Adventures in … Life

A good friend of our, BRyan Polson, fellow returned Peace Corps volunteer, and now back in Kenya, sent us these pictures of the two national papers in Kenya … both featuring Obama.

Here’s his explanation:

As one race is over, so another begins. However, as you know, Obama has simply become an international phenomenon. Now, multiply that by pie-r-squared and you have the feeling of the pandemonium his victory has created here. I have gotten “Aye, just imagine that it was one of us who finally did it in America!” or “Obama Tosha!” (”tosha” meaning “enough” as in “all we need” which was used by Raila Odinga during this past election for Kenya as in “Raila Tosha”). People are selling t-shirts and there is talks of a security detail soon being sent to his grandmother’s tiny little village of Kogelo near Lake Victoria. For those of us American, we are well aware of the history here, but do know that in Kenya, a nation celebrates too!

I’ve attached pictures of today’s newspapers headlines and have included some links to the stories they have written:

Kenyans Salute Obama, The Standard
Obama Clinches Democratic Ticket, The Nation
Obama Sr went to US on scholarship…, The Nation
Why Africa Exults at Obama’s Victory, The Nation Editorial

Enjoy! And…OBAMA TOSHA

Last weekend Proctor and I headed up to the annual fishing trip on the Delaware river. It was a great time though the fishing was horrible. I caught only one trout the whole weekend. The first day we went fishing it rained all day long:

The second day was at least sunny. A lot more folks had show up by this point and half of us got in canoes and headed down the East Branch. Below is a picture of our boats and fly rods.

Here my fishing partner, Fred, was working a nice riffle, though no fish showed any appearance.

A lot of what this weekend was about is sharing, hanging out, and having a great time. Here Tom and Sam sit on the remains of a old bridge support, having a good time.

I did happen to catch something, and while it wasn’t a fish, it was interesting, though in a gross kind of way.

This creature was somewhere between a foot and a half and two feet long. It had actually gotten snagged on my fly while I was fishing, when it rolled over I got a look at this:

A circular sucker mouth full of pointy little teeth.  Below is a video of it swimming away.

After I got back I looked it up on the internet and found out that it’s a Sea Lamprey. I guess they swim up the rivers to spawn.

We also recently upgraded our old digital point and shoot for a new camera, the Olympus 850sw. The selling point of this camera is that it’s completely waterproof. I tested it out on this bass I caught in the lake.

Anyway it was a great weekend and I can’t wait to get back to Starlight.

This last weekend Deborah, Proctor, Bebeth, Lucy, and I all went up to Starlight to “open up”. “Open up” refers to the process of unpacking the “Green House” from it’s winter storage and preparing it for all the spring and summer fun. This involves dusting, vacuuming, mopping, cleaning out the cupboards, fishing (any trip to starlight usually involves fishing), and unpacking all the seat cushions and pillows from their plastic cocoons. It’s definitely hard work.

But in order to do all that hard work you gotta eat well. How about some home made biscuits, strawberries, honey, jam, maple butter, and bass from the lake (which I caught) for breakfast? Sign me up!

Last weekend I was still in Seattle while Bebeth was already in New York. I decided I’d make a last minute trip over to Eastern Washington to fish since I’d be out on the East Coast most of the summer. My target was Lake Lenice, a 94 acre lake just south of Vantage. It was planted with Rainbow, Brown, and Tiger trout. I got up Saturday morning at around 5:30am and got to the lake around 7:30am. 20 minutes later I was kicking my way out into the lake. There were so many different birds around, red wing black birds, yellow headed black birds, coots, magpies, and swallows … and of course trout! It was a great day of fishing and catching. I “brought to hand” around 10 -15 trout and missed maybe twice that many.

That day I found out that I had a major leak in my waders, so the next morning instead of donning wet clothes, I drove over to Rocky Ford, which is a spring creek near Ephrata and spent a couple of hours chasing large spring creek trout from shore. Picked another 4 fish from there.

Anyway was a great weekend of fishing!

Ok, so Mark and I don’t have a little girl, but today it felt like we did. We’re down in Santa Cruz visiting Sam and Miranda for a long weekend (and er….work). Tomorrow morning Miranda starts her 6 month Apprenticeship in Ecological Horticulture at UC Santa Cruz’s Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems (http://casfs.ucsc.edu/training/index.html). Five days a week Miranda will be knee and elbow deep in dirt, plants and all things horticulture. Miranda only lives about 15 minutes away, but most people live on the campus in tents for the six months.

Today was “moving in” day….setting up tents, getting to know each other, etc. Sam, Mark and I took Miranda to school, helped her set up her tent (for the nights she’s too exhausted to drag herself home), and waved goodbye as she joined the other “kids”. It was sad to see our little girl leaving us

Assuming she’s not too tired at the end of the day Miranda will be writing about her experience there…if you’re interested you can read more at http://miranda.ujeni.net/blog/
Sam and Mark in front of Tent #29 (aka Miranda Robert’s Home)

On Tuesday we got back from our trip to visit Courtney and Arthur in Tanzania with my mom and dad. We had a great time….but we’ll post on that later. Our trip home took about 36 hours because we had a couple of really long layovers. The first one was in Nairobi and it was long by design. We were able to get a full 12 hours and made the most of it. We were picked up at the airport by Jonathan Campaigne (our old boss at Pride Africa) and went to the office to visit old co-workers and get an update on the status of DrumNet. After that we headed back to Jonathan’s house and had a wonderful dinner with some close friends: Tanja and Jarat (our next door neighbors while living in Nairobi) and Marco and Tessa (Marco, among other things, was our guide for our Schenk family trip in Kenya). It was great to see everyone, but made us wish, once again, that Kenya wasn’t so far away.

During dinner we mentioned that we had an 8 hour layover in Amsterdam. Marco and Tessa are both Dutch and told us that the train station was just below the airport and we could be in downtown in 15 minutes. Only mildly concerned about our ability to function normally after such a long flight, we agreed to visit Amsterdam. It turns out they were right about the ease of getting into town and at 7:30 am(!) Mark and I found ourselves at Central Station in the heart of Amsterdam. We spend the next few hours wandering the streets, walking up and down canals, and enjoying the chaos of thousands of bicycles that is Amsterdam rush hour. All in all it was a very fun, if unexpected, part of our vacation. Below are a few images from the morning.

Our first day in Bozeman found us at the local fair. Fairs are always fun for seeing new sights…how often do you get to watch stallion service auctions (yes….auctioning off the right to have your mare “serviced” by a stallion), dog agility events, and more! Beyond the usual events, this fair is a mixing of Montana cultures. Bozeman has become quite the preppy town. Sitting in one of the many, many restaurants on main street, you would never guess that you were in Montana. But the fair brings in many of the traditional coyboys to buy and sell horses and so walking through the barns you see quite a diverse selection of cultures.

Below are some of the shots we took that day.

The Seattle branch of Mindful Interactive is picking up and moving shop for a couple of weeks…we’re headed to Bozeman, Montana. What’s involved in the move?

1) Pack the car full of all the outdoor great that you can find/reach in storage.
2) Pack up coffee and snacks for the 12 hour drive
3) Pack laptops and modems

As I write this we are somewhere in the middle of Washington State on I-90. Mark is driving and I’m working (er…blogging). Things are a lot different than when we left…or maybe they’re the same and we just didn’t know you could be connected to the internet while driving a car in the middle of nowhere. We’re curious to find out if there’s anywhere between Seattle and Bozeman where I can’t be online.

Stay tuned for pictures and stories of our adventures in Bozeman!

A friend of ours, Joanne Sprague (in the above picture), was recently interviewed on NPR. They were doing a piece on Peace Corps Kenya closure. Check out the piece:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18770524

I think one of our favorite parts about Cape Town were the Penguins. They are such personable little characters. These shots and video were taken at Boulder Beach. Most of the time the little guys would hide under rocks staying out of your way. But if you sat down and didn’t move, the adventuresome ones would come out and play around. We got to see a few guys playing around in the surf at very close range. If you can’t see the video in your RSS reader try logging onto the actual site.

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http://www.steudel.org/blog
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