to be there at 6 o'clock. We caught this phenomenon on film. It's pretty amazing!...Katie

fluidity is the name of the game

This is what is considered a motorcycle here in Thailand.
It is far from this....

BOLTS ACTION

but it is a 250cc scooter that has no problem doing 100 kph down the shoulder of a highway. Now this is only about 60 mph. It was very able to go faster but its little tiny bicycle like wheels felt a bit squirrely for me. I averaged about 80 kph most of the time out in the country. Yesterday, was my first day riding a "motorcycle" here in Thailand. I was pretty nervous considering the way motorbikes and cars handle themselves in traffic. (If you dont know check back to my Crazy Motorbike post from a couple weeks back.) After driving in it for about 45 minutes on the way to the beach I pretty much had it figured out. The chaos of driving here actually works for them. The way it works is like water. Water doesn't like open spaces in it. If you poke a hole in water it quickly fills it back in. Traffic here is no different. You the bike have to act like that. (along with everyone else on the road). If there is an open space in traffic you quickly and carefully fill it. People here dont get pissed at everyone for cutting in front of them and all that stuff. Everyone here is just getting to where they are going.
It is crazy, but it works for them. It is one of those things that you don't understand until you are actually neck deep in. Now I am by no means good at driving in this crazyness but I understand it a little bit better. This little bit of fun also made me really miss driving my bike back home.

Here are some of the spots we were able to find on our rides. This is such a beautiful place and i am so thankful to be here. enjoy....Eric