Home at Last

While we were waiting in the lobby yesterday, I read a sign that said the free shuttle came every half hour to take people to the airport, or at least I thought it did. So this morning we got up at 4:30 am once again, hoping to catch the 5 o’clock shuttle. When we went to check out, the man at the front desk informs us that the next shuttle won’t come until 5:30, and that we won’t make our flight. Apparently the sign says that it come “every hour on the half,” so you can see how one would get confused easily. My bad! Anyway, we ended up having to take a taxi from our hotel to the airport, we are starting to get used to this. I guess Nick needs to check over my work as well. At least we didn’t have nearly this much bad luck when we were in Europe this last Christmas!

Our first flight was 20 mins late, as always with US Airways. Then once we landed we had to wait nearly 30 mins before our gate opened up. Surprisingly the flight from Phoenix to Portland was on time! After 11 hours of sitting in airports and on planes, we finally landed in Portland, only to hop in our car and make the 4 hour drive up to Bellingham. We deliberated for about two days whether we should leave as soon as we landed and deal with Seattle rush hour, or if we should hang out in Ridgefield for a few hours to try and bypass it. Both options sounded pretty miserable, as we were exhausted, especially with the 3 hour time difference. We finally decided to stay until 4:30, which worked out great so Nick could see his grandpa and I could see my mom and Kiara. This put us home at 8:30, luckily we didn't hit any traffic.

We were both very glad to sleep in our own bed and to have our cats back. We missed Larry and Theo, and they are both glad to be home as well. Theo has grown so much over the past 11 days.

As of right now, we don’t have any vacations BOOKED in the near future, but we are possibly thinking of going to South or Central America over my Spring Break. We have tossed around the idea of going and volunteering there as well as just going on a vacation. Time will tell if we end up going anywhere. All I know is that our next vacation will involve a beach, and no big cities. Nick and I are kinda done touring cities for a while and want to have more of an adventure trip! Snorkeling, swimming, and renting jet skis are some of the things that we see in our future!

Finally, I have more good news! I was suppose to met up with another girl in New York to take some more of the books to Kenya, but because of mis-communication, it never worked out. However, I have still been in contact with her, and so I'm going to ship them today to her which will still be way cheaper than sending them all the way to Africa. She is taking the rest of the books (about 70), 5 jump ropes, 25 pens, 1 puzzle, and a box of chalk. When I emailed my host father to tell him, he was extremly excited!

I really want to send over some world maps for the class room, but am still pricing them out. One requirement is that they have to be laminated in order to survive. I have found some for $12 on amazon, and am thinking about getting those if I can find someone else to take them to Kenya so that I avoid shipping costs! I am planning on buying around 5 so that classes 4-8 can each have one. Many of those kids have never seen a world map (or any map for matter) before. I would like to get maps of Kenya, Africa, the solar system, etc, but haven't found any of those yet. I have found the skeleton, mucular, and nervous system posters for about $12 each as well. I think that these would be great tools for the students to learn with. If you know any cheap places to buy some, let me know!