Where's the Chicken?

The End?!?

2008-05-16T21:07:00.000-07:00

All good things must come to an end?

It's May 16, and we're almost home. Chris has taken a temporary school position in Seattle that lasts through the rest of the school year. The kids and I are on Day 86 at La Casa de Los Abeulos in Bend, Oregon. The plan is for all of us to be in Seattle by June 1 at the latest. Our house probably won't be available until June 15, so we will test the limits of friendship by staying with the Ritscher family for a few weeks.

For closure's sake, here are some of the happenings of the last month or two:

* The chickens have grown! They were barely an ounce when we brought them home in March, and now they're pushing two pounds. They are currently living with the big girls in Grandma's coop, and get to roam the yard most every day. City living will be a big change.

Little Dixie (March).Charlie Horse talks to the chickens.
Big Dixie (May)!

* Company. Since our last blog, we have enjoyed visits from our cousins - Doug, Kim, Zachary, and Mara Drape. We snowboarded, rode horses, hiked Pilot Butte, and ate at all our favorite haunts.

We were also visited by our Seattle roomie, Stephanie Hill. We ran/walked in a 5K, hiked Pilot Butte, and ate at all our favorite haunts.

* Snow. Last week, on May 9, the boys snowboarded one last time. Today, May 16, it is over 90 degrees. That's Central Oregon for ya. We took advantage of the Mt. Bachelor spring passes, and figure we were at the mountain at least 15 times this spring. Probably more than the whole of our lives up to this point.

May 9, 2008

* Soccer. Matt has spent the spring playing soccer for the Hot Spurs of Bend Rush, with his cousin, Caleb. Andy got to practice every week with a competitive team, and see what life is like in the select soccer realm. Chrissie and Jeannie (her sister) logged many miles walking laps around the practice fields.

* Iowa. Chris managed to sneak back to Iowa to help with the spring planting. This time, he took his wedding ring off BEFORE operating heavy machinery, so he came home with all his fingers intact.

*Miscellany: Yes, we've remembered to do some home-schooling, although not quite to the extent that we had planned / hoped / dreamed. It's much harder than it sounds, so hats off to people who do it "for real". It's much more fun to ski and snowboard, feed the chickens, talk to the horses, and play with the cousins.

Not sure if we are done blogging, or not. We still haven't adequately answered the questions, "What did you learn on your trip?" and, "How are you going to be different?" We've journaled, but haven't compiled our answers into any meaningful form yet. So stay tuned... or not...

Travel Index - The Trip In Numbers

2008-04-13T12:22:00.000-07:00

Drape Family Travel Index: The Trip in Numbers
(details below)

12 Airlines we flew on
30 Actual flights / legs
42,904 Air miles flown
13 Countries we visited
3 Countries we landed in but didn’t see
23 Modes of transportation we used
7 Languages we learned to say “thank you” in
6 Large bodies of water (oceans, seas) we saw
9,448 Highest elevation of the trip (in feet)
-1,208 Lowest elevation of the trip (in feet)
15.8 Most miles walked in one day
4 Schools the boys attended
33 Museums visited (don't tell the kids!)
12 Currencies used
5 Monkey encounters
2 Broadway-style shows seen
70 Biggest one-day temperature swing (in degrees Fahrenheit)
1.5 Longest church service attended (in hours)
2,584 Oldest site visited (in years)
2 Official visits to a doctor
11 Churches attended
128 Nights spent on the road
4 Nights in a tent
6 Nights on an airplane
2 Nights on a train
116 Nights in a bed
12 New skills learned while traveling (that we’ve thought of so far)
10 Number of times we inflated / deflated our soccer ball

DETAILS:
Airlines Flown – 12
United, Thai, El Al, Southwest, Singapore, Hawaiian, ATA, Precision Air, Swiss Air, Nippon (ANA), Kingfisher, South African

Actual Flights/Legs – 30
Redmond to Portland to Chicago to Washington DC to London to Johannesburg to Port Elizabeth to Cape Town to Johannesburg to Dar es Salaam to Arusha to Dar es Salaam to Nairobi to Zurich to Frankfurt to Amman-Tel Aviv to Bangkok to Phnom Penh to Bangkok to Singapore to Delhi-Udaipur to Mumbai to Bangalore to Singapore to Hong Kong to Tokyo to Honolulu to Maui to Honolulu to San Francisco to Portland

Air Miles Flown – 42,904
Redmond to Portland (116) to Chicago (1,736) to Washington DC (611) to London (3,677) to Johannesburg (5,620) to Port Elizabeth (563) to Cape Town (402) to Johannesburg (789) to Dar es Salaam (1,509) to Arusha (238) to Dar (238) to Nairobi (415) to Zurich (3,780) to Frankfurt (177) to Amman (1,880) -Tel Aviv to Bangkok (4,304) to Phnom Penh (329) to Bangkok (329) to Singapore (898) to Delhi (2,583) - Udaipur to Mumbai (387) to Bangalore (530) to Singapore (1,971) to Hong Kong (1,603) to Tokyo (1,265) to Honolulu (3,818) to Maui (100) to Honolulu (100) to San Francisco (2,398) to Portland (550)

Countries We Spent More Than 12 Hour In – 13
USA, England, South Africa, Tanzania, Germany, Jordan, Israel, Palestinian Territories, Thailand, Cambodia, India, Hong Kong, Japan

Countries We Landed in But Didn’t See – 3
Kenya, Switzerland, Singapore

Modes of Transportation Taken– 23
Taxi, Tuk-Tuk, Moto, Autorickshaw, Bicycle rickshaw, Airplane, Open-top Bus, Jeep, Minibus, Double-decker Bus, Tour Bus, Ferry, Train, Subway/Metro, Electric Bikes, Bikes, Gondola, Tram, Longboat, Foot, Car, Van, Trolley

Languages We Can Say “Thank You” In – 7
English (Cheers!), Afrikaans (dankie), Swahili (asante), Maasai (ashe), German (danke), Thai (kawp kun ka), Khmer (awkun)

Bodies of Water (Seas and Oceans) Encountered – 6
Atlantic Ocean (USA, South Africa), Pacific Ocean (Hawaii), Indian Ocean (South Africa, Tanzania, India), Mediterranean Sea (Tel Aviv, Israel), South China Sea (Hong Kong, Cambodia), Sea of Galilee (Israel).
Plus some big rivers… Thames (Londond, England), Mekong (Phnom Penh, Cambodia), Tonle Sap (Phnom Penh, Cambodia), Chao Phraya (Bangkok, Thailand)

Highest Elevation – 9448 feet on our second day of the trek (our 26km day), in between Olmati and Empakai Craters.
Lowest Elevation – -1208 feet at the Allenby Bridge crossing of the Jordan river between Jordan and Israel.

Most Miles Covered By Foot in One Day – 15.8 on our first day of the trek.

Schools The Boys Attended – 4
Sapphire Road Primary (Port Elizabeth, South Africa)
Charles Duna Primary (Port Elizabeth)
Canadian International (Bangalore, India)
Mastery International (Bangalore)

Museums Visited – 33
Air and Space – DC, Mt. Vernon, National Gallery – DC, Holocaust Museum – DC, Arlington National Cemetery, National Gallery – London, Tower of London, British Museum – London, Trinity College – Cambridge, British Library – London, Red Location Museum – Port Elizabeth, District Six Museum – Cape Town, Robben Island – Cape Town, Mandela’s House – Soweto, Hector Petersen – Soweto, Apartheid Museum – Johannesburg, Tanzania National Museum – Dar es Salaam, Zanzibar Slave Market, The Citadel – Jordan, Garden Tomb – Jerusalem, Wat Pho – Bangkok, Ancient City – Bangkok, Wat Phnom – Phnom Penh, Cheung Ek (Killing Fields) – Outside Phnom Penh, Tuol Sleung – Phnom Penh, National Museum – Phnom Penh, Royal Palace – Phnom Penh, Angkor Wat – Siem Reap, Ghandi Memorial – Delhi, National Museum – Delhi, Bundi Palace, Udaipur Old Palace, Pearl Harbor - Hawaii

Currencies Used – 12
US $, Pounds – England, Rand – South Africa, Tanzanian Schilling, Euro – Germany, Dinar – Jordan (“JD’s”), Shekel – Israel / Palestinian Territories, Baht – Thailand, Riel – Cambodia, Rupee – India, Hong Kong $, Yen – Japan

Monkey Encounters – 5
Monkeyland – Port Elizabeth, South Africa
Pet at Paradise – Zanzibar
Jozani Forest (Red Colobus) – Zanzibar
Bundi Palace (Rhesus Macaque) – Rajasthan, India
Bannerghatta Zoo – Bangalore, India

Shows Seen – 2
Mary Poppins – London, The Lion King – Johannesburg

Biggest Temperature Swing in Shortest Time – 70-degree drop: Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (95 degrees) directly to Frankfurt, Germany (20 degrees).

Longest Church Service Attended – 4.5 hours, Uniting Presbyterian Church, Alexandra, South Africa

Oldest Place Visited – 516 BC
Western (Wailing) Wall, Jerusalem.
Newest Place Visited –
Terminal 5 @ Heathrow (just now opened…)

Trips to the Doctor (official) – 2
Andy in Dar es Salaam (nasty wind/sunburn/rash on face)
All – Dentist in Bangalore

Churches Attended – 11
Church of the Resurrection – Washington DC
King’s College Chapel – Cambridge, England
St. Paul’s Catholic Church – Port Elizabeth, South Africa
Omega Revival Ministries – Port Elizabeth
Mt. Hope Worship Center – Mitchell’s Plain, Capetown
Uniting Presbyterian Church – Alexandra, Johannesburg
Nazareth Baptist Church – Nazareth, Israel
Maryknoll Mass at World Vision – Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Banaswadi Bible Church – Bangalore, India
City Harvest Assemblies of God – Bangalore, India
Island Evangelical Community Church – Hong Kong

Nights Slept in a… - 128
Tent (4)
Airplane (6)
Beds and Floors (116)
Train (2)

Skills Gained – 12
Yo-Yo (Capetown), Card Shuffling, Blowing Bubbles with gum, Going Potty Anywhere, Thank You and Hello in multiple languages, Card Games (crazy 8s - students at Sapphire Road, rummy - Katie T.), Cricket (Udaipur), Soccer Juggling (everywhere! see below), Shuttlecocking (Cambodia), Asking for bill anywhere, Passing Time, Being Resourceful

Number of Times the Soccer Ball was Inflated/deflated – 10
London, Port Elizabeth Capetown, Johannesburg, Dar Es Salaam, Jerusalem, Sihanoukeville, Bundi, Udaipur, Bangalore

Drape Family Travel Awards (some bests, worsts and things in between… in no particular order)

2008-04-05T18:35:00.001-07:00

Best Chocolate – Swiss Air little chocolate bars (so good even the diabetic joined in the eating).
Best Overall Meal – Aimbrei restaurant: outside, on the water at night with views to the Lake Palace in Udaipur, India with Steffen and Grace.

Most Copious Public Urination (other than our own) – Delhi, India (especially in Old Delhi) - no picture for this, thankfully.

Best Burger – Amman, Jordan Marriott (a taste of home at the sports bar – while watching soccer – but with lots of smoke).

Best Pizza – Phnom Penh Mall, Cambodia. (Special thanks to Aunt Kathy Morefield!)
Worst Pizza – Bali Restaurant, Phnom Penh, Cambodia (and yes, the boys should know better than to order pizza in Cambodia at a Balinese restaurant).

Best Airplane Food – Singapore Air (mmm! And they even served the boys before all the other adults).
Worst Airplane Food – United Airlines, domestic (pay $5 for a little box of packaged processed foods?) .

Best Airport – Singapore (beautiful, lots of real plants – with a nice little old man caring for them all; free high-speed internet).
Worst Airport – Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (nice folks, but a time-consuming and highly sweaty place).

Best Things Packed – Dental floss and duct tape for repairs, baby wipes for bathing on the trek, and the soccer ball/pump for general recreation along the way.
Most Unnecessary Things Packed – Dad’s extra tube of shaving cream (he is STILL working his way through the first).
Things We (Mom) Wish We Had Packed – Fleece hat.

Most Significant Injury – Andy’s dog bites (followed closely by Andy’s chapped and blistered face).
Most Entertaining Injury – Dad’s stick to the head from Steffen.
Most Disgusting Injury – Mom’s sand-filled toe blisters (followed closely by Andy’s chapped and blistered face).

Top Three Guest Houses/Hotels –
1. Haveli on the Lake, Udaipur, India (even with the dog bite).
2. Ms. Van Rooyen’s, Port Elizabeth, South Africa
3. The house in London
4. Matt wants a number 4 with Fauzi Azar Guest House, Nazareth

Best Coffee – The Plunge pot at the Schilder’s in Mitchell’s Plain, South Africa
Worst Coffee – The Goldiana Hotel, Phnom Penh, Cambodia (Chris drank it for 7 days!, Chrissie drank tea)

Best Bacon – Home cooked bacon at Ms. Katie’s in Bangkok.
Worst Bacon – Once again, The Goldiana Hotel, Phnom Penh (it was hairy).

Best Tea – Two choices: Adnan’s, our new friend made in Bethlehem Christmas Eve, when he invited us into his shop and served us delicious mint tea; and Babu’s, our host in Udaipur who served us up some killer chai at his shop in town.

Best Pets Visited – Tiger and Monkey (Katie Thorleifson’s cats in Bangkok), followed closely by Oreo (the Hanstad’s dog in Bangalore).
Worst Pet Visited – Alfy (Andy’s biter).

Funniest Small World Moment – Biking along the Sea of Galilee, being passed by a biker with an REI pack like ours. Dad yells, “What part of Seattle are you from?” The response, “Kent!”

Best Night’s Sleep – Amman, Jordan Marriott (love those down comforters).
Worst Night’s Sleep – First night at Paradise Beach Bungalows, Zanzibar (hot, humid, mosquitoes, and only a wimpy fan…)

Most Expensive Lodging – Oliver Plaza Hotel in London our very first night - $255
Least Expensive Lodging – Dad’s $5/night hotel in Ratanakiri, Cambodia (where he could have stayed for 51 nights for the cost of our London place).

Best Pool – Golden Palms, Bangalore, India.
Most Refreshing Pool – The Goldiana Hotel, Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Worst Pool – Amman, Jordan Marriott (Mom says, how can you have a “bad” swimming pool?).

Smelliest Travel Companion – That white BO-ridden South African 14 year-old, on the flight to Tanzania.

Most Satisfying Bathing Experience – The waterfalls at the end of our trek.

Best Wildlife Moment – Cheetahs stalking the warthogs; Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania.
Worst Wildlife Moment – Monkey attack at the fort in Bundi, India (from Chrissie's journal: "Steffen screamed, Mom cussed, Matt cried").

Best Phrase Learned – “Izit” – South Africa (English); meaning anything from literally, “is it?” to “really?!” to “you’ve got to be kidding”….

Worst Phrase – “Don’t worry, Matt…” uttered by the mother on too many treacherous occasions.

bending along...

2008-03-29T18:08:00.001-07:00

Now that we are back in the northwest, we'll try to keep a bi-monthly blog pace going here. Perhaps the most significant changes in these two weeks are taking place with our chickens - who more than doubled in size in their first week with us (our Monday weigh-ins are providing many practical and tangible Drape Academy math problems). They're growing feathers like mad, and we've already moved them into a larger home (that they can fly out of if they decide to). They've made fast friends with Grandma Fran's guinea hen from South Africa (that's Dixie in the picture - the name that has stuck for chick #4), but to her chagrin, Torah (the Wenndorf's boxer) has yet to be turned loose with the chicks.

Last weekend we celebrated Matt's 10th birthday and Easter all in one (the Easter celebration included a re-enactment of the Passion - with the birthday boy in the starring role). We spread the celebration out to two days with a killer (and frigid) game of golf (the putting course at Eagle Crest) on Monday. While she did not win outright, Aunt Jeannie did score the only hole-in-one of the day.

The boys are soccering along, though the snow we've had this week put a little cramp in the outdoor time. While the rest of the northwest may be ready for spring to spring, we're happy to be having some winter, since we missed most of it on our travels. Our big fun this past week was having our dear Seattle friends, the Ritschers (Mike, Lisa, Teresa and David) come and hang out with us for a few days. We adventured up to the mountain on a cold, sunny-snowy day for dad-snow-shoeing and mother-and-child skiing. Good times... good times....

I made a quick Seattle trip a week ago, joyfully reuniting with a few folk, and doing some work on finding work. There are a few leads, and I'll keep you posted (and you're welcome to keep me apprised of any good leads).

So that's the quick update. We'll be back in a few weeks to keep you up to speed.

Bend Adventures

2008-03-15T07:55:00.000-07:00

We are well settled into the end of our second week here in Bend already, soaking in the joys of the Austin place - horses and chickens galore. Yesterday we went out and got 4 little chicks of our own. We'll raise them here this spring (under Grandma Fran's keen eye), then bring them home to Seattle with us . We've each taken "ownership" of one of the chicks: Matt's is "Tembo" - elephant in Swahili, the blondest of the bunch; Andy's is "Rosie", the brownish-reddish one; Chrissie's is "Shirley" the smaller of the two blacks ones; and mine, the other black one, has yet to be officially named. We're considering "Kuku" - Swahili for chicken - but we're taking suggestions. The big yellow one is still just Chicken.

We hit the slopes at Mt. Bachelor this past week, although I got to play Lodge-Dad support team. Since I'm now 43 years old, I've decided to regularly throw my back out so I don't have to hurt myself more actively in activities such as snow boarding.

Other things.... Andy and Matt are both connected to spring soccer teams here in town, and loving it, and we continue to live it up with the cousins with fierce card games, trampolines and climbing on lava. And we're also keeping up on our chores.

Back in Bend

2008-03-07T11:00:00.001-08:00

It's good to be home in the Pacific Northwest. Though we aren't all the way home to Seattle yet, we are settling into our home-away-from home at Grandma Fran and Grandpa Roger's (the Austins - Chrissie's folks). We're working on establishing some routine (a little more formalized Drape Academy and such), while taking advantage of being here in the wonderful high desert of central Oregon with Chrissie's family. We love getting to hang out with the grandparents and the Wenndorfs - Chrissie's sister and family (Jeannie, Mike, Caleb and Ben). The cousins are having a ball being back together.

Yesterday included a snow shoe adventure with the chicken, followed by a Pilot Butte Drive-In feast of burgers, fries, onion rings and shakes. It doesn't get much better than that. We'll keep updating things here, and will also add some end-of-the-trip summary blogs of great and trivial interest, so stay tuned.

alohaaaaahhhh

2008-02-25T16:48:00.000-08:00

We're beginning our re-entry to the reality of our lives by transitioning home through Hawaii - we know... quite difficult, and still thousands of literal and figurative miles from our reality. We're here with Grandpa Gene (my dad) and Grandpa Roger/Grandma Fran (Chrissie's folks). Matt decided we needed a distinguishing nomer for the two Grandpas in order to avoid confusion, and since we are staying at a place called "Papakea", he has taken to calling Grandpa Gene "Papakea" and Grandpa Roger "Papapea". Matt's keen on the nicknames.

We're fully enjoying the relaxed re-entry here and...
...Hanging with Chrissie's cousing Tammie and her family for a couple of days upon arrival [Jeff, Tammie, Jake, and Hannah, plus Uncle Bob and Aunt Janet who were visiting for Hannah's birthday]... catching the sea turtles and shave ice of Haliewa.

... A serendipitous soccer match between LA Galaxy (with David Beckham) v. Gamba at Aloha Stadium.

...Pearl Harbor with Grandpa Gene (aka Papakea, don't forget).

...Seeing Cousin Kathy and Bill Scharnhorst - We got a chance to see my cousin and her husband, here taking a little break from Iowa farming, and like my dad, a break from the below zero snow-zone Iowa has been this winter.

...The whales! The humpbacks are in their glory.

...Surf school - Andy and Matt are naturals, and are ready to take it up full time (and I'm noticing that I am 43). I did explain that the surfing options of the northwest are a little more limited, and require significant wet-suitage, but they remain undaunted.

...Boogey-boarding and trying not to get killed in the surf.

...Golf of multiple kinds: -Saw the big-timers like Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Fuzzy Zoehler, etc. at the Skins Championship that just happened to be right near where we're staying. -Putting competitions on the putting green at our spot - even an official one with prizes - Andy and Matt came back with a t-shirt and a box of chocolate-covered macademia nuts respectively - each winning his age-group (made easier by the fact that each was the sole entrant in his age-group). Grandpa Gene won a key chain. -And, the simple joys of the driving range.

...And just the general joy of lounging around in this glorious place. We are looking forward to catching a little of the Bend winter when we get there (which will be on Saturday, and we're looking very forward to seeing the Wenndorfs!), but we'll soak up this sunshine wonder while we can.

hong kong

2008-02-17T01:34:00.000-08:00

Sunday evening at the Olsen's in Hong Kong (Repulse Bay, for those of you who know the city). We are having a marvelous time with the Olsen family - Andy and Ari, and their three kids - Ana (7), Adam (3-almost-4) and Aaron - 2. Andy and Matt are having a blast being big brothers, and we have visions of Andy's baby-sitting service starting up upon our return to Seattle.

We arrived on Friday noon, after some all-night/little-sleep flying from Bangalore. We didn't mind the lack of sleep, since we were reasonably convinced we were never going to get out of Bangalore - our driver was almost an hour and a half late picking us up, and Bangalore traffic is crazy. So the fact that we made the flight at all, and didn't end up sleeping on the airport floor, made the lack of sleep not such a problem.

We've been adventuring with the A-team here since then. Andy is a friend and colleague from Seattle (we did the Danforth Principal program together), who has been teaching here at the Hong Kong International School for a couple of years, after having principaled an elementary school in Highline for a number of years. They are fabulous hosts, and all our kids are having a blast together. We've hit many Hong Kong hots spots and traveled by subway, bus, taxi, cablecar and foot hither and yon. Though Hong Kong is a high density big city of about 7 million folks, there is greenspace in the midst (not so much grass, but lots of little parks and playgrounds), and some real hiking. We had a great hike yesterday along Dragon's Back (a nice, high ridge, complete with some parasailors), played frisbee on the beach, and at moments we are reminded of Seattle and San Francisco as we adventure our way along.

One of our favorites here was our trip last night to the "night market" full of great deals that stretches for blocks. We picked up quite a number of things we didn't know we needed, and didn't get home until after 11pm.... Today's dim sum lunch is right up there - mmmm....

Suddenly tomorrow we are flying out to Japan (Tokyo... for one day, rather 23 hours) on our way to Hawaii and the grandparents. Originally we had intended to be in Japan for a week with Chrissie's cousin Steve and his family - but if you remember our Frankfurt day a ways back, the Steve-Austins moved to Germany - so we've adjusted our Japan time, and are heading to Hawaii a bit earlier.

We are looking very forward to getting back closer to home, and beginning to reintroduce some routine into our lives. Hawaii will be a chance to do some organizing of pictures and thoughts, and decide just what it is that we have learned, accomplished and done with these past 6 months. I also need to start the process of finding work, so if you have any ideas for me, let me know. We'll keep the blogs coming, but they will certainly evolve as we work our way back into something a little more "regular."

happy valentines day... and another funny story

2008-02-14T02:16:00.000-08:00

The two weeks we've been here in Bangalore have flown by (as you can tell, since it's been almost that long since I've blogged!). Tim, Chitra and the crew flew out of Bangalore this morning for an engagement party weekend in Mumbai (Cetric, one of the young men who works for the Hanstads, and a son of sorts, is the celebrant), and we fly out late tonight for Hong Kong. Our time here with the Hanstads was a wonderful combination of hanging out with family (playing ping-pong, chasing Oreo-the -loveable-family-dog out of the house regularly, trying to catch Star, the family rabbit, eating, evening basketball with the neighborhood college guys, eating again, school - Andy with Rajan and Matt with Asha, eating some more, bb gun wars, eating, watching the Superbowl - Go Giants! - live at 5:30 in the morning, eating and just generally enjoying being together), with some mini-adventures thrown in:

-Water World, the follow-up to Fun World, was Andy's birthday choice (the little sport turned 13 (!) on Feb. 9): This water park again would not pass OSHA standards, but that makes it all the more fun. Andy and Cetric talked me into going on the "Cyclone" without providing full disclosure. You start out in an enclosed tube that feels way to much like a free-fall, and just when everything goes dark, the tunnel takes a severe right angle turn - smashing you into the wall - then shooting you out in the toilet bowl spin, round and round, until it deposits you forcefully (most likely landing on another rather dazed rider) into a shallow pool at the bottom. Good times!

-Industrial and Technical Museum: Wonderful, quirky little place with lots of interactive exhibits. One of the favorites was severing our heads from our bodies. You can do that here in India.

-The Zoo: Fun, low key place, with our favorite part being the caged Rhesus monkeys, the same variety that attacked us in Bundi. We gloated a little over their condition, even though we realized that was petty and mean. Our second-favorite part was the 1-hour bus safari that felt strikingly reminiscent of the nice safari in the first Jurassic Park movie, except the really scary part was the bus ride, and not the animals.

-The Dentist: Our dental insurance runs out before we'll be back in Seattle, so we decided to get a cleaning while we were here. ColumbiaAsia Clinic is a spankin' new establishment just down the road, so we headed in, registered, and showed up for the cleaning. Funny things with this - the boys both came back out after about 3 minutes, with the pronouncement that they didn't need their teeth cleaned. Seems they must have been brushing better than Chrissie and I, because the two dentists working on them set them free. Chrissie and I, on the other hand, had an interesting 30 minute dental workover, getting our teeth cleaned with some combination of high pressure water, sonic vibration and enough screeching to send all the neighborhood dogs (of which there are many) howling for cover. It's all good, though, and now we can return to the clinic whenever we happen to be in Bangalore needing medical or dental attention.

-Prophesies: At lunch yesterday a nice elderly man in a walker stopped Chrissie to inform her that, as a Face-Reader, he had read Matt's and determined that he will grow up to be a great man, including becoming the prime minister of his country and having $55,000. Good news!

You can see that we've settled well into family mode here with the Hanstads, since much of what we've done sounds like anywhere. It's special here, though, because it's India, and because it's the Hanstads.

So on to the story... I'm happy to say that the story that follows does not contain any jinx-ridden reassurances from Mother-Chrissie. Any of you who know Chitra, know that she is keen on deals, and is always finding coupons for this and discounts for that. She is the queen of bargaining, and it was wonderful to be here with her and see her work her magic. So, she found us a deal - the "weekend package" at a nice resort about 45 minutes away - a local 5 star hotel, the Golden Palms. The story doesn't get interesting until the very end. Before that, we had a wonderful 3 days of swimming, biking, playing tennis, pool, ping-pong and squash, and eating way more than we needed to at the three-a-day all-you-can-eat buffet extravaganza.

The real adventure begins when we go to check out. We are presented with a bill that is double what we expected (and though Chitra got us a good deal for the nice resort that it was, there was no way we could afford "double" what we expected). It turns out that the killer rate was PER night, not for the whole weekend. We showed them the ad that said "weekend package" and "It will make you wish the weekends were longer", an ad that nowhere said anything about per night, and they informed us that "In India [Tim and Chitra really appreciated the condescending tone], everyone knows that 'weekend package' means just one night, and anyway, you should know our prices wouldn't be that low... we're a 5 star hotel." I tried to explain that a key aspect of being a 5 star hotel is treating one's clients with care - something that everyone except that day's desk manager was very happy to do - but that fell on deaf ears. To make a long story short, we said we'd happily pay the part we expected to pay, and we'd let the owner decide if we needed to pay the other part. The desk manager said we would pay all or nothing. When we told him given that choice, we'd choose nothing, he called security and had the exits blocked. He even tried to go get our luggage out of the car, but fortunately, he was unsuccessful.

In the end, after a two-and-a-half-hour stand-off, Tim wrote a long letter (while standing at the reception counter) to the owner, and we attached both the ad and the other portion of the bill, asking him to weigh in, and we'd abide by the decision. By this point, the desk manager had washed his hands of us, so the nice other people took that document and we headed home. They did let us out, though the rest of the two families were planning our escape while Tim and I negotiated for our release. We still don't know the final outcome, but we'll keep you posted.

So now we're down to our final 6 hours in India, and a wrap-up blog seemed a fitting close. It's been a fabulous time in so many different ways. And we hope you all have, are having or did have a joyous Valentines day! Here's us, with Tim, Chitra and their friends Pranu and Emu on our little date night.

Home with the Hanstads!

2008-02-02T03:30:00.000-08:00

We have landed in Bangalore, India, home to not only a bustling IT community, but also our family-away-from-home, the Hanstads - Tim, Chitra, Rajan, Rani, Asha, Shalini and a whole host of local supporting cast and crew. It's wonderful to be here, being able to be with our dear friends, and settled into a home for an extended stay. Tim is the pres/ed of Rural Development Institute (RDI - http://www.rdiland.org/ ) - an organization working to secure land rights for the rural poor around the world, as well as an expert net installer. Tim's office is in a home near the Hanstad home here in Bangalore, and our "guesthouse" for our time here.

We arrived Wednesday evening, after an eventful departure from Udaipur. Not only did we have to say goodbye to our India travel-mates Steffen and Grace (who headed north, while we headed south), but the friendly guesthouse host-dog, Alfy (think very large, playful, hyper cross between a black lab and a greyhound), decided that Andy's offer to pet him was rather an imminent attack, and chomped his arm twice. Andy's got some nice punctures and bruises, but fortunately both Andy and Alfy have had their shots... so not too much to worry about. So while we escaped the teeth of the mad monkeys, Andy did not leave northern India unscathed. Alfy was immediately repentent, and sheepishly lay outside the door while we put Andy back together.

This weekend we are fully engaged in Aunt and Uncle mode, as Tim and Chitra are gone for a speaking engagement. They'll be back tonight, but we did have time to get in a trip to Fun World this afternoon. It's a sweet little low-key amusement park that has equipment that feels a little like hand-me-downs from the Bremer (or Deschutes) County Fair. I must say my roller-coaster ride this afternoon was scary for all the wrong reasons.

Now that we're settled in here, we have consistent (and worthy) connectivity, so I'm going to add some pictures from our last few weeks - some chronological, some thematic. Enjoy, and we'll keep you posted.

India...

like Delhi traffic

Udaipur

A little drainage project, but cars, motos, bikes and peds continued to navigate effectively, the fresh fruit market and our guest house (site of the bite).

Bundi

Some of our new friends, and color of the town...

... and overnight trains

first class, and not-quite-first class

Cambodia

Us and the Morefields...

The boys helping Kathy M. with an ESL lesson, and the mighty Mekong.

The temples of...

Angkor Wat, Bayon and Ta Phrom...

plus Chrissie and her friends and Matt on the scooter.

Our delightful lunch with Min Sor and his family.

Bangkok

The family at the ancient city, a little taste of home with Katie and Matt and Andy with their mates Tiger and Monkey (a different monkey than the ones we encountered in Bundi....)

Impact of Drape Academy

... and last, but certainly not least, The Chicken Chronicles

"Matt, the monkeys are not going to attack us..."

2008-01-28T02:34:00.000-08:00

So, clearly it's been way too long since we blogged here. Our access has been troublesome, so we have some real catching up to do. But before that, a story.... We are in India now, having a wonderful time with our dear friends Steffen and Grace. After three days in Delhi, we moved on to the wonderful little town of Bundi, where this adventure takes place.

Bundi is a picturesque little town, full of blue houses, many temples and lots of cows, pigs and dogs wandering the colorful (and odorous) streets. It also has an amazing hillside palace and fort that is only partially restored, and therefore great for real exploration. Our first day in town we took a fabulous wander through the palace (we were almost the only ones there), soaking up all the history and architecture. We also met many of the non-human inhabitants of the town - the monkeys that are everywhere. Day one, they were cute and fun to watch.

Day two.... We headed up to the top of the hill, and the unrenovated fort - which, it turns out, is really monkey-land. I'll let you enjoy the story in Andy's voice, with his journal entry for the day:

"Today, we were attacked by monkeys! Grace was also sick. We all decided it was a good day for her to be sick. She is pretty scared of monkeys. We were up in the ruins of the palace, up in the high ruins. Up until then, we hadn't had any problem with the monkeys. We were going to head in a different direction. There were a couple of monkeys making us a little bit nervous. We had all made it past the two monkeys, but they were still eyeing us. Steffen went back to scare them off with a stick. The first sign of danger was when the monkeys began to growl. All of a sudden I heard Steffen start to yell. At first I thought that Steffen was trying to scare the monkeys away. When I looked up, one of the monkeys was gone, and Steffen was slowly backing up. That was when I got worried and started to walk away. All of a sudden the other monkey also began to chase Steffen. He began to scream bloody murder. The last thing I saw was a monkey jump at Steffen from the roof of a building. Matt was already halfway out of the puny doorway. I raced out after him. I remember watching my mom come out after me. I had my slingshot, and grabbed a rock and loaded my slingshot. I heard Steffen yell again. I aimed my slingshot at the doorway. Matt started to cry because he thought Steffen and my dad were getting eaten by monkeys. Then, out came my dad (bleeding on his face), and Steffen, who closed the door behind them. We all breathed a sigh of relief. We then proceeded to walk down the hill. We were then caught in a migration of approximately 100 monkeys coming up the hill. That was very nerve wracking. After being chased by monkeys, we very scared. We finally made it through. It was a wild experience." From Andy's journal - Jan. 26, 2008

Some editorial comments from the father and a few important asides to fill out the details:

Steffen might argue with some of the details, but as we know, eyewitness accounts can often differ. The blood on me... When the monkeys screamed at Steffen, I assumed that would be it, and then they would run off. I turned to see they were not leaving at all, and Steffen was moving quickly down my way. Chrissie and the boys were safely making their escape, so I jumped down a bit, and turned to see how Steffen was faring (of course, ready to stand by his side in battle, if necessary). At this point, Steffen jumped down, swinging his stick to keep the monkeys at bay, and also effectively kept me at bay by hitting me with his monkey stick. I am healing up just fine.

Chrissie's prediction-reputation with her boys, however, will take much longer to heal than my face. Just prior to the real adventure starting, Chrissie-the-mother shared that she was not interested in exploration of the unchartered fort (monkey) territory that we seemed to be wandering into. A moment after that, she reassured Matt with the line that titles this blog - "Don't worry Matt, the monkeys are not going to attack us." Shortly after those words are out of her mouth, we are set upon. Here's a bit from Matt's journal to explain...

"I screamed and pushed Andy out of my way and jumped through the hole we had gotten in through. Andy poised his slingshot to hit a monkey. My mom and dad and Steffen made it through alright. We called Mom a jinx because she said earlier that the monkeys would not attack. In Yellowstone, she said we would not see a bear, and we saw a bear [ed. note: the bear sighting came approximately 3 minutes after Chrissie's reassuring statement]. In South Africa, she said we would not see a snake and a snake reared up at us and flattened its neck and swayed[ed note: again... appr. 3 minutes time between mother's reassuring comments and the event she assured would not happen]." From Matt's journal - Jan. 26, 2008.

As you can see, Chrissie's animal assurance credibility has taken a serious blow here. So, there's the monkey adventure - funny now, not then...

There are many other updates we should give, but we'll try to summarize a bit, since many of you have a life outside of our blog.

Our second week in Cambodia was great. Chrissie and the boys had a great time at the beach, and I had a great adventure out to Rattanakiri on a school leaders training trip with John Morefield. I picked up an interesting little bug out in the wilds of rural northeast Cambodia that I think I've finally gotten rid of, but that just makes the trip more interesting.

We survived our time apart, and then headed out to Siem Reap and the temples of Angkor Wat. As I have said many times, pictures can't capture the feel of these amazing temple complexes - some of which are 1000 years old, but we'll show you some anyway. We made friends with some of the local Khmer girls selling us things, one of whom said "save one of your boys for me...." Our big adventure in the midst of the temples was renting electric bikes for a day. We had to ride about 25 kilometers total that day. The temples are about 7km from our guest house (through the busy and crazy streets of Siem Reap), and are then spread out on a 17km or so route. Let's just say no one died, and that the e-bikes are very fun when they have electricity, but don't work so well when you just have to pedal.

We met up with Steffen and Grace in Delhi, India, on Jan 21, (it is wonderful to have them along) and had three full days there. We wandered far and wide, got 3-day passes for the Delhi Metro and took the great city in. The markets of Old Delhi were intense, and my favorite part of the time there (though I don't think all would concur with me on that). Our monkey adventure was part of our 3 days in Bundi. The people of the town were wonderfully welcoming and friendly, and the boys even got in on a wee bit of a cricket match.

We are now hanging out in a fabulous guest house in Udaipur - a gorgeous city with palace on the lake, and surrounding hills. The guest house is a sizable place but we have all the rooms, so have the place to ourselves. There's a big yard (huge bonus) so room for us to play soccer (Steffen and I need a rematch with the boys after losing yesterday afternoon) and have shuttlecock (a sort of hand-worthy version of badmitton and hackey-sack combined that we picked up in Cambodia) tournaments.

We head to Bangalore (and our great friends, the Hanstad family!) on Wednesday. From here on, we should have more regular internet, so won't have such blogging gaps. We continue to have a ball, and still all like each other, so that is good news.

phnom penh...

2008-01-12T21:04:00.000-08:00

Sunset behind the Royal Palace, from the Tonle Sap River, photo by Matt Drape...
(we'll add more photos when we're on a faster computer...)

Chrissie and I are currently on a "date" here at our favorite Phnom Penh internet cafe, while Andy and Matt are off adventuring with Kathy Morefield. Kathy wanted some boy help in finding a birthday present for a seven-year-old friend of hers, and she liked the idea of helping us have a little couple-time. We promise that it will not all be spent here, though we are sitting next to each other, which is nice.

Phnom Penh has been wonderful. It is an amazing and complex place, fraught with challenges and contradictions, and full of delightful and dear people. While there is much tragedy in the history here, and many obstacles lying to better things for most of the people, there is a sweet spirit in the midst of it all.

We have been adventuring widely here, and will try to cover some of the highlights:

-We have spent great time with our dear friends John and Kathy Morefield. John (former Seattle principal, and professor @ UW) is working with the Cambodian Ministry of Education doing principal/leadership development. Kathy is teaching ESL at the University and more informally to smaller groups. They are taking great care of us, and it has been a joy to reconnect. We have visited a number of projects with Kathy that serve children affected by AIDS (either directly themselves, of having parents suffering...).

-We have been able to connect with a Cambodian friend, Min Sor, who is the country director for an education NGO, Room to Read. Yesterday we joined him and his family for a wonderful and very traditional Khmer meal. It was delicious, and all the dishes were new to us - quite an eating adventure.

-We spent a good bit of time this past week exploring the difficult history of Cambodia and the time of the Khmer Rouge. We traveled out to the Killing Fields - Choeung Ek, and visited the Tuol Sleng Prison here in town. While there were many "killing fields" during the Khmer Rouge's genocide, Choeung Ek was the primary execution site, where people were taken from Tuol Sleng prison here in Phnom Penh. It is very painful to witness what took place, but it is also a powerful testament to the human ability to survive, and the stories speak to the important work that still lies ahead for the people of Cambodia. If you want to delve more deeply into the stories yourself, visit two very powerful websites - Document Center of Cambodia (http://www.dccam.org/ - a research and documentation project), or "Beauty and Darkness: Cambodia, the Odyssey of the Khmer People" at www.mekong.net/Cambodia.

-We have also visited numerous temples and fascinating cultural sites, like the Royal Palace and National Museum. There is such a rich history beyond the Khmer Rouge, and that history has survived, despite the KR efforts. We took an evening boat ride with the Morefields. Phnom Penh sits on the confluence of the Mekong and Tonle Sap Rivers - quite an amazing site - so we floated down the Tonle Sap, and then motored up the Mekong a bit.

-We visited the Psar Tuol Tom Pong Market (also called the Russian Market) and found lots of great deals in the hilariously cramped, stuffy and busy little aisles. Our wandering through the food section connected us to a wondrous diversity of sights and smells - some good, some not so. We saw many chickens that looked quite a bit like our little rubber traveling companion, as well as live turtles, eels, crabs and many different fish. Fascinating.

The wonderful thing about living in South Seattle, is that it represents so many different parts of the world, and there are many things we see here that remind us of home. We like that. There are also many great projects in the midst of the city that we have had a chance to connect to, one in particular called "Friends", which is a training program extraordinaire for helping street youth move off the streets (with New Horizon connections!). They run a number of training restaurants (similar to the Fare Start project in Seattle), and we have enjoyed some incredible food there. Their tacos will make an updated version of Andy and Matt's favorite foods of the trip.

Tomorrow (Monday), I am headed out to rural northeast Cambodia (Ratanakiri) with John as he heads out there for the week with his Cambodian colleagues to do a training with principals in the province. Chrissie and the boys are headed the opposite direction, and going to the beach at Sihanoukville while I'm gone. On Wednesday evening we'll reconnect and then on Thursday we head northwest to Siem Reap, and the amazing temples of Angkor Wat. We'll keep you posted!

Andy and Matts' bests and worsts food and drink from around the world (so far)

2008-01-09T04:25:00.000-08:00

Here are Andy and Matt's highs and lows of eating and drinking around the world.

Drinks:

Bests

South African cream soda... it's green (only good thing about it)!

Thailand's drinks in a bag... ice in a bag, comes in licorice and bubblegum flavors. Mom likes the ice tea in a bag. Dad enjoys the straight coffee in a bag, with ice, poured in using a strainer to keep out the chunks of coffee.

Cambodia's lime juice... very refreshing. Add sugar water, or pucker up.

Khmer Restaurant's milkshakes... best so far out of the United States.

Worsts

South African cream soda... tastes really gross.

Food:

Bests

Amman Marriott's Sports Bar burger... really good burger, you also get to watch soccer on a very large screen.

Amman Marriott's Sports Bar nachos... comes with everything you don't need (even if you just ask for cheese, chicken, and chips). It also includes a big screen showing soccer.

Old City Jerusalem New York Deli burger... good plain old burger.

Thailand's pad thai... very good.

Cambodia's sweet and sour chicken... we didn't know that something non deep-fried could taste so good.

Worsts

South Africa's burgers... tastes like meatloaf on a bun. If it doesn't, it will be under-cooked.

Out of World bacon... it is just ham!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Goede Hoep Bed and Breakfasts' scrambled eggs... not really worst in the world, but the cook bragged about her totally "delicious" scrambled eggs. She gets the award for runniest eggs in the world.

Written by: Andrew Drape, Narrated by: Matthew Drape and Andrew Drape

catching up

2008-01-05T16:51:00.000-08:00

We've covered some ground since our last Jerusalem blog, and are now happily hanging out with our friend, Katie Thorleifson, in Bangkok, Thailand. Katie is a former Hawthorne Elem. teacher, now teaching at an international school here in Bangkok. She is very graciously putting us up (or putting up with us...) in her wonderful apartment for the weekend, and serving as tour guide extraordinaire. The boys are thoroughly enjoying her cats, but I'm not sure the feeling is mutual.

Here's a bit of an update on the past week:

Nazareth - wonderful and beautiful. We spent 3 nights at a great guest house, Fauzi Azar, run by an Israeli couple who are both committed backpackers/trekkers/outdoors people, as well as committed to reconciliation work and making their spot a place where Israeli Arabs and Jews and folks from all over can connect. It's a beautiful old home set on the hillside of Nazareth. We met a great guy there, a Mennonite from Pennsylvania named Dave, who is working at the guest house as well as for Mennonite Central Committee - but his other project is something called Jesus Trail. The Jesus Trail is a hiking/trekking route through the Galilee region of northern Israel, a very beautiful and rugged area worthy of lots of time spent outdoors. Check it out at jesustrail.com (quote from the website - "The Jesus Trail offers an alternative for travelers and pilgrims to experience the steps of Jesus in a way that is authentic, adventurous and educational.").

Our grand adventure on New Year's Eve day was taking the bus out to Tiberias (about an hour away on the Sea of Galilee) where we rented bikes, and biked 40km up to the Mount of Beatitudes and Capernaum (including the ruins of Peter's house and the spot on the lake where Jesus conferred upon Peter leadership of the church). It was quite cool, but also hilly (the climb up to the Mt. of B was a serious workout), on a busy road, and Matt's bike was a bit of a bust. We rewarded ourselves with a big dinner at an Italian restaurant in Tiberias (I had the St. Peter's Fish, appropriately) and then bought lots of snacks for our looming New Year's celebration. We welcomed the new year in Nazareth on the deck at Fauzi Azar, with snacks galore and lots of fireworks.

New Year's Day we taxi-bussed our way the 2 hours from Nazareth to Tel Aviv, which was quite a feat since I was sure our emphysema-ridden driver, who was smoking his way along, was going to keel over at the wheel before we made it. I had my plan for simultaneously administering CPR while navigating the bus to a safe halt. Fortunately, Mr. Driver managed to wheeze, cough and smoke his way to Tel Aviv without event. We wandered Tel Aviv that evening, watching the sun set over the Mediterranean and visiting the local laundry, so as not to offend our fellow passengers on our flight to Bangkok the next day. We didn't leave until the next night (Wednesday), so we had a nice, mellow day of wandering Tel Aviv, and even taking in our first movie theater of the trip with a viewing of "3:10 to Yuma", not exactly family friendly (our options were limited), but a rollicking jaunt through the gun-battles, with Hebrew subtitles.

We arrived in Bangkok on Thursday (Jan. 3) afternoon, to our friend Katie's hearty and hospitable welcome. We had a wonderful day wandering Bangkok yesterday, with more in store today and tomorrow, before we head to Cambodia on Monday. We taxied, trained and boated our way about town, visiting some temples and eating good food (and drinking good things like Thai iced coffee and liquid red licorice, though my street treat was chicken satay... see photo above).

We have had some unintended adventures with United over our 'round the world tickets on our last and coming flights, but I think it's worked out - if not... that will be a future blog.

We'll try to give you a more thorough Bangkok run-down before we leave here Monday.

Peace and Joy!

jerusalem

2007-12-29T01:39:00.000-08:00

The Boys' Jerusalem Top Ten (in no particular order...)

10. Food: Dad votes for the falafel/hummus/pita combination, though it's not particularly diabetic-friendly. Andy and Matt vote for the transplanted New York Jewish deli (Tzaddik's) that served them a hamburger and fries that tasted like home.

9. Drink: Dad votes for the Arabic coffee that you can eat with a spoon, and Matt and Andy vote for the fresh squeezed straight-up pomegranite (sp?) juice.

8. Our home away from home - The Jerusalem 3 Arches YMCA (thank you, cousin David!) - We decided that it is the perfect Drape family place (Andy says it's his favorite hotel in the world...): not too fancy, with a real gym (for soccering and b-ball), a fitness center and a pool, with a big buffet breakfast included (think all-you-can-eat eggs, cheese, sausage and bread products galore for the smaller two Drape boys).

7. Temple Mount (in 10 minutes or less...): The 10 minutes or less is due to the fact that our 1-year-old Lonely Planet guidebook forgot to tell us that the Temple Mount (home to the Dome of the Rock - site of the first two temples, Abraham's supposed sacrifice spot for Isaac, Mohammed's ascension...) is closed on Saturdays (because of Israeli control of the entrance), and they had the afternoon closing time one hour off.... So we did the whirlwind tour.

6. The Western (Wailing) Wall: complex and fascinating... living remnant (retaining wall) of the actual Temple. We prayed for the peace of Jerusalem, and our dear brother, Frederick Robinson's healing. We had to cover our heads (think paper yamulkes) and Mother had to head to the separate women's section.

5. The Old City overall, with the most fun getting caught up in the post Friday noon Muslim prayer crush through the very narrow streets of the Muslim Quarter of the Old City.

4. Mount of Olives (Gethsemane and views over to the Old City): We walked around the edges of the garden area, with 200o year-old olive trees that were witnesses to Jesus' praying and arrest - pretty amazing. We then hiked up the steep hill for great views across the Kidron Valley into the Old City.

3. Mt. Zion and the Upper Room: While the building around it is newish (thanks to the 11th century Crusaders) we stood in the room where Jesus broke bread with the disciples at the Last Supper, and where the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples at Pentecost. We read those passages in the room itself.

2. Via Dolorosa and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre: We walked through the 14 stations of the cross that commemorate Jesus' final steps to crucifixion. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is traditionally held as the site of his crucifixion and burial. The monumental architecture that the various churches have constructed over these sites (Constantine commissioned the church in 326) are very impressive, but strike us a little contrary to much of what Christ had to say.

1. The Garden Tomb as alternative to the Church of the HS: Outside of the Old City there is a tomb site that is held by some to be the real crucifixion (Golgotha) and burial site. It is a very different place from the ornate and complex machinations of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, simple and quiet. As one Catholic priest is reported to have said, "If the Garden Tomb is not the true site of the Lord's death and resurrection, it should have been."

So, there you have it. Certainly words and pictures again can't do this place justice. This evening (after Shabbat ends and the buses start running again), we're heading off to Nazareth and more Holy Land adventures. We'll keep you posted!

Christmas in Bethlehem!

2007-12-27T00:16:00.000-08:00

by Chrissie, with help...

After enjoying our 26 hour visit to Amman, Jordan, we hit the road again. It was December 24, and we wanted to be in Bethlehem for Christmas. Here's how we got there: 1) Taxi from Amman Marriott to the King Hussein / Allanby Bridge. 2) Big bus across the actual bridge, to the Israeli border entrance. 3) After standing in line for over an hour, as we were stuck behind a large tour group, a small bus to downtown Jerusalem (Damascus Gate). 4) Large bus to Bethlehem, from the Arab Bus Station, via the "old" security checkpoint, where our bus was boarded by an Israeli soldier who checked the ID of anyone who looked Arab. 5) Taxi to our hotel, the Jacir Palace.

In case you don't know your Holy Land history, Bethlehem is not in Israel. It is part of the West Bank, which is Palestine. Ironically, it is only 5 miles from Jerusalem, which IS part of Israel. In case you can't remember this, Israel has graciously erected an 8-meter high wall separating the two. If you are a tourist, like us, you are free to move between Israel and Palestine. If you are Palestinian, you must stay on your side of the wall. Needless to say, this is very difficult for the Palestinians.

We had a wonderful 2 days in Bethlehem. We wandered the city streets, which were full of soldiers. They were very friendly, and a bit bored. We think they were there to protect us? From what, we're not sure. We visited Manger Square, which is the heart of Bethlehem. It is bordered at one end by a big mosque, and at the other by the Church of the Nativity. On the 24th, there was a choir performance in the square all evening. We hung around, ate roasted corn and cotton candy, and soaked up the scene - soldiers on the roofs of the buildings, children selling packs of gum, tourist groups wearing matching yellow caps, vendors wishing us a Merry Christmas and hoping that we will purchase something in their shops. The church holds midnight mass, but we had been traveling all day, and turned into pumpkins at about 7:00. Oh, and Matt pulled out a loose tooth in the midst of the mayhem.

We went back to Manger Square on the 25th, and enjoyed the scene again - Italian Christians singing and dancing in the square, more roasted corn and children selling gum, and hordes of tourists visiting the Church. Inside the Church of the Nativity, if you are willing to wait in line, you can go into a cave and see a 14-pointed star which marks the place where Jesus was born. (Leave it to the Christians to erect a giant church over this humble site!) We didn't wait in line, but we did see the star. Let's just say it involved Chris lying to a priest. We'll leave it at that.

We've been saying for weeks, "It will be so amazing to be in Bethlehem on Christmas!" Now we can't decide if it's the best time, or the worst possible time to visit Bethlehem. So many people, so little worship. But maybe that's how it was when Jesus was born - lots of activity, but nobody really paying attention to him.

On the morning of the 26th, we had breakfast with some local Palestinian Christians, who are friends of our cousin, David Austin. It was powerful to hear their stories. One of the women is the captain of the Palestinian National Soccer Team. Some of their players live in the West Bank, and some in Gaza. In order to practice together, they must leave the country, as there is no way to travel between the two parts of Palestine. We asked how we could pray for them, and they said pray for Peace, Health, and Freedom. Will do!

At this moment (11am on the 27th) we are in an internet cafe in the Old City of Jerusalem. We'll write more about this amazing city after we've explored it a little more!

es ist ja kalt!

2007-12-23T09:40:00.000-08:00

So we have gone through quite a transition over the last 48 hours, leaving sweltering Dar es Salaam Friday night at 9:00 - sweating our way through the airport, looking for some slight air movement - arriving in Zurich @ 6:00am and heading quickly to our Frankfurt connection that eventually took us here, to Amman, Jordan. In the process, we were able to adjust our long layover so that we spent 12 hours in Frankfurt, instead of 12 hours in Zurich. Chrissie's cousin, Steve Austin, and his family - Lana, Matthias and Levi - have just moved close by (Steve has a new job as the assistant principal of a Department of Defense K-8 school outside Frankfurt). In a hilarious rush of activity (they've only been in Germany 6 days!), we spent the day with them, wandering the Christmans market in the old town section of Frankfurt - shivering in the 20 degree - foggy - snowy weather! It was quite an adjustment for our tired bodies, that had been used to 90 degrees, but it was so wonderful to hang out with Steve, Lana, Matt and Levi (and eat brats and other German goodies)! It was also a more tangibly Christmas feel for us, so it has helped usher us into the season.

One unfortunate part of our adventure is that the switch of flights from Zurich to Frankfurt seems to have been too much for our luggage, so we have spent the day without it. We are trusting that it will arrive before tomorrow morning (when we head for Bethlehem), and we are also ready to change clothes - since we're wearing what we left Dar es Salaam in 50 hours ago. Fortunately, Chrissie had the presence of mind to have everyone pack an extra pair of socks and undies in our day packs, so that's nice....

Our flight to Amman was delayed out of Frankfurt, so we ended up arriving here at 6:00am this morning, without much sleep. After a little 3-hour nap, we ate a big buffet breakfast, then headed out on a little downtown Amman touring. It's a beatiful city, full of deeply hospitable, gracious and friendly people. We had a wonderful time wandering the ancient Roman ruins here in town, as well as the narrow streets and bustling markets. There was a choir here in the hotel, singing Christmas carols earlier this evening (which has sinced transitioned into more traditional Arab music), and we even saw Santa! Tomorrow morning we'll head out early for Bethlehem, and are looking forward to celebrating a midnight Christmas-eve service at the Church of the Nativity.

We'll keep you posted!

the trek!

2007-12-21T00:11:00.000-08:00

It will be hard to capture the amazing experience of our time trekking through the Crater Highlands of northern Tanzania, either in words or pictures, but we'll certainly try to give you a taste of the experience. We got back to Dar es Salaam last night, and today is our day to blog, do laundry and regroup-repack before we head out to the Middle East tonight.

Trek Day 1:

Our guides (King, the driving guide, and Shabaan, the trekking guide) picked us up at 8:00am Saturday morning in Arusha, and we set out. After a quick stop to pick up Daniel, our cook for the week, we were off to drive through the Ngorongoro Crater (to see lots of animals). The adventure along the way was getting a hole in the radiator, which required a change of vehicle/driver, so we left King to get the truck fixed and head back to town (we were already two hours out). The time in the Crater was incredible, and we saw lots of big animals. Here are just a few (three male lions eating/wrestling over a very dead wildebeast; a cheetah stalking a warthog; some zebras hanging out with the wildebeast).

After a few hours in the Crater, we drove off to our first night's camp at Nainokanoka Village, where we had a delicious dinner, after a nice 4K hike up to the rim of Olmati Crater. It was cold enough at dinner that we donned our fleece coats (which made us happy that the first week in London wouldn't be the only time we wore them on the trip).

Trek Day 2:

Our second day was a glorious 25 kilometer trek across amazing landscape - climbing from about 7500 feet up to 9500 feet elevation - through Maasai villages and herds of zebra, Thompson and Grant gazelle, wildebeast and plenty of Maasai cows, goats and donkeys. Shabaan was a wonderful and patient guide for us, and we had many wonderful conversations along the journey (he, Andy and Matt were quite the talkative crew). We were joined by many folks along the way, who wanted to check out the crazy mzungu (white folk) who were walking through. Daniel, our cook, came behind with two Maasai who brought donkeys to transport all the camping gear, water and food. We camped that night on the rim of Empakai Crater, and fell asleep to the soothing sounds of our donkeys grazing, and the 1000s of flamingoes honking and winging their way back to Lake Natron for the night.

Trek Day 3:

After breakfast, we started off by hiking down to Empakai Lake, at the bottom of the crater (the pink things are flamingoes at the water's edge), a short 4km hike, but about a 12oo foot loss (and then gain) of elevation, to see the lake and flamingoes. After returning to the crater rim, we travelled about 15km on day 3, over rolling terrain, dropping back down to about 6500 feet by the end of the day. Throughout the day we had evolving views of Ol Doinyo Lengai (Mountain of God) - which normally could have been part of our trek, except that it's currently active (see ash spewing in the picture!) Maria walked with us quite a while, and her persistence paid off, as we bought a number of her beautiful beadwork necklaces and bracelets. Daniel traded for the guinea fowl pictured that became dinner for us on Day 4.

This was also the day our guide finally confessed that they had never had a trekker younger than 11 (Matt is 9). When they saw our family, they made back-up plans for how they'd get Matt through the Highlands on the back of a donkey. Matt ended up doing the best of all of us, sometimes literally skipping as we plodded along.

Trek Day 4:

Our final day of walking was mostly down hill, but steep enough that it was a strenuous 12K or so. We lost about 4000 feet of elevation over the course of the day, and camped about 10K from Lake Natron - the major breeding ground of the flamingoes we had seen at Empakaai. Before dinner we hiked up to a waterfall and took a very refreshing and necessary dip, as the thundering water pounded us with little bits of sand and washed away the 60km of dust and dirt.

Trek Day 5:

The final day was mostly in the vehicle, as we drove down to Lake Natron and wandered a bit, seeing the flamingoes again. We then had a 6 hour drive back to Arusha, through Maasai land where we saw more animals (a giraffe!) and craters. Four of the hours were along some seriously challenging dirt roads. We were thankful for King's (he rejoined us at the end of our trip) driving skill in navigating the adventures without flipping us all.

Trip casualties: Chrissie "walked" away with four big blisters on her feet, Chris has an achy back, and Andy has some sores on his face from sun, wind, and sand. Matt, as per above, is still skipping.

We spent yesterday, day 6, back in Arusha recouping and getting a little laundry done (we would have gotten more done, but the power kept going out), and then came back here to Dar es Salaam last night around 8pm.

Overall the trek was an other-wordly experience of wonderful connection with our hosts - Shabaan, our Maasai porters Isack and Katango, as well as the many Maasai that greeted us along the way - amazing food thanks to Daniel, and absolutely incredible terrain, scenery and wildlife. While it will be hard to leave Africa, given our amazing last 6 weeks here, the time has been deeply satisfying with a great diversity of experiences. We know that theme will continue, as we head off to a Christmas-time in the middle east!

The team, back row left to right... Shabaan-the-guide, Daniel-the-cook, Katango-the-porter, Chrissie-the-mother, Chris-the-dad, Isack-the-other-porter, with Matt and Andy in front, with King-the-driver-guide taking the picture....

a day in the life, zanzibar style

2007-12-13T23:40:00.000-08:00

We're back from our 3-day adventure on the intriguing isle of Zanzibar, a fascinating mix of African and Arab cultures in a beautiful (though extreeeeeemly hot and humid this time of year) setting. Here's a simple recap of what a day was like, as we wiled away the hours at Paradise Beach Bungalows on the east coast of the island, in Paje.

6am - The boys (3) are up, after what was not the most restful night's sleep (though the ever-optimistic Matt announced that he felt well-rested after our sweaty night under, then not under, the mosquito netting).

7am - A family walk along the beach - HOT already (that equitorial sun is serious business for our northwest skin).

8am - Breakfast! Delicious fruit (watermelon, pineapple, bananas), coffee, juice, eggs and homemade rolls....

9am - Books in the shade, imagining a faint breeze. We watch the local folks come out to begin gathering seaweed as the tide starts to go out. There are little seaweed farms that appear as the water recedes.

10am - A walk out as the tide continues to go out (which takes some time, since it goes out about a mile on this very shallow coast).

11am - More books (with a little napping) in the shade. The resident monkey at Paradise (Matt and Andy were convinced he was constantly preparing to mount an attack against us) wanders onto our table to sip my coffee.

12noon - More low-tide walking, though we never made it all the way out to the reef. Now it is even hotter than HOT. Saw a little angel fish, a little ray, many sea urchins (don't step on them!) and a gazillion (perhaps a brazilian) hermit crabs.

1pm - Delicious lunch of spaghetti, grilled fish and Japanese noodle soup (the host of Paradise is a Japanese woman).

2pm - Watched one of the resident dogs (of which there are almost as many as the resident cats, though the dogs chase the monkey, while the monkey chases the cats) sleep on the beach in the shade of a palm tree - moving every few minutes to keep up with the shade.

3pm - Bought a coconut for about 50 cents from the old man walking the beach selling them - he cracked it right there for us and we had a little coconut milk and meat snack - hmmmm! Andy and I went for a little baking-hot run on the beach, which was to be followed by a refreshing dip in the ocean. However, the super-heated shore from the long low tide had super-heated the water, which by then was well over 90 degrees. So much for refreshing dip, but we dipped nonetheless.

4pm - Still more books in the shade, and more breeze than the morning.

5pm - Card games (gin, crazy 8s, war...) in the shade. Chrissie took an intermittent shower, as the water came and went.

6pm - Bought a couple of bracelets from the Maasai who work at the bungalows as security. They walk the paths with their big sticks, and make jewelry at rest-times. Passed some time by trying to remember any jokes we could.

7pm - Dinner! Prawns, traditional Swahili stew, chicken, ocra w/tuna (fresh), spinach/egg soup... all accompanied by a local one-man band.

8pm - More crazy 8s in the room, under the fan that just didn't move as much air as we would like. Followed that up with a slathering of bug spray (jungle juice, for those REI fans out there), for what we hoped would be a more restful (and it was) night's sleep.

9pm - sleep....

So there you have a day in Paradise. This evening we're off to Arusha (by Mt. Kilimanjaro), and tomorrow morning we head out on our big trek through the Crater Highlands. We'll be back in a week, and will update you then.

Tanzania!

2007-12-09T15:30:00.000-08:00

Ahhh... we are settling very happily in with our dear friends, David-Susan-and-Nolie Giles, here in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. We arrived Thurday afternoon, and they have been taking wonderful care of us ever since. David and Susan are teachers at the International School of Tanganyika (the name of the country before it united with Zanzibar) - David teaches in their secondary school (English), and Susan teaches grade 2. Nolie is their almost-6-year-old daughter, who is loving to entertain her new guests. We have entered the HOT and HUMID equatorial zone (the boys say it feels like Iowa in July) with temps in the 90s and quite humid. Yesterday we dealt with the heat by heading out to the beautiful little island of Bongoyo for some floating in the water, and sitting in the shade. We had some absolutely delicious fish and chips, where the fish was bbq'ed whole, and served up smiling.

Some highlights here so far:
-David and Susan's friend, Fuad, toured us through Dar on Friday morning. Great to get our bearings a bit, and hear the lore from a local. The local fish market is quite a feast for the eyes, and an experience for the nose as well.

-All three boys decided that it was way too hot to have hair, so we visited David's local barber, and had him shave it all off. I'm sure that was the most American hair he's ever had sitting on his floor at any one time. This was also a remarkable event, because it's the first time we've ever paid for a haircut for Andy or Matt (almost 23 years combined boy life). I figured my frugal streak can still continue in the US, and Africa is a fine place for the first paid haircut. ($6 for all three heads!)

-While things have been going quite smoothely with our trip, I have had a couple of opportunities to practice my resourcefulness (McGyver skills). I sewed up a torn loop on Andy's shoes using dental floss, and I borrowed some athletic tape from the nice guys on the beach at Bongoyo to (temporarily) fix Chrissie's sunglasses.

-The boys are fully enjoying the different pace in Dar (only one museum so far...). They have a bit more chance just to be kids - playing at the beach all day yesterday - and Matt is having a wonderful time being the big kid playing with Nolie (she won't let Matt out of her sight), and Andy's been reading novels from David's classroom and playing frisbee with the big boys.

Tomorrow we catch the early ferry off to Zanzibar, where we'll spend the next three days. It should be a wonderful adventure (just buying the tickets was quite an experience itself), as Zanzibar is a fascinating place of Arab and African culture coming together, with beautiful beaches as well. Since we're well computer-connected here with the Giles, we should be able to give an update after we return from Zanzibar, before we head off to the next adventure - our Crater Highlands Trek, next Friday.

Jo'burg

2007-12-09T08:00:00.000-08:00

(by Chrissie...)

After such an amazing week in Cape Town, we must admit we were a little nervous about our next adventure in Johannesburg. We didn't have anyone meeting us, and were going to be on our own for the first time. We had all heard rumors about the dangerous big city, and tourists being easy targets for crooks and scammers. But... We had no need to worry! We had arranged to stay at Mama Lolo's Guesthouse in Soweto (SouthWestTownship), and her son, SonnyBoy, was to pick us up at the airport. No sooner had we arrived at the Guesthouse, than Mama Lolo put us back in the car and whisked us away to a wedding! (If you know our beloved Mom Wilson, you will have an inkling of Mama Lolo's personality. She loves you, and you don't tell her no.) We were treated like VIPs at the wedding, and Chris and Ernie both made toasts to the bride and groom. We ate some traditional African food, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We just kept looking at each other and giggling.

The next day, Sunday, we arranged for transportation to Uniting Presbyterian Church, in the nearby township of Alexandra. The pastor, Dr. Maake Masango, is friends with our own Pastor Harvey in Seattle, and Aisha had visited his church before. Aisha had contacted Dr. Masango in advance, but we hadn't heard from him definitively, so we didn't even know if they knew we were coming. Again, why do we worry?!? We were welcomed with open arms, and it turned out they had rearranged the service in our honor. They celebrated Confirmation, with 10 teenagers affirming their faiths, and baptized a teenager and a baby. Dr. Masango conducts the service in three languages simultaneously (english, sotho, and xhosa). We sang so many songs, all accompanied by a choir, and a hand drum. The program was typed out, so it was fun to try to sing along in other languages. Then we were hauled up front, we all gave greetings from home and introduced ourselves, and we were given African names. What an honor! Here they are:

Ernie: Maake (warrior; the pastor's own name!)

Katrina: Lesedi (light)

Aisha: Mpho (gift)

Chris: Katlego (success)

Chrissie: Thando (love)

Andy: Thabo (happy; the name of the current president of SA)

Matt: Kgosi (king!)

For the balance of the week, SonnyBoy took us on an insider's tour of Soweto, and we spent half a day at the Apartheid Museum. Andrew's summary of Apartheid: It's a cross between American slavery, and the Holocaust. I think he's got the picture! To round out our adventures, we also visited Gold Reef City casino, and gambled away about 40 Rand ($6). The boys spent about the same in the video arcade. We also enjoyed ourselves at the casino buffet, ironically called Boston Bbq.

And finally, we had saved our last day in Jo'burg for shopping and recuperating from the above. We had made a call to Anthony Morgan, who is the great-nephew of Mom Wilson back home, earlier in the week. She had given us his number, and "told" us to call him. Like we said, you don't tell Mom no. To make a long story short (shorter?), Anthony is the producer of the South Africa Lion King show. He got us tickets to Wednesday's matinee, and then took us backstage to meet the cast. The show is licensed through Disney, so the set and costumes are the same as the Broadway show. But the cast is all South African, and the script is tweaked to give it a SA flavor. We LOVED it. Anthony put the boys on the aisle, and they were treated to a giant elephant entering the show at the beginning, and Matt was scared out of his pants when a hyena rubbed up against him a while later. Thank you, Anthony! And thank you, Mom W.! After the show, we went to dinner with Anthony. It was great to get the perspective of an African American who has lived in SA on and off for 10 years. He's marrying a local girl in a few weeks, so it looks like he's staying for good!

Thursday morning, we said goodbye to the Cathcarts. We all rode together to the airport at 6am, and we left for Tanzania, while they waited most of the day for their 6pm flight home. Yikes! It was such a blessing to spend these last two weeks with them. They brought us a little feeling of home (and cards from the kids' friends!). South Africa is such an amazing country, full of so many contrasts, that it was great to debrief with them at the end of the day, and have them to share the experience with. Hopefully they feel the same way, after two weeks of very close togetherness! We look forward to traveling other places with them in the future.

a little math problem from drape academy for you...

2007-12-08T13:52:00.000-08:00

Andy and Matt are going to let you in on a little Drape Academy traveling math problem. This is from our time in South Africa. We'll post the answer in a week or so....

Before heading to the airport in Port Elizabeth, we filled our rental car with petrol (gas). Here are the questions for you to answer:

1. How many gallons of gas was this fill up?

2. What was the cost in dollars per gallon?

3. What was the total cost in dollars?

Here's the picture of the pump:

Double-click on the picture to enlarge it, if you need. Our information is on the left.

The rest of the information you need is:

1. There are 3.8 liters in a gallon

2. We figured an exchange rate of 6.5 Rand to the dollar

transitions...

2007-12-05T10:40:00.000-08:00

Just a very quick note here (because of very sketchy internet connections).... Tomorrow morning we head out for Tanzania and the next stage of the adventure. This past week here in Johannesburg with the Cathcarts has been amazing, and once we're settled in Tanzania, we should be able to get a more detailed update out.

Be well!

the cape town journey continues...

2007-11-30T20:58:00.000-08:00

Oh, but these are powerful days, indeed. We continue to experience the complex contradictions of this amazaing place that South Africa is - the incredible extremes of poverty and wealth, beauty and challenge - something that remains strikingly similar to the contradictions of our very own south end of Seattle in many ways. It has been so powerful for us to be here together with the Cathcarts, as we are able to talk deeply about things here, as well as about things at home. This trip is such a gift and blessing to begin with, and being joined by our dear friends - being able to share the experience, has made it all the more wonderful.

We are also quite overwhelmed with the hospitality of our hosts - Pastor Alphonso Schilder, his wife, Crystal and their daughters - Meagan and Micaela. They have welcomed us into their home, their family and their life, which has taken our experience here to a level we couldn't have expected.

Some of the highlights (as if EVERYTHING is not a highlight...)

A few days ago we joined the rehab program men from Pastor Alfonso's church as they serve soup in one of the informal settlement areas of Mitchell's Plain. Three times a week they take their soup cart (a trailer that hooks to a vehicle - quite cool!) into the community - providing for many what amounts to their main (or only) meal for the day. It is wonderful to watch this group work, and a blessing to be able to share in that with them.

Wednesday, Ernie and I joined and shared with the men in the program at their morning devotions - such a incredible testimony to God's redemptive power. These are all men who have chosen to leave the street life of drugs and gangs, and to hear their stories is overwhelming. These are men who are so humble and so committed in their faith, as they have come back from the edge of death - literally. It is such a privilege for us to be able to spend time with them, and bear witness to their work - personal work, as well as their work in their community, as they now give their lives away to build that community up.

We've also had a chance to experience the incredible physical beauty of Cape Town - traveling up Table Mountain, and touring to the Cape of Good Hope. Pictures cannot do justice to the stunning physical beauty, but we'll try.

We have explored markets here as well, enjoying the entrepreneurial creativity of the people. The Khayelitsha Craft Market (Khayelitsha is a mostly black township of about 1 million) is a small market organized by a neighborhood church to create an opportunity for local artisans to have a venue to sell their creations. We also visited Green Market Square in downtown Cape Town, and I'm pleased to say that Matt found a screaming deal on a djembe (drum), so he won't have to look for big blue water jugs the next time he wants to lead folks in some singing.

Saturday we head for Johannesburg and Soweto. There we'll be moving even more deeply into the history of the struggle, and we look forward to continuing to see the powerful commitment of so many as they undertake redemptive work in this amazing country.

cape town!

2007-11-26T22:44:00.000-08:00

This will just be a quick note to let you all know we’ve made it to Cape Town – Mitchell’s Plain, to be more precise! We have settled in to the wonderful hospitality of Pastor Alfonso Schilder and his wife, Crystal. They have built an apartment attached to their home that they use as a guest house, and we will be staying here for the week. The Cathcarts (good friends from Seattle) arrived on Sunday, and it is so wonderful to be together with them here – much good reflection and dialogue and reconnecting!

Mitchell’s Plain is a large township – 1.5 million people – mostly coloured. It’s in the area know as Cape Flats, which is the region of Cape Town where the townships were created when the government moved black and coloured folk out of the areas of Cape Town deemed desirable (starting in the mid 1960s) . The scale of things here is much more vast than Port Elizabeth (whose entire population is 1.5 million), and the contrasts of rich and poor are more extreme.
We’ll add a few pictures here, and will try to get back to this and give more detail about things soon. There are many stories to tell, both from our adventures and also of the people and this place.

digging deeper...

2007-11-21T06:40:00.000-08:00

So… hard to believe, but we’re left with only two days to go here in Port Elizabeth. Our time has been so full that our arrival into the PE airport a short 10 days ago seems like ages ago. We have become very attached to this place and our new friends.

Andy and Matt are spending their school days at Sapphire Road Primary. Though school has slowed down a great deal, since the students are finished with their exams (the students go out on their summer break – remember seasons are opposite here in the southern hemisphere – in about a week), the boys have good connections there, and enjoy being able to hang with kids, not getting dragged around with us adults. They also have developed relationships with the neighbourhood boys where we are staying, and are enjoying daily soccer matches (the current/informal Drape Academy PE program).

Chrissie and I have visited four more schools in the last two days – rather intense, as we’ve been in deep conversation with the principals – but what a gift it has been for us to be able to spend time with them:

Hamie Peterson @ Jubilee Park Primary

Dan Mavukela @ Noninzi Luzipho Primary

Sipho Matyolo @ Cebelihle Primary

Mandisi Mvimbeli @ Jarvis Gqualama Primary

At each of these (as well as Sapphire and Charles Duna), we have met with school leaders who are doing so much, with so little material resource. These schools are true centers of the community, addressing much more than the educational needs of the students, serving in various degrees as job training centers, feeding programs, health and counselling support programs. These principals represent their respective communities’ mindset of hope – resourcefulness – perseverance…. Optimistic attitudes balanced with the pragmatic approach of making a way through very challenging circumstances – but circumstances they see filled with opportunity. And all of this set in a context where we have been so graciously and lovingly welcomed. Port Elizabeth is known within South Africa as the “friendly city,” and it has certainly lived up to its name.

We do recognize that we have only seen a small slice of the South African reality, even here within PE, and we are careful not to project too much from our limited experience. It is so clear that the South African story – the “new” South Africa – has myriad layers. The communities that we have spent time in represent the challenge the country faces in addressing the legacies of apartheid – economic hardship, racial complexities, health challenges. The dynamics of hardship in SA are quite complex, and the economic story of the country is as well. We don’t begin to presume deep understanding, but are fascinated by stepping into the questions and conversations.

The South African Institute on Race Relations - http://www.sairr.org.za/ – has a website with a series of fascinating articles (news releases section), that if you have the time, are well worthy of perusing. One in particular cites Steven Biko’s legacy as a critical element for the new South Africa (Biko was the main force in establishing the Black Consciousness Movement within the struggle to end apartheid – a movement stressing the need for psychological liberation in the midst of the physical liberation, and was killed in police custody in 1977. The book “Cry Freedom” tells his story) – here’s the link: http://www.sairr.org.za/wsc/pstory.php?storyID=452

This blog entry is perhaps a little more weighty than some of you may be looking for, but it’s important for us, the Drapes, to wrestle through this as we travel, so we’re happy to share our wrestling with you all as well.

Matt answers questions

2007-11-20T17:45:00.000-08:00

How is Africa? It is very nice here. So far, it has been hot, but it has been very windy, so the heat and wind mix to make perfect weather.

Do you still have the chicken? Yes, we still have the chicken. But we haven't taken very many pictures lately. One will probably pop up sooner or later.

Is the scenery pretty? Yes, it is very pretty. It looks like Oregon! Port Elizabeth is on the Indian Ocean, and the beach is perfect for body surfing.

Andy and Matt, are you enjoying your school experience? Yes, very much. It is the end of the school year here, because we are in the Southern Hemisphere. We aren't working very much, so it is very easy.

Are the people nice? Yes, the people are very nice. You get a few glances saying, "Why are YOU here?" But otherwise, everyone is very nice.

We were surprised to find out that the teachers can hit the students. - We have not been hit, but we have seen other students get hit, and we are very glad that we have not! The teachers hit the tips of your fingers with a ruler if you act up. [Parent editorial: Corporal punishment is on the way out in South Africa, so this is not necessarily condoned!]

London muggings: No, we were not "hugged" or pick-pocketed in London. This is just a story we heard. We have not been hurt or threatened by anyone on our trip.

WERE YOU PRETTY TIRED AFTER WALKING ALL THAT WAY IN LONDON? Yes, my legs felt like giving out. I had to work twice as hard as everybody else, because my legs are shorter, and everybody else had a quicker pace than me.

Port Elizabeth Update

2007-11-16T20:00:00.000-08:00

It's been a powerful last few days, as we have spent time deeply in two schools - Sapphire Road Primary, with Principal Bruce Damons; and Charles Duna Primary, with Principal Nombulelo Sume. These are two extraordinary leaders and individuals, who are not only running schools, but true community centers addressing the needs of their respective neighborhoods (we'll tell this part of the story in more detail in a future blog).

Our second day at Sapphire on Wednesday was highlighted by Matt's teaching his classmates a Nigerian song he learned at The New School (thank you, Jah Breeze!) - "Funga Alafia." Ms. Aileen, the school's Mrs. Everything, even helped Matt search out a suitable drum (big blue jug). It was quite a sight watching the energy for the song spill out of the classroom to the lunch recess, where more students joined the "choir," and Matt unintentionally collected quite a following. He loved teaching his classmates the song, but I think the attention got a little intense for him at recess. Chrissie finished up her beading projects, and continued her growing connection with her new friends.

The last two days we have been at Charles Duna, another primary school serving 958 students in the black township of New Brighton (the student population is 100% black, with many students starting school only speaking Xhosa). Most of the students come from the "informal settlements" (the tin and cardboard shacks that go for miles around the edges of PE) surrounding the government housing within the township - all are very poor - and again there is a 90+% unemployment rate in the community. The government is building more permanent housing, but as soon as one family moves out of one of the informal settlement homes, a new family will move in. There is a great deal of migration into the urban areas from the rural townships, so the government's attempt to move folks out of the informal settlements will take years. While there has been social progress in the years since apartheid ended (1994 was the election of Nelson Mandela and the new government), there is still significant economic work to be done.

New Brighton was an important center of the struggle against apartheid, and we visited a museum in the neighborhood (Red Location Museum - http://www.freewebs.com/redlocationmuseum/) - dedicated to chronicling the struggle, and focusing on the stories from the community. It is a powerful exhibition, and the museum is set in the middle of the community with both "official" government housing and informal settlements surrounding it.

While at Charles Duna yesterday, we also visited the homes of two students (with the students, Principal Sume, and Deputy Principal Cynthia). Both homes were in the informal settlements. While from the outside these homes look like they are barely standing, they are works of significant resourcefulness and perseverance - and are HOMES, not just shelters. One of the families we visited has lived in their home for 18 years! While it felt somewhat voyeuristic to come to see the families in their homes, the families and the school leadership are committed to making sure their story is told outside the community - helping the broader community (in and out of South Africa) to understand that the end of apartheid does not automatically mean an end to the conditions apartheid created.

Today at Charles Duna we worked with a grade 6 and grade 7 class on art projects - doing decopage (sp?) - painting and decorating trays students had made. It was a great time of sharing with and hearing from the students, while exercising the right side of our brains. We were also treated to a wonderful performance of the school choir and dancers.

We have experienced a great range of things in these days, strong connections with colleagues, budding relationships with families and students, difficult situations of poverty and struggle.... In all of this, the constant theme of our time here has been one of exceptional hospitality - at every point we have been warmly welcomed and graciously cared for. This hospitality says so much about the spirit, character and resilience of the people of Port Elizabeth. We are so blessed to have the privilege of building relationships here.

Port Elizabeth - Day In The Life

2007-11-13T21:00:00.000-08:00

We spent the day today at Sapphire Primary School in Booysen Park, a township in Port Elizabeth, SA (our host, Bruce, is the principal of the school). We were all busy doing different things.... Sapphire is a Port Elizabeth primary school, serving grades 1-7 (secondary schools serve 8-12). It is home to about 1000 students, and is set in a colored community of PE, with black townships surrounding it (these are real terms in South African: colored = of mixed race, and black = indigenous Africans). The school instructs in both Afrikaans and English, with the third language of the school being Xhosa - the indigenous African language. It's population is about 50% colored and 50% black, but all poor - with 90% of the families unemployed. For many of the students at the school, the lunch the school provides (two slices of bread, sometimes with spread, and a nutritional drink) is the only meal they will have for the day.

The Different Experiences
Chris: I shadowed Bruce all day, reliving my life as a principal - ringing phones, visiting parents, recess duty. Bruce is a remarkable leader, and an inspiration for those he works with, as well as for me. We have had powerful and deep conversations not only about South Africa and education, but about human nature and leadership, and we continue to examine the parallels and differences between our settings (the paradox being there are so many similarities set is startling contrasts). I am inspired by his vision, and his ability to balance the practical (he is South African's version of a notary public and took time out of his crazy day to notarize employment application documents for a young man who came in off the streets) and often unplanned work of a principal in his setting, with the visionary work of being an instructional leader and community leader. I also had the opportunity to sit in on an adult education course that takes place at his school. It is a program run by the SA department of labor, but fits perfectly into the vision of the school (committed to empowering the neighborhood, not just working with the students of the community). These are folks, ages 18-50+ who have committed to going back to complete the schooling they never finished. They are an inspiration, and they represent authentic, student centered and driven learning. It was great to have a chance to sit in their midst.

Chrissie: Mom attended an adult bead-making class most of the day. Since the area around Sapphire has about 90% unemployment, the school has become a parent job-training site as well as a primary school. (Welding, carpentry, sewing, farming.) One of the courses is a week-long bead work class, taught by a school parent and graduate of the program, Lynn. Chrissie was joined by another parent, Theodora, and a neighbor, Latisha, who had some craft ideas of her own to share. They spent the day making necklaces, bracelets, and earrings. Bruce has encouraged us not to be afraid to cross boundaries, and to ask probing questions. So Chrissie asked the other ladies what life was like under apartheid, and now, after. Latisha said, "Under apartheid, only white ladies would sit around playing with beads. And now here we are teaching you!"

Andy: Sapphire is almost done for the school year. Their summer break starts in two weeks. (The seasons are opposite of ours here in the southern hemisphere.) So Andy attended a Grade 6 class with Mrs. Williams. The students asked him lots of questions - Has he been to a 50-Cent concert? - What does a dollar look like? Does it have the picture of our president on it? - Has he been to a WWE event? In the classes, if you misbehave, teachers are allowed to pinch you or smack you with a ruler. Lucky Andy, he made it through the day without either!

Matt: Matt attended a Grade 4 class with Ms. Prinsloo. He was also asked lots of questions. In his class, the teacher was allowed to 1) hit your shoulder with a ruler, 2) hit you with a bamboo pole. Matt says his day was good, and he misses everyone who is reading this, and those who aren't, too.

We're looking forward to tomorrow and day 2 at Sapphire. On Thursday and Friday we are visiting a primary school in a black township, so we'll be able to give you a comparative sense of our experience.

Blessings!
The Drapes

photos...

2007-11-12T10:23:00.000-08:00

Here are two, for now.

Chrissie, Marie van Rooyen (our housing host) and Chris

Andy, Bruce Damons (our overall host) and Matt in Bruce's office - in front of his vision wall.

South Africa!

2007-11-11T18:48:00.000-08:00

From Chrissie: We've arrived in South Africa! Our internet access is limited, and it's dial-up, so we'll just post a quick note for now, and try to load a picture later.

We were greeted at the airport in Port Elizabeth on Friday evening by our host, Bruce Damons, principal of Sapphire Road Primary School. We were treated to a braai (bbq) at the home of Marie van Rooyen, a retired teacher, along with much of the Sapphire teaching staff. We are staying in Marie's home, which she has converted into a guesthouse. It is a comfortable two-bedroom house here in Port Elizabeth, and we are grateful for both the lodgings and the warm hospitality!

We spent the weekend on "holiday" with Bruce, Marie, and Marie's friend Sylvia. We drove along the Sunshine Coast to a small resort in Sedgefield. We stopped along the way to watch nutty people bungy jumping from a very tall suspension bridge. On the return home today, we stopped at Monkeyland, a reserve for monkeys rescued from cages and zoos. Matt has announced that he'd like to be a monkey when he gets to heaven.

Tomorrow, Bruce is taking us on an insider's tour of Port Elizabeth. Then we will be in schools starting on Tuesday. We have a rental car, so pray for Chris as he has to drive on the left! No issues so far, other than turning on the windshield wipers when he wants to use his turn signal. We will be in PE for almost two weeks, and are looking forward to spending time with our new friends, and meeting even more!

London Closing

2007-11-08T00:34:00.000-08:00

We’re in our last day of London time – We fly out tonight on our way to South Africa! We’ve had a wonderful time with Grandpa Roger and Grandma Fran adventuring in London. We have walked miles and miles while we’ve been here. And with the extensive nature of the London Underground (subway or “tube” – pronounced “chube”), if we get too far out for a return walk, we can always catch the Underground.

Since the boys’ last update, we’ve continued to explore in and out of London:

We headed out to the Cotswolds – a cozy little countryside full of sheep and beautiful old things. We took the train to Moreton-in-Marsh, and wandered through their weekly market (folks from all over the area selling things from fabulous local food – cheese, meat, scones… - to used books, new clothes, tools). It was a great place to see the real, working aspects of the area. We then took a local bus to Stow-in-the-Wold, an even cozier town. One of the highlights there was walking around and through St. Edwards Church (built in the 1400s). It’s quite an amazing structure, and for you Lord of the Rings fans, lore has it that JRR Tolkien got the inspiration for his door to Moria from the Yew-tree-straddled church door here.

We’ve also hit lots of museums and historical places. A few days ago we took a good wander through the British Library and the British Museum. The library holds many of the museums old manuscripts, and has a very cool exhibit displaying beautiful old bibles and other books of faith, original manuscripts from folks like Sylvia Plath, William Blake, the Brontes, Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, the Beatles, the Magna Carta … quite amazing. The British Museum has an incredible collection of things “gathered” from around the world – especially some amazing ancient Greek and Egyptian relics. I suppose this is related to ruling much of the world at a point, though I imagine Greece and Egypt might want some of their things back. You’ll notice Matt getting punched by Rameses II.

Last night, being our final one in London, we lived it up and went to see Mary Poppins. The London theatre scene is over-the-top grand, and the show was fabulous. We’re still all humming along with Mary and Bert today.

I’m not sure what our internet access will be in South Africa, but we’ll update as we can. We’re very excited for this next part of the journey. The first two weeks will be with a school principal and his colleagues in Port Elizabeth, where we’ll be able to connect and hang out with educators in one of the townships of PE, as it’s called. Andy and Matt will be able to go to school during this time, so they don’t have to keep following their parents to museums. They’re looking forward to this. While we’ll still be visitors, we are looking forward to the relationships we all will make in this chance to settle in to a place more deeply.

Cheers!

Andy and Matt’s Do’s and Don’ts of World Travel – London, England Edition

2007-11-04T22:44:00.000-08:00

Do’s
*Take the Underground (London’s subway): It’s fun, it’s fast, it’s cheap (kids 11 and under are free).
*Take the Big Bus Tour of London: It’s a tour of London with commentary in a double-decker, open-top bus that takes you all over the city. We learned lots of cool facts (like how old some buildings are; that the Tower Bridge is the only bridge over the Thames where cars have to give way to boats).

*Visit the Tower of London: Cool exhibits where you can learn a lot about the history of the place, as well as seeing the Crown Jewels (all the royal crowns, maces, swords etc. down from history). One piece of history from the Tower of London is that being queen can be short and dangerous - Jane Grey was queen for 9 days before she was beheaded.

*Go to Cambridge: Visit King’s Chapel (at King’s College) – begun in 1446. We went to Evensong there (the evening service that happens every night). If you are already a Christian, it’s great. If you’re not, it can be a little boring. We also learned that Cambridge University is actually made up of 31 different colleges, so don’t go to the city of Cambridge and ask where the university campus is.

*Play football (soccer) in Hyde Park (where you can also see Peter Pan).

*Visit Platform 9 and 3/4 at King's Cross Station.

*Take lots of pictures.

Don’ts

*Don’t take the bus (regular bus). It’s very crowded and the streets have even more traffic than Seattle.
*Don’t cross the street too quickly – cars don’t stop for pedestrians, and they come from the "wrong" direction.
*Don’t drive on the right.
*Don’t let drunk people hug you outside of the pub after midnight (this is the latest pick-pocket, or love-mugging, trick to get your wallet or phone).
*Don’t eat Cornish pasties.

Also, we’ve enjoyed learning how to say things here, like:
“Football” means soccer
“American football" means football
“Mind the gap” means watch your step (“mind the _____” means pay attention to the ____)
“Cheers” means thanks
“Sorry” means excuse me
"Row" means fight
And… a very important one… “bacon” really means ham.

We’ll tell you some more, later, on Andy and Matt’s do’s and don’ts of world travel.

dc

2007-10-30T02:42:00.000-07:00

I can see that as we move into our more intensive times of travel, that we will need to post more often. There is too much that is happening in any one day to let too many go by with any hope of effective summary.

Washington DC has been wonderful. We're staying with Chrissie's cousin, David Austin (aka, uncle-cousin-brother), and it would be difficult to find a better host. David is the best, and there's lots of familial love to go around.

We came in Friday night around 6:30 - remarkable in the fact that we had a late flight leaving Bend with a very short turn-around in Portland. We had to get our bags, and re-check-in (wait at counter/check bags, go through security, etc.) and given that we landed when our next flight was supposed to be boarding, we had given up hope that we would make the flight. However, Berta, our very helpful Southwest agent, cared for us (seemingly) well, and scooted us off. We ran (literally and fast) through the Portland airport and took the last - the VERY last four seats on the flight. We were scattered throughout the plane - Matt, of course made a new best friend with the lady he sat with (who let him use her ipod) - We put skinny Andy in the middle seat with the "large" man (sorry, Andy) - and I got to sit next to Mr. Talky (3 beers on the 8:00am flight). The only downside to our trip was that our luggage didn't seem to make it out of Chicago, so we enjoyed our first 2 days of travel in one set of clothes. We did pack an extra tooth brush in the carry on, and from here on, fresh undies will go in as well.

There are so many things to highlight about DC that we'll have to do a list here. As I said, David is the supreme companion and guide - having deep DC roots and experience. I do also have to add that he lives with a dear couple - Bart and Linda Tarman - whose gracious hospitality we enjoyed as well. On the hospitality-thanking front, our first two nights in town we stayed across the street in the office/apartment of Grace Nelson, wife of Senator Bill Nelson of Florida. Funny.

So, the summary:
-Saturday - walked a gazillion miles, seeing the monuments and an dinner out (Mortons) for the grown-ups (boys get pizza :) ).
-Sunday - an absolutely beautiful day, Mt. Vernon (home to Pres. #1), Annapolis (home to Naval Academy, St John's College - one of David's alma maters - and of course Chick & Ruth's - more on that in a minute), and church that evening at Church of the Resurrection - a wonderful groups of believers and powerful service.
-Monday - Holocaust museum (powerful...), National Gallery, Capitol, National Archives (think Declaration of Independence), Library of Congress, Arlington National Cemetery (and the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (again, powerful...). A full and fabulous day.

Throughout it all, David took grand care of us (and our boys LOVE their Uncle David). He was especially giving and gracious in that he is in the midst of a very intensive week of organizing around an Israeli-Palestinian gathering he is planning/hosting starting next Sunday (pray for that!).

So... to that one story I mentioned above - Chick & Ruth's. The experience is a good example of the seredipitous fun that comes on such adventures. Chick & Ruth's is a glorious diner/deli in Annapolis - a local feature that has been there since 1965. Son, Ted, now runs the show (and has been working there since it opened, when he was nine) - working the crowd and keeping things rolling. The place is an institution, and was packed out. It was fabulous (good and greasy) food, with gigantic milkshakes (and my pastrami & swiss omelette was divine). Toward the end of our meal, Ted comes over and starts entertaining the boys with magic tricks (where DID he put that salt?) - hilarious. On our way out, we grabbed Ted and Bridgette, our waitress, for a picture. A very nice gentlemen offered to take the photo for us. Turns out that he just happens to be a former governor of Maryland (we'll send that picture on later). Very funny and wonderful time, and represents the kind of fun that we have had here.

So, this morning we're off to London, and the beginnings of the overseas time! The grand adventure expands and continues. Since we have a direct flight, we're hoping the bags make it with us this time, but we'll see. We're ready, regardless.

Peace!

Ready to Go...

2007-10-25T20:49:00.001-07:00

We’ve been back in Bend almost a week, so it’s high time that we updated things here. It’s been a week of regrouping, repacking and making sure we have what we need for the next four months of adventure (and that we can fit it into our backpacks). We head out at the crack of dawn tomorrow – actually, earlier than the crack, since sunrise is 7:30am and we board at 5:40am – on our way to Washington DC and cousin David.

We cruised our way back from Iowa last week with another Boulder, Colorado stop. This time our dear friends Will and Beth WERE there (and Bill and Charlie, too), so we stayed with them, not just in their house. We had a day of snow-driving between Boulder and Park City, Utah (our overnight stop), with a quick little stop and hike in Dinosaur National Monument (once we were beyond the snow). On our way from Park City to Bend we saw even more prong horns in Eastern Oregon than we had seen in Wyoming.

It’s been nice to have a few days to get reorganized here, enjoying the glory of central Oregon – 75 degrees and sunny yesterday – 45 degrees and sunny today. We also had the chance to visit cousin Caleb and Ben’s school, and were able to share about our trip with their classrooms.

We also had some good Seattle connection this week. Chrissie’s BFF, Lisa Ritscher, came down for a couple of days for some good girl time (Chrissie had the nerve to say her 4 weeks with 4 boys – her three and my dad – was not fully sufficient to meet her emotional needs). I cruised up to Portland for a night to hang out with our brother, Steffen Nelson. It was a little Seattle relational fix that was wonderful, while making us miss you all more.

So we find ourselves here the night before the big take-off, getting generational haircuts (grandpa cuts dad, dad cuts boys), finding a place for everything - deciding what we can’t live without, and then leaving half of that behind.
We will work to keep up our weekly (or so) blog updates. Be well!

pendulum

2007-10-15T07:34:00.000-07:00

Monday, and our final day in Iowa. It’s another rainy one, so we’ll have time to gather our belongings, wash the gravel-road dust off the car and pack for our trip back to Bend. We’re leaving tomorrow morning for our 850 miles to Boulder. We’ll stay in Boulder Wednesday (hanging out with our friends Bill Locke, and Will & Beth Laughlin – we hope, this time J), then off to Bend, via Salt Lake City overnight, arriving in Bend Friday night.

We’ve had a wonderful stay here in Iowa, and it will be hard to leave, especially for Matt, whose favorite place, and the place he wants to stay forever, is wherever we currently are.

For those of you who have been privy to the annual Drape Family Christmas letter, you know that I like to take seemingly non-eventful events, and expand on them a bit. I haven’t really taken the chance to do that yet on our trip, so now seems like a good time. We’ll call this story “Pendulum.”

You probably know that farming is dangerous work. There are many (often comically graphicked) warnings signs on the heavy equipment, reminding us when to jump off, and when not to jump off the overturning tractor. Last Thursday I tried (unsuccessfully, thankfully) to become a statistic.

Two lessons. Don’t park a loaded grain wagon on soft ground, and don’t wear a ring (even your wedding ring) while working at such pursuits.

We were harvesting corn down the highway from the farm, and had finished the field we were in. Uncle Dave and my dad had already set off for the next field, so Bill (Figenbaum, owner of the trucking/grain storage company that hauls for the Drapes) and I were loading out the last of the corn. The first wagons were dumping away into the semi, so I ran off to move the next wagon up in the queue. The fields are still soft from recent rain, and a 35,000-pound load of corn has a tendency to sink – sometimes right up to the axel. This wagon was not up to the axel yet, but it did happen to be the wagon pulled by the tractor least equipped to pull something out when stuck. Bill and I rocked and cajoled to see if we could get it unstuck, but to no great avail. Bill was in the stuck tractor when I noticed we were getting close to moving time with the semi (the auger dumps in, and you pull the semi forward gradually, so as to fill evenly). I dashed off to move the semi forward (yes, Bill allowed me to drive his semi, but it was in 4-foot increments, so reasonably safe, at least “safe” in the relative sense of working with equipment that can squash you like a grape), so we didn’t have corn spilling all over the road. My Grandma Edna is fond of reminding us that she never spilled any corn in her 75+ years of harvesting – a goal we all aspire to, but cannot attain.

So I ran to the semi trailer, and climbed up to see how close we were to time to pull ahead. We were very close, so I jumped off the trailer and ran around the front of the truck to jump in the cab. In order to propel myself more efficiently around the front of the truck, I grabbed the side mirror to pivot and swing myself along. Before I knew what was happening I found myself slamming my head against Bill’s truck. It seems that my wedding ring had caught on a screw on the side mirror, and thus turned my arm into a pendulum, and my head into the nice weight at the end of the pendulum – and WHAM! Head meets truck. I will let you know that the truck is harder than my head (thankfully no dents in Bill’s truck) and a gold ring bends under such pressure, though one’s finger does not. This little mishap, while leaving my finger rather mangled, and head throbbing, did not deter me from my task of moving the truck ahead (remember, our highest priority, short of glorifying God and enjoying him forever, is not spilling corn). After I successfully bounced the truck ahead the requisite four feet, I examined my wounds. My ring was no longer round, rather more of a teardrop shape. It’s difficult to remove such a shape from a round (and swelling) finger, so I grabbed the vice-grips from the tractor tool-box, returned the ring to a semi-circular shape and pulled it off. My head seemed fine for the moment… and the other tractor was still stuck.

So, Bill and I quickly switched tractors, and got the honkin’ big tractor (a technical term) to pull the wagon free, and got on with the loading of corn.

At lunch at Grandma Edna’s that day, I was proud to tell my story of solving our stuck wagon problem while beating a semi with my head AND not spilling any corn in the process.

I am healing up fine, and Grandma let me eat an extra piece of chocolate cake. Chrissie is now in possession of my ring, at least until we are in less dangerous territory, and we have promised Priya we will not post any pictures of the actual incident, or finger – so all seems well. I am thinking of turning the incident into a Drape Academy math/physics lesson, making the boys figure out the impact of a longer or shorter arm on the velocity (and force of impact) of my head.
So, there you go. honkin' big tractor
not-so-honkin' big tractor

Three editorial notes… two amusing, and one serious.
I did not let Chrissie edit this (because she wanted to remove all my parenthetical thoughts), so she takes no responsibility for the content or style.
When I told my dear wife I was going to write this story for the blog, since I hadn’t rambled on about nothing in particular in any focused way on the blog, she replied that “rambling on about nothing in particular” describes most of my blog entries.
The serious note: Since we know many of you readers are praying folk, please be lifting up Grandma Weidler (the twin who just turned 97). She is hospitalized with some internal bleeding that doctors are trying to figure out. We’ll keep you posted.

Matt's Thoughts About School

2007-10-12T14:04:00.000-07:00

Matt spent about a week and a half attending 4th grade in Mrs. Egli’s class at Margaretta Carey Elementary School here in Waverly, Iowa. Our special thanks to Mrs. Egli, her class, and the entire school for making Matt feel so welcome. Here are some of Matt’s thoughts about his time at school, in no particular order:

School was fun, and I enjoyed having two recesses again (thank you, Carey Elementary staff!).

Recess: I liked playing soccer at recess, but I wish it was a bit more organized like during PE.

Lunch: The food is good – a lot better than my school’s at home. But couldn’t the lunch lady leave the lights on when we’re talking too much?!

Math: Go, algebra! I learned a few things that I had never known (thank you, Mrs. Egli!). I learned that if you correctly simplify algebra, it will turn into an upside down pyramid.

Reading: I liked the mini-books, and I really liked “free” reading.

Science: The thing I liked about science is that we got to watch tv for homework! [Weather Report]

Art: I liked doing the watercolor paintings.

Music: It reminded me of singing and playing drums at my school at home with Jah’Breeze.

I liked that the school day was longer, but not TOO much. [8:25 – 3:10]

There are a few people of color, but not very many – I’d like to see more in Iowa. It made me miss my friends in Seattle, especially from our Rainier Beach neighborhood.

I really liked having the field trip while I was there. We went to the Bremer County Historical Museum. The ghost story was cool, but I didn’t believe it. I liked the war room.

I’m glad I met Mrs. Egli at church. Otherwise I would never have gone to school and met so many new friends.

Where's the chicken?!

The Whirlwind Week

2007-10-10T05:42:00.000-07:00

The past week has been quite full and varied, so instead of trying to sum it up too much in words, we’ll tell it in pictures (with a little captioning).

Saturday was perhaps the fullest, starting with the Waverly (vol.) Fire Department’s pancake breakfast. We got there right at 6:30am to avoid the rush, and make sure we got our fair share of the fried rinderwurst patties (mmmm!).

Andy and I got a reprieve from picking corn Saturday morning, so we could run the Waverly

Light and Power's Best Dam 5k (get it?). Andy went ahead and won his age group, and beat most of the high school cross country team that ran the race as well.

We then had a big (early) Thanksgiving dinner at my dad’s for lunch - with the Drape extended family all together. After cleaning up, Chrissie and I headed out for Solon, IA (about two hours away) and Anne Davies’ (New School teacher) wedding.

Sunday’s big event was Grandma Weidler’s 97th birthday party following church (photos thanks to Matt, self-appointed chief photographer of the event). My Grandma Weidler (mom's mom) is the twin on the left in the pictures. My Grandma Edna (dad's mom, turning 97 in January) is the one standing in the picture of three grandmas (and almost 300 years of wisdom!).

We had a great time with my brother and his family (Doug, Kim, Zach and Mara) while they were here – so much so that when they tried to fly out on Monday, it didn’t work, so we went back and got them, and they stayed one more day. Yesterday they tried to leave again, and it worked.

Andy’s cross-country season ended yesterday with the conference meet. Since he’s a home-schooled kid, he has been able to run officially in these meets (funny). He went ahead and got 6th overall, and 1st for his school, at yesterday’s meet (more funny).

Matt finished up his school stint last week, and will add his own blog entry with details on his time in class.

We also took in the Fall Waverly Draft Horse Sale. Some amazing horses there. We went to the main auction for a bit one day - the first horse sold for $800… the fourth for $26,000. We didn’t buy anything (sorry Grandpa Roger).

Yesterday, we took a little stroll across the Wartburg College campus (my mom's, and Uncle David's, alma mater), just down the road from where my dad lives.

So there you have a bit of the update. A week left, and lots of corn to go. It’s finally turning to fall weather here, so I actually get to wear the coat I brought, and don’t have to keep working in the one pair of work shorts I have. Don't forget to tune back in soon for Matt's version of his 4th grade experience.

an important clarification

2007-10-03T04:12:00.000-07:00

We realized yesterday, after our kernels musings, that we need to clarify about this corn we are harvesting. This is not sweet corn. This is "feed" corn (also sometimes referred to as "field" corn), corn that will end up (depending on your view) satisfying many cattle, in order to satisfy many beef-eaters. The vast majority of cattle in the US have corn as a significant part of their diet (though there is a growing movement to head back to "grass" fed cattle, but that is another story).

A little more on the mechanics of how this all works. Sweet corn you harvest when the stalks are still nice and green, and in a perfect world you eat that corn as quickly as you can after you have picked it (it's sugars start turning to starch as soon as you pick it... so the closer you are to picking time, the sweeter it is). With feed corn, one wants the corn to dry out (better for storage), so you don't harvest the corn until the stalks have died and dried, and the moisture content of the corn drops below 20%. You really want the moisture content to get to ~14% for storage, but you can't always wait for that to happen in the field (snow can sometimes come early, and you don't want to have to wait until spring to harvest :) ), so when we haul it out of here (actually, the Figenbaums haul it out of here), it goes to Tripoli (pronounced "truh-POH-lah") where it is stored and dried. Once dried, it is either sold from there, or some might come back out to the farm and Drape grain bins to be stored until sold (at this point, I can't begin to explain the process around the sale of corn (or beans), so you'll have to wait on that). Corn that comes out of the field in the neighborhood of 15% moisture content, can be put directly into grain bins at the farm.

I'm sure if my Uncle Dave is still reading our blog, he'll let me know if the city-boy has any egregious errors in his attempt to sound informed about corn here.

FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

2007-10-02T08:58:00.000-07:00

1. How are you able to take a year off?
This trip has been in the works for about 5 years, although we’ve talked about traveling as a family since before our kids were born. After ten years as a high school teacher, Chris became an administrator in 2002. At that time two things happened – he got a significant pay increase, and he lost his summers off. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be an administrator forever, and we were all heart-broken about the end of family summers. So we vowed to save his pay increase, and planned to take a year off at some point in the future. While we didn’t save as much as we thought we might be able to (does anyone ever?!), we did save a significant amount over these five years.

We’ve always called this year our “sabbatical”. About a year ago we made passing reference to the sabbatical. Andy, who was just about to start middle school, asked when this was going to happen. He put in a request that he not miss sixth grade (first year of middle school), and not miss eighth grade (big year!). So he spoke it into being, and here we are, with Andy in 7th grade and Matt in 4th.

Chris is on a leave of absence from the school district, and while he was replaced as Principal of The New School, he is promised a position when we return. He is fully committed to being an educator in South Seattle, but what form that takes remains to be seen. Chrissie is also on leave from both Rainier Scholars, and Emerald City Bible Fellowship (our home church), and is able to return to both positions when we return. (Thank you Bob and Shawn!)

In other details, our house is rented to Pete, Kit, Cade, and Jack from The New School, Stephanie remains in the basement apartment, brother Doug is keeping our truck, and the worldly possessions we didn’t take with us are boxed away in our attic. [Thought: If everything we need for a year can fit in our car, what the heck is all the stuff in the attic?!]

2. How did you decide where to go?
We started by making a list of all the people we know in the world. This list has changed since we first made it two or so years ago. People have moved back to the US, or changed countries, and we’ve made some new friends. We connected [most of] the dots, and bought plane tickets. The beauty of going places where we know people is that we have personal connections to those places. It is much more difficult to travel totally on our own to places we’ve never been and don’t know much about. Besides, pulling out a world map and trying to decide where to go without some sort of plan or purpose is completely overwhelming.

We purchased Round-The-World tickets through the Star Alliance, which is the network that United Airlines is a part of. Check out their RTW Mileage Calculator sometime at http://www.staralliance.com/. Even if you don’t go anywhere, it’s really fun to play with! We were allowed 39,000 miles for our trip, and we are using 38,944!

3. What are you doing about school?
We are officially registered as homeschoolers with the state of Washington. Ask us sometime about our experience trying to get some help from the Home School Resource Center in Seattle – it wasn’t pretty!

The boys will attend “real” school here and there, as they can. Matt is attending Carey School in Waverly, Iowa for a week or two. Both boys will attend school in South Africa for a few weeks in November. But mostly, they are enrolled full time at the Drape Academy. (Chris is principal and teacher, Chrissie is lunch lady, counselor, and classroom volunteer.)

MATH: The boys have math workbooks. Andy is doing the workbooks he would be doing at Aki Kurose as a 7th grader. The District has all their math curriculum available on their website, which was a big help. He has about 8 workbooks to get through this year. Matt is using Singapore math, which we heard about on NPR once. He’s starting with 3B, which is a review of 3rd grade math, plus a few things he hasn’t learned yet. He will work his way through 4A and 4B this year. Andy is in charge of calculating the mileage for our road trips, and we’re all working on the family budget.

READING: Lucky for us, both boys are avid readers. We are actually a little concerned about how we’ll keep them in books while we are traveling overseas. Before we left Seattle, we read lots of books about the countries we are visiting. You can look up books on the SPL website, and search the Children and Young Adult sections by typing in country names in the subject field.

WRITING: The family is having journal-writing time most every night. Sometimes we just write about anything that comes to mind, and sometimes we have a topic or writing prompt. Theoretically, we hope to turn some of our journals into blog entries, or more formal writings. Maybe in the spring?

SOCIAL STUDIES: We read quite a bit about Native Americans while we were traveling to and from Yellowstone. The Nez Perce traveled through Yellowstone on their flight toward Canada. We read a few chapters from Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, and then watched the new HBO movie by the same name when we got to Iowa. We have read quite a bit of historical fiction about countries we are traveling to, especially South Africa and Cambodia. Our theme for the year is Justice. (For anyone who has taken a US History class from Mr. Drape, you will know the African proverb: Until lions have their own historians, hunters will always be glorified.)

SCIENCE: We studied “thermal features” in Yellowstone. Now we are into farming in Iowa. Matt wants to do a science experiment to see what effect drinking real Coke would have on him. We’ll see about that!

PE: Hiking in Yellowstone, Frisbee anywhere, basketball in Grandpa’s driveway, soccer anywhere, picking up rocks at the farm. What isn’t PE?

4. How do you know what to pack?
Many thanks to several travel books for help on this. (See our reading list!) One book suggested you pack a nanny, and another book suggested that you don’t really need to pack a change of clothes. So we’re aiming for somewhere in the middle. We all have travel backpacks, and that’s all we’re taking. It’s basically a suitcase that you can strap on your back. Lord willing, the piles of things we plan to take will actually fit into the packs. We hope to be able to send some things home too, so we don’t have to haul our souvenirs and gifts all over the world. And yes, we will be very tired of the few shirts we’ve packed by the time we get home. We’ll post some pictures when we are ready to leave the country!

5. Where did the rubber chicken come from?
A teacher at The New School, Libby Sinclair, gave it to Chris as a going away gift last spring. (Thanks, Libby!) We thought it was an excellent gift, and it folds up into a nice little ball, so we decided to take it along with us. Andy has always had a thing about chickens, Grandma Fran has quite a family of chickens (“the girls”), and we have an unintentional chicken theme in our kitchen at home. So it fits, both thematically, and physically.

Feel free to submit a question. We’ll do our best to answer. [Hit the “comment” button at the end of this post.]

Kernels of Corn

2007-10-02T07:16:00.000-07:00

Yesterday my Dad gave Matt and me the assignment to figure out how many kernels of corn there are left to harvest. The answer was ~6,960,000,000 kernels of corn are left to harvest! The way we figured it out, was first that we had 400 acres of corn left to harvest. Then we multiplied that by 200 bushels per acre so that we would know how many bushels we had left to harvest. The answer was 80,000 bushels left to harvest. Then we multiplied 80,000 bushels by 60 pounds per bushel. We got 4,800,000 pounds of corn left to harvest. We then had to figure out how many kernels are in a pound. We counted for a very long time. The answer we came up with was 1,450 kernels per pound. To figure out how many kernels we had left to harvest, we then multiplied 4,800,000 pounds left to harvest, by 1,450 kernels per pound. We have 6,960,000,000 kernels left to harvest.

This morning, my Dad gave me a new problem. I was supposed to find out how many kernels we have already harvested. We have harvested 150 acres of corn. 150 acres times 200 bushels per acre = 30,000 bushels harvested. 30,000 bushels of corn harvested times 60 pounds per bushel = 1,800,000 pounds of corn harvested. Next, 1,800,000 pounds of corn harvested times 1,450 kernels per pound. ~2,610,000,000 kernels of corn have been harvested.

My Dad then told me to find out how many kernels will be harvested. I added together ~2,610,000,000 kernels harvested + ~6,960,000,000 kernels to be harvested = ~9,570,000,000 kernels of corn will be harvested total.

P.S. These are approximate (~) numbers. Depending on the size of the kernels, a total number of kernels per pound can be larger than 1,450, or smaller than 1,450. You also get anywhere around 200 bushels per acre. The number of acres done, and to be done are also appr. numbers. Matt and I did the best we could.

-Andrew

halfway...

2007-10-01T04:23:00.000-07:00

Sunrise at Grandpa Gene's, over the Cedar River

We’re at the midpoint of our Iowa time, and having a grand one at that. This past week has been corn, corn, corn: we hauled away appr. 420,000 lbs of it Thursday, and there is much more to go, about 400 acres of it left. If you figure a hopeful 200 bushels of corn per acre @ 60 lbs per bushel, I believe that means we have about 5 million pounds of corn to go yet. We’ll let Andy and Matt do the math on that to figure out just how many kernels of corn that is. Harvesting corn is more intense than beans – things are moving more quickly (perhaps more on that later), and with that Chrissie stepped into Grandma Edna’s role here at my dad’s place (he has a small farm about 13 miles away from the “home place”) – bringing sandwiches to us during combining/hauling, so that we don’t have to come in from the field. She’s so nice.

This Monday morning will be a little mellow – a respite from the fieldwork as we had a good thunderstorm last night and the ground is too wet to work this morning. We’ll do a little catching up on Drape Academy and overseas trip planning, and may make a run into the big city of Waterloo. After lunch, we’ll probably be back at it in the corn.

This week will be an eventful one:
-My brother’s family (Doug, Kim, Zach and Mara) will be joining us all here on Tuesday for the week
-It’s the big annual Waverly Horse Show/Auction, when the size of the town will double as folks come from all over the world to buy and sell (I’m not exaggerating)
-Don’t forget corn, corn, corn
-Andy has a cross-country meet (funny… see below)
-Matt has more school (more funny… see below)
-We’re having an early Thanksgiving with my dad’s side of the family on Saturday
-Chrissie and I plan to go to a wedding (Anne Davies, New School teacher) a couple of hours away from here Saturday evening
-We have the big celebration of Grandma Weidler (born Bertha Afra Baumgartner) and her twin sister Lena turning 97 this coming Sunday
AND
…corn, corn, corn.

So, the funny things on Andy and Matt - We’ve been able to find adventures for them within our larger adventure here. A number of people at my dad’s church teach at one of the local elementary schools. My dad was talking to one, who happens to teach fourth grade (Matt’s grade) a few weeks before we came, and she said she would love to have Matt join their class for a bit. That has all worked out, and Matt is loving hanging out with Mrs. Egli's fourth graders at Margaretta Carey Elementary School in Waverly, Iowa (http://www.waverly-shellrock.k12.ia.us/carey/). Matt, on his second first-day-of-school

On the Andy front, junior high does not present the same classroom connection as elementary, but I did write to the cross country coach, who very graciously and enthusiastically has let Andy join in on the fun. He even wants Andy to run (unofficially, of course) at their cross-country meet tomorrow in Manchester, which, as you can imagine, has Andy sky-high excited. It’s been great to craft some individual experiences for them here that are not just chasing after the big boys on their large working toys (although we are certainly doing a proper amount of that, as you have seen). We’re excited to continue to find ways for Andy and Matt to dig in on this adventure in their own ways that can help not only broaden their experience and understanding of where we are, but Chrissie’s and mine as well.

On the front of finding little adventures within this larger adventure we’re on, Chrissie and Matt cruised over to Chicago (about 5 hours away…) this weekend. Chrissie’s dear high school friend, Brenda Nelson, lives there with her son Noah (a year older than Matt). They had a great time, and it allowed a little family separation that made us miss each other (they were gone all of 36 hours) – so far we aren’t tired of each other, which is good. (Do you hear that, Carmen?!)

So, there you have a bit of week two, and looking ahead to week three here in Iowa. We do miss our Seattle friends and family greatly. We love getting the updates that we do from you. (HINT: Please write!) We’re busy enough that we don’t always notice the missing, but it certainly creeps in around the edges. It’s a blessing to have such connections with you all. We notice we are not complete apart from those relationships. The beauty of this trip is that it is our chance to connect with those we miss when we are in Seattle!

2007-09-23T04:14:00.000-07:00

Week One in Iowa
We’re settling into things here in Iowa, that “good place to grow” (Iowa state motto). It’s been a warm week with some highlights here:

Highlights (as usual, after the first entry, the others are in no particular order):
1. Hanging with my dad, seeing the family, of course (both my Grandmas are still doing great, living on their own at 96). Grandma Edna (paternal side) lives on the family farm, and has been there since she was two. Grandma Weidler (maternal side) lives in town (four miles from the farm), and has been there since the early 70s, when she and my Grandpa retired from pastoring the country church my dad’s family attended.
2. Driving tractors. We all have been (Andy and Matt drove yesterday while we were picking up rock – see below).
3. Driving trucks (new and old). There are many opportunities to shuttle folks back and forth to the various jobs to be done, and trucks are usually involved (although my favorite farm “truck” is my dad’s new one – which is actually my Grandma Weidler’s 1987 Reliant K car - for those of you who listen to a fine Canadian band, you might be humming “If I had a Million Dollars”). Andy learned to drive the old truck out in the wide-open cleared bean fields, a very safe and soft place, with few things to run into (except rocks – see below).
4. Riding in the combine with Uncle David (my dad’s brother) – Uncle David patiently puts up with his city-folk kin coming out to ooh and ahh at the work of the big John Deere equipment (while there is a Case/International Harvester dealer here in town, the Drapes (pronounced “droppee” in Iowa), are a green family (which in Iowa means John Deere)).
5. Watching Grandma Edna mowing her lawn on her John Deere.
6. Eating Grandma Edna’s serious home cooking comfort food (she still cooks enough to feed the threshing crew).
7. Hauling beans (soy beans, of course… corn will be in a week or so). Uncle David drives the combine, which “picks” the beans, shells them, spits the stalks and pods out the back, and stores the beans in the hopper of the combine. When that is full, he’ll unload into a grain wagon. When the grain wagons are full (they hold 600 bushel of beans, which at 60 lbs/bushel makes a nice 32,000lb load), we haul them over to the grain bins (the auger moves all those little beans up, up and away), and leave them until they are sold.
8. “Harvesting” rock – Iowa fields grow a great variety of granite, ranging from the nice fist-sized 3 lb variety, up to the truck-sized versions. Most of the Drape (remember, say “droppee”) fields have been cleared of rock for years now, but a few years ago Uncle David and my dad bought Lorenzie’s farm (cousin to Grandma Edna). Lorenzie was not the careful farmer that the Drapes are, and there has been some work (ie harvesting rock out of the fields) to bring the ground up to good farming standards.
9. Watching the Wartburg College football team (my Mom’s alma mater, and the local college here in town - go Orange!) beat rival Luther College up in Decorah on Saturday.
10. Farm cats… There aren’t any farm animals on the farm any more (like hogs or cattle – cousin Adam raises hogs a few miles away, but that may be worthy of a later entry), just a dog (see #11) and a bunch of cats (who are supposed to eat the little critters of the farm). Grandma Edna’s cats are working cats – meaning they don’t have any time for humans. They eat her food, and do their work, but don’t wait for them to come and rub up on your leg, because they won’t. This is troubling news for Matt, but fortunately we have Uncle David and Aunt Phoebe’s cat kingdom to make up for this. They have lots of cats (a newish litter just arrived), and many are willing to enjoy some human loving.
11. Maggie, the dog – Uncle David and Aunt Phoebe’s loving black lab, whose car-chasing prowess is unmatched, though will prove to be her demise, as she “chases” from the front…. It’s quite unnerving, even when you know she is going to do it, as she bobs up and then disappears. She can go 25mph, and usually moves off to the side of the road when you’re driving faster than she can run.
12. The upcoming birthday party for Grandma Weidler (my mom’s mom) and her twin, who will be turning 97 on Oct. 5.
Thanks for listening. I’m sure there’s much more to tell (more than you may be interested in hearing). We’ll keep you posted….

Andy and Matt harvesting rock...

Chrissie and Chris unloading beans.

Grandpa Gene, Chrissie, Maggie and Andy.

Soy Beans!

arrival in Iowa

2007-09-19T11:43:00.001-07:00

We made it to Iowa, and what will be our longest stay in one place (4 weeks) until we head back to Bend in March. We got here Monday evening, about 8:30 - after a solid 850 mile drive from Boulder. The trip went quite smoothly, given the almost 13 hours we were in the car together. We'd like to share here some guidance on how to survive such a journey:

Andy:

9/18/07 How to Survive an 850 Mile Car Trip:
1. Try to leave very early. That way you will sleep for the first 2-3 hours.
2. Bring a long, good book.

3. Try and occupy yourself not using any games, books, music, etc.

4. Bring video games. The really do help you pass the super long time in the car.

5. Good music. You will have to listen to it quite a bit.

6. Talk about a lot of stuff - the time will just waste away while you are talking.

7. Bring good car toys. They have to be small enough to fit in a backpack. They also have to be really fun to play with. If they aren't, you will get very bored.

8. Take naps. If it is only 30 minutes, that is 30 minutes of time closer to the destination.

9. Bring some sort of work. If you say, "I will write for 20 minutes," and you write for 20 minutes, you are 20 minutes closer.

10. Bring snacks. Sunflower seeds work very well. You start concentrating on eating, and the time flies by.
11. Take rest stops. They really help. You can stretch, eat, etc.

If you follow these guidelines, your trip will go by very quickly.

Matt's contributions to surviving were:
1. Sleep for 4 hours.
2. Bring 7 books.
3. Bring a Game Boy.
4. Sleep more.
5. Eat.

6. Radio.

Mom added...
-listened to NPR whenever we could
-listened to 3 hours of This American Life podcasts (on Andy's ipod) - thanks Steffen!
-ate our pb&j lunch at 9am

-stared out the window

We had a wonderful time in Boulder - enjoying Will and Beth's house and dog, while missing them, getting to spend lots of time with our friend Bill (seen here with us all playing Texas Hold'em using office supplies for loot),

cruising out to Erie to see Chrissie's college roomate, Sherri, and her family (Tim and TJ),

AND taking a Sunday morning drive down to Colorado Springs to see a statue dedicated to the grandfather of Mom Wilson, William Seymour, the first African American to serve on a jury in the El Paso County court house.

We found a CCDA church in Denver, Agape Christian Church, and made it back from Colorado Springs for the 11:00am service.

Here in Iowa we already started into the bean (soybean) harvest, but are on hold today on account of rain. We'll give you the skinny on the harvest soonly.

Be well!

Books We Are Reading...

2007-09-19T11:32:00.000-07:00

Here is the ongoing list of books we are working our way through as part of our adventure. We welcome any additional suggestions any of you have for us. The names in parentheses after the book indicate who has, or is currently, reading the book. Please do not draw unkind conclusions from the fact that "Dad" appears after very few entries (I'm sure it is due to the fact that the books I am reading are really long and complex).

THE WORLD

Adventuring With Children, by Nan Jeffrey (Mom)

Family Travel: The Farther You Go, The Closer You Get, edited by Laura Manske (Mom)

One Year Off: Leaving It All Behind For a Round-The-World Journey With Our Children, by David Elliott Cohen (Mom, with lots read out loud to all)

How To Travel Practically Anywhere, by Susan Stellin

Rough Guides: First Time Around The World (Mom and Dad)

The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities For Our Time, By Jeffrey Sachs (Dad)

Lonely Planet series

THE UNITED STATES

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, by Dee Brown (Mom reads aloud in car)

Nisei Daughter, by Monica Itoi Sone (Mom, Matt)

Takini: Lakota Boy Alerts Sitting Bull, by Kenneth Thomasma (Mom, Andy, Matt)

Soun Tetoken: Nez Perce Boy Tames a Stallion, by Kenneth Thomasma (Andy, Matt)

Amee-Nah: Zuni Boy Runs the Race of His Life, by Kenneth Thomasma (Matt)

The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan (Andy)

Billy The Kid, by Robert Utley (Andy)

The Company of Wolves, by Peter Steinhart (Dad)

Dreams From My Father, by Barack Obama (Mom)

Under The Blood-Red Sun, by Graham Salisbury (Andy, Matt)

SOUTH AFRICA

Biko, by Donald Woods (Mom)

Kaffir Boy, by Mark Mathabane (Andy)

Long Walk to Freedom, by Nelson Mandela (Mom)

Chain of Fire, by Beverly Naidoo (Mom, Matt)

Cry, The Beloved Country, by Alan Paton (Mom, Andy)

Journey to Jo’burg, by Beverly Naidoo (Mom, Andy, Matt)

No Turning Back, by Beverly Naidoo (Mom, Andy, Matt)

Out of Bounds, by Beverly Naidoo (Dad, Mom, Andy, Matt)

The Power Of One, by Bryce Courtenay (Andy, Matt)

TANZANIA
(suggestions...?)

MIDDLE EAST

Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid, by Jimmy Carter

The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East, by Sandy Tolan

CAMBODIA

The Clay Marble, by Minfong Ho (Mom, Matt)

Little Brother, by Allan Baillie (Mom, Andy, Matt)

The Lost Executioner, by Nic Dunlop (Mom)

First They Killed My Father, by Loung Ung

INDIA

The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy (Mom)

May You Be the Mother of 100 Sons: A Journey Among the Women of India, by Elisabeth Bumiller (Mom)

The Inheritance of Loss, by Kiran Desai (Mom)

Yellowstone National Park (Wyoming) Highlights from Boulder, Colorado…

2007-09-14T14:04:00.000-07:00

Well, we’re back in the land of connectivity, here in Boulder, CO. We rolled in last night at about 7:30, after a pleasant 500 or so miles from Cody – the 75 mph highways make a wonderful traveling feature - 300+ pronghorn along the way, not to mention more cattle than we can count.

We’re staying with our dear friends Will and Beth, except we’re not, because they had to leave (their house in North Carolina finally sold… so a little unfortunate timing… the saving grace being we’ll see them when we roll back through in October), so we’re hanging with Blondie (their sweet 14 year old lab who is currently sleeping by my feet) and our other dear friend Bill. But let’s play a little catch-up on our last week or so. There is way too much to try to explain, so here are some highlights.

Yellowstone highlights – in no particular order
-One 17-degree morning – a frosty wake up from our cozy little tent (the nightly condensation was frozen…our smallish 4 person backpacking tent did the trick, mostly) – It did warm up during the day, and most of the days were quite nice… in the 60s and sunny.
-All the animals
A gazillion bison
2 wolves
4 red foxes (though it might be a double sighting of the same one…)
4 coyotes
Some deer
Lots of elk (including the one bull elk that wandered into our campsite the first night, and sat down about 100 feet away while we ate dinner, bugling every now and then).
6 or 7 big horn sheep (female and young ones… so no big horns)
3 trumpeter swans in an early morning fly-by
2 pronghorn (see above regarding the real pronghorn sightings…)
Lots of hawks, osprey, eagles, ravens, crows, gray jays, magpies, a kestrel, some mountain blue birds, geese,
A few fish (none caught)
Lots of bear tracks

Lots of scat (including some mountain lion)
And 1 BEAR! (black, we believe… but we didn’t hang around long enough to make introductions)
-The hikes! From the heights of Mt. Washburn (10,243), to the grand canyon of the Yellowstone, to the petrified trees of Fossil Forest, to the bear of Clear Lake… Lots of miles of incredible things.
-Campfires out of necessity (to keep from freezing… literally)
-Wolves howling in the night
-Elk bugling all around
-Thermal features (the boys can tell you the difference between a geyser, a hot spring, a mud pot and a fumarole (steam vent))
-Fishing the Gibbon River
-Watching bison, elk and coyotes from our campsite

-Drape Academy in unusual places (everything is a field trip!)
-Opening our canned goods with a hatchet and pry bar (resourcefulness is a virtue…)
-… and… My simple pleasure - Dr. Bronner’s Pure Castile Soap – an all-purpose camping essential (wash your dishes, your body, shampoo the hair and brush the teeth!). I am very pleased to say that I went the entire week at Yellowstone NP without showering – just my daily stripped-to-the waist scrub downs with the Dr. Bronner’s J.

So these are my musings from the week. I’ll add some thoughts from the rest of the family’s journaling here.

Matt: 9-7-07
“We hiked Mt. Washburn today. We saw 4 big horn sheep, a red-tail hawk and a bald eagle. When we reached the top the view was amazing. When we were driving up to Mt. Washburn there was a bison in the road.” [editorial comment by the father – we were driving along the road, and saw a couple big piles of bison evidence in the road, which we were chuckling about, until we came around the corner, and there the author of such was, lumbering along the highway, quite content with that trail. He was playing a little chicken with all us drivers – walking right down the middle, and whenever a car would try to squeeze by on one side or the other, he would sidle along that direction. We joked that it must be his day to be out entertaining (teasing) the tourists….]

Andy: 9-8-07
“Today we saw a black bear. We were out hiking. We were on the Clear Lake trail. We had already seen a dead hawk, 2 red-tailed hawks, many paw prints, and lots of scat. At first we saw an animal. Then we thought it was a bison. Then we realized it was a black bear. We started making lots of noise. We got out of there in a hurry.”

Chrissie: 9-11-07
“It was cool driving through Hayden Valley at 6pm and again at 8pm. The bison had taken over the roads, we saw a bald eagle, an elk walking down the middle of the Yellowstone River, two bull elk “battling” on a hillside and a red fox crossed the road. It’s all about being in the right place at the right time, which means lots of time in the park.”

Back to now…
We’re here in Boulder for the weekend, then have a good 800-mile driving day on Monday to get us to Grandpa Gene’s in Iowa. They’ve already started harvesting the beans (soybeans), so we have to get a hurry-up on and get there. We’ll update you all from there (unless we get the urge before then). We miss Seattle, but are having a blast – so far we’re not tired of each other!

Blessings!

Boise, the first day of school, and onto Yellowstone

2007-09-06T06:02:00.000-07:00

This will be a bit of a limited entry this morning, as I am working on very sketchy web connection here... so the pictures will have to wait until later.

We're heading into Yellowstone this morning, for a glorious week of adventuring (hoping that the highs will reach 60, the lows won't drop too far below freezing, and that the snow holds off... and I'm not kidding). We won't have internect connection for another week or so, so we'll update then.

The last two days have been quite wonderful. We spent Tuesday night in Boise, in the midst of a wacky dust storm, and got to have a Red Robin dinner (Tuesdays are Kid Night in Boise), complete with the weird bird thing and a nice old balloon man.... The real joy of Boise is that we got to take Kendra Kemp (friend, and sister of our former housemate Amber) along with us to Red Robin (she's a student at Boise State - go Broncos!)!

Yesterday was an emotionally complex day, if there is such a thing for us, as it marked the first day of school in Seattle. We are missing our Seattle friends and family, but wouldn't trade this adventure for anything. We'll add more on this, when we have more than a dial-up connection.

Peace!

The boys and their first day of school pic, next to their traveling classroom....

High Points From Shasta...

2007-09-02T13:25:00.000-07:00

We're back from our week's adventure with the Austin clan at Shasta Lake. It was HOT, but the salvation was being on the water - always a chance to dive in and cool off. We'll each weigh in here with favorite moments from the trip.

Andy:

One of my favorite things about Shasta Lake was when I figured out how to water ski. I had been trying to water ski for quite a while. I finally water skied on the last day we had the speed boat. Once you get up, you feel really good about yourself. The first time I got up, I fell after about 12 seconds. Next, 20 seconds. Then, 45 seconds. Finally, I was up, and stayed up. Water skiing is very fun.

Matt:

Lake Shasta, CA. It's the first day on the houseboat. I do like having the ski boat. It is very fun when we attach an innertube to it, and when you hit a wave, you go flying. I got a good three feet out of the water.

Shasta Hot Spot, by the Mother:

There were many highlights of our time at Lake Shasta - good food (such as alphabet pancakes...), hanging out with my family, floating in the bays, learning to play Texas Hold 'Em, waterskiing. But what sticks out most in my mind is the funny night we slept out under the stars.

It was hot, hot, hot on the lake - in the 100s during the day, and 70s at night. The last night we just couldn't stand sleeping inside, even with the windows open, so we dragged our mattresses onto the deck and all four of us slept outside. Initially, the stars came out, and we pointed out the constellations that we knew. Then we fell asleep. The very full moon came out and was shining brightly on us all night long. At one point in the night, Matt woke up and said, "Why is the sun shining in my eyes?" Later, at about 5am, Chris and I both woke up. We were looking up at the sky and realized that a family of bats was doing fly-overs just a foot or two above our faces. We started giggling, which woke Andy up. He stood up to go into the boat to use the bathroom, and I yelled, "Get down!" Then we were all three wide awake and laughing. We didn't get much sleep, so it's good to be back in Bend where it drops into the 40s at night.

The Father:

I was going to write about our bat adventure, but my lovely wife beat me to that. I will add that yesterday morning, the Bend newspaper had a front page story about a woman bit by a rabid bat - it flew in her window while she was sleeping, and chomped away. Had we read that article BEFORE our little bat adventure, I don't think we would have enjoyed the show quite so much.

My contribution here will be the summary of those offerings we made to the Lake... I like to think of them as our payment to the Lake itself for the privilege of our use. Day 1 - Uncle Mike's expensive sunglasses - whipped off Andy's head by the tow rope (I don't really mean this, but it would have made me feel a little better if Andy would have at least ended up with a good scar as part of the story). Day 2 - Matt's goggles and Grandma Fran's walkie talkie - both gave in to the subtle and strong pull of the lake while someone was not quite paying close attention. Day 3 - Andy's goggles - as he tried to rinse them off in the lake while cruising at approximately 20 mph. Clearly, all of these things are replaceable, but it makes me thankful for dry ground, where I at least have the general opportunity to pick things up after I drop them....

Bend

2007-08-26T14:11:00.000-07:00

We are finally off on the adventure! We left Seattle Friday afternoon - straight from soccer camp (which made for a bit of a funky drive) - packed tight for the trip to Bend.

This morning we made an early assent of Pilot Butte, on the edge of Bend, for a glorious 360 degree view of central Oregon (you can see that Chicken did come along...). It was our own little worship service (we offically went to Saturday night church last night @ Eastmont with Chrissie's family).

Tomorrow we are off to Shasta, for a few days of floating and mayhem with the cousins.

Thanks to all of you who sent us off with so much love and encouragement. We will miss you all dearly, but we like to think of ourselves as ambassadors on this trip - carrying our relationships with you all across the globe!

Our Trip Itinerary

2007-08-17T15:14:00.000-07:00

So here's the plan of our travels... so you know where we are, and when. We've added some links to websites related to the places we'll be, when there are interesting ones to check out:

August 24 – Leave Seattle for Bend, OR (Chrissie’s family)

August 27-31 Houseboat at Lake Shasta with Chrissie’s family

Sept. 4 – Leave Bend for road trippin’

Sept. 5-12 Yellowstone National Park

Sept. 14-17 Boulder, CO with Chris’s college friends (Bill, Will & Beth)

Sept. 19 – Oct. 15 Waverly, IA (Chris’s dad and extended family)

Oct. 20 – 25 Back in Bend, OR

Oct. 26 Fly to Washington DC (Chrissie’s cousin, David)

Oct. 30 Fly to London (meet up with Chrissie’s parents)

Nov. 8 Fly to South Africa

Nov. 9-22 Port Elizabeth
We’ll be visiting the Sapphire Road Primary School (and the boys will be attending there for two weeks) – http://www.sapphireprimary.co.za/
Our friend and colleague, Dr. Ed Taylor (University of Washington) helped found an organization that partners with a group of Port Elizabeth Schools – http://www.molocare.org/.

Nov. 22 – Dec. 1 CapeTown: Our Seattle friends, the Cathcarts (Ernie, Katrina and Aisha), are joining us for the balance of our South African time.
We'll be visiting the Mt. Hope Worship Centre, a partner church of ECBF's - http://mounthope.co.za/index.html

Dec. 1-8 Johannesburg

Dec. 8 Fly to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (former neighbors, David, Susan & Nolie)
David and Susan teach at the International School of Tanganyika – http://www.istafrica.com/

Dec. 15-19 Crater Highlands Trek
We’re trekking through the Ngorongoro Crater – http://www.safarimakers.com/climbs_treks.htm

Dec. 21 Fly to Amman, Jordan (hook up with Chrissie’s cousin, David, and cousins Steve, Lana, Matthias, & Levi?)

Jan. 2 Fly to Bangkok
Visit Katie Thorleifson, friend from Hawthorne Elementary in Seattle, teaching at Ruamrudee Intl. School - www.rism.ac.th

Jan. 7 Fly to Phnom Penh, Cambodia (friends and mentor John & Kathy Morefield)
John works with Cambodian principals – Here’s an intro to the work from a few years ago - http://www.newhorizons.org/trans/international/morefield_01.htm

Jan. 21 Fly to Delhi, India

Feb. 1 Train (?) to Bangalore, India (friends Tim & Chitra, Rajan, Rani, Asha, Shalini)
Tim is the Executive Director of Rural Development Institute, an organization working on land reform issues world-wide - http://www.rdiland.org/OURWORK/OurWork_India.html

Feb. 14 Fly to Hong Kong (friends Andy & Ari Olson) Andy teaches at the International School in Repulse Bay - www.hkis.edu.hk

Feb. 18 Fly to Japan (Chrissie’s cousins Steve & Lana)

Feb. 25 Fly to Honolulu (Chrissie’s cousin Tammie, meet up with Chris’s dad?)

Mar. 3 Fly back to Bend, OR

March – mid-April – Hangin’ out in Bend, OR
Snow time, catch up on home schooling

Late April - back to Iowa to help plant corn?

May – Road trip through California, Southwest

June – Back to Seattle!

Here We Go!

2007-07-18T15:54:00.000-07:00

Our adventure begins as we are setting up our communication system... this here blog - the title of which will eventually become clear.