Revising Africa's Big Five

Here's a post that badly needs a bunch of images, but our limited bandwidth is prohibitive.  Maybe I'll add some later, when I'm somewhere else.

We are looking at traveling to Kenya in a few months, and planning on taking the kids on a safari, which should be great, especially as they will be quite a bit older than last time, and more able to enjoy it.

If you have ever looked into safaris, then you are probably familiar with "The Big Five".  Everyone wants to see "The Big Five".  Tourist trinkets are often emblazoned with "The Big Five".  Different parks are valued on whether or not they can boast all of "The Big Five".

What is the Big Five?  It is lions, leopards, rhinos, elephants, and cape buffalo.  Why those?  As we understand it, it is a historical list from the days of big game hunters, because these five were the hardest to bring down on a hunt.

And we have adopted this list for game viewing.  The problem is that we are not trying to kill these animals.  We are instead deriving pleasure from watching them, which everyone should agree is quite another thing.  Therefore, we would like to propose a new list.

Elephants, lions, and rhinos are cool.  No doubt.  Even when not killing them.  The leopard however is elusive.  So elusive that we have decided that it is imaginary.  Even if it is not, so much disappointment is born by not seeing a leopard that it seems a bad fit for this list.

So the leopard is out.

Cape buffalos are ugly.  And mean.  And travel in herds.  So you can't get close enough to enjoy their ugliness, but they are easy to find.

So the cape buffalo is out.

Replacements?  We would like to submit the hippo and the giraffe.  Both are incredibly iconic.  Both are items of the earliest childhood imaginations, and seeing them in person does not disappoint.  And they are big.  So our revised list goes like this:

1. Lion
2. Elephant
3. Rhino
4. Hippo 
5. Giraffe

You will not be disappointed.  At the same time, we would like to submit a couple other lists, because completing lists adds a certain satisfaction to almost any activity.

The Big Five Birds:  Africa's birds are truly awesome, and though you might not ponder it ahead of time, you should anticipate a good time seeing them.  The list:

1. Ostrich
2. Secretary Bird (huge 4 feet tall cockatoo-looking white bird)
3. Grey-Crowned Crane (stately and 5 feet tall)
4. Flamingo
5. Stork (you can choose which one.  The Marabou stork is very iconic and stately, but kind of in an ugly way.  The Yellow-Billed Stork is a favorite of ours.)

And last, The Cute Five:

1. Dik-Dik: these tiny antelope are about knee-high and always found in pairs
2. Rock Hyrax: this little gopher-looking guy is the closest relative of the elephant
3. Bushbaby: nocturnal tiny primate with giant eyes
4. Meerkat: because of the Lion King, which really is an inescapable allusion for all safaris
5. Warthog: it's cuteness is controversial (as in, Rachel disagrees), but when you see a little line of them running with their tales straight up, I think you'll agree.  And again, the Lion King.

So, forget the anxiety of leopard hunting and the disappointment of the Cape Buffalo and settle in for a safari list that truly satisfies.

How To Make Your Own Passport Photos - Optimized

One of the unexpected areas of expertise we have developed is in the area of passport photos.  We have of course needed them for keeping the passports updated, but in our lives, they are needed for many other events: long-stay visas, visas that you need to buy before arriving at the border, even lots of official documents such as driver's licenses still use a "bring your own passport photo" policy where we live.  I have at least 4 passport photos in my current passport, associated with various visas.  So we keep several on hand, just in case.

When I was in college, I went to a Mailboxes, Etc, and paid about $13 for two passport photos.  They were awful and the source of many a border guard's amusement for the next ten years of travels.  Thankfully, digital photo technology has progressed to a more convenient and less expensive way to fill this function.  So here are a few things we've learned about efficiently creating your passport photos:

1.  Chose a big blank background and shoot a bunch of photos with a "more than you think necessary" margin of blank space around you.  You can always crop later.

(1a.)  For newborns:  All three of our kids had their first passport photos taken in their first week of life.  Method:  Put a white sheet on the bed.  Swaddle the kid up tight, and lay them awake on their back on the white sheet.  Fire away.  Choose the one (and there will likely only be one) with eyes open and both ears visible.

2.  Load the picture into Picasa or editing program of your choice.  Crop with a square dimension.  Aim to get the total head height about half of the total picture height.  Err on the side of a smaller head if necessary, because these things are often cut further when getting used.  This is a further reason to give yourself a generous white margin at the outset.

3.  Whiten the background.  We just learned this one, as the Burundian visa office's scanner was having trouble with our off-white/greyish background.  It can't be too white.  The Picasa "highlight" function works well.

4.  Make a JPG with a 2x3 grid of your square photo.  This will come out perfectly in a 4x6 photo as 6 standard size passport photos.  Alternatively, Picasa's collage function works well in a grid if you set the collage size to 4x6.  Save photo and print.  Voilà!  Six photos for about 28 cents.  Here's our recent one (Rachel got spot 6 because she's the most likely to travel again the soonest.)

"Vacationing" With Kids

The simple rule:  Vacations cost money, time, and sometimes physical energy.  They provide excitement, fun, memories, and sometimes physical rejuvenation.  We will choose to vacation as long, and as often as, it's costs are equal or greater to what one gets out of the vacation.

OK, we'll return to that.  A bit of back story.

If you know us, or even if you read this blog without really knowing us, you quickly figure out that Rachel and Eric enjoy traveling.  In fact, I (Eric) often say that traveling with Rachel is one of the best things I have found in this world.  Some couples don't travel well together.  We are not one of those couples. Within a 12-month period in 2005, when we lived in the US, I went to Turkey, Zambia, Botswana, Holland (and neighboring countries) and Costa Rica.  And then I felt like maybe I would want to stay in the US.  For at least 6 months.  So, that's who we are.  One must always figure in the various costs, but in general, if we can find the time, it's not too hard for a vacation to be "worth it" for us.

Enter children.

How exactly the presence of children will change vacation decisions will be highly individual.  But I offer to you the following principals for how this will certainly change the equation in certain directions:

On the cost side:

• When they are really young, they might not cost any more money.  Under 2 years old for planes, and in most public transport in Europe, under 4 is free.  It's a pretty mean museum ticket agent who asks for another ten bucks for a kid in a stroller.  Similarly, subways are free, though getting through those turnstiles with a stroller is quite a doozy.  However, as they get older, they quickly get to cost almost as much as another adult.  We will soon rapidly enter that phase.
• For physical energy, the cost goes up dramatically.  Our kids are pretty travel-savvy, and it hasn't been easy to make them that way.  Nevertheless, they never sleep as well somewhere else, and so the parents are always more tired.  If you're exploring a city or region, there can easily be a lot more stroller pushing and carrying, as well.  Time zones?  That ought to need no explanation.  The fact that it is still nighttime is not a reason for a little to kid to stay in bed if they are not sleepy

On the benefit side:

• This is where I've really been learning a lot.  Think about it:  If it's just adults, you wake up and eat, and spend the morning doing whatever.  You lunch whenever.  You spend the afternoon however.  You eat dinner wherever.  Afterwards, you can go walking or...whatever.
• Depending on the age of your kids, this may look quite different.  Our last trip was really a best-case scenario for little kids.  One kid takes one nap, and it's doesn't even have to happen every day.  OK, so you get up and head out for the day.  You have about 3 hours from opening time of most places until lunch.  After lunch is nap, until maybe 3:30.  It's a quiet time, if you're all in the same dark room, but it's somewhat relaxing.  Then you have about 2 hours after nap until dinnertime, which is not quite so flexible for the kiddos.  After dinner, there's not really enough time to do anything before kid's bedtime.  After bedtime, the parents can hang in the hotel bathroom planning the next day until they are ready for sleep.  So the whole day of experiencing the destination has become about 5 hours.
• Memories.  Well, the youngest of the kids won't remember it at all, and I'm not sure how much my kids will care, in the future, about how we've augmented their travel "statistics".  I get to see my kids chase pigeons in St. Mark's Square in Venice.  That's nice.  For me (since they don't care about the square, just the pigeons).  And it is.  Point one for traveling with kids, but I would be mistaken to prioritize that too highly.

OK, I'm done.  You can see where this is leading.  I truly have no wish to rant or rain on anyone's parade.  But these are the thoughts that have made us really reconsider how much traveling we will be doing in this phase of our lives.  And I'm thankful for the revelations, because they don't come easily for someone like me, whose travel plans have to be pried from his unconscious fingers oftentimes.  These thoughts free me to let these things go, realizing that this just isn't the same.  One day, it probably will be again, but not for now.

Will we totally stop all traveling for fun?  No.  Will we change the way we make such decisions?  Yes, significantly so.  And I offer it to those of you who think "Well, Eric and Rachel don't seem to have any trouble doing it."  Let it be known.

Our Wee-Home Whilst in Paris

Some of you have heard us mention our digs in Paris.  Great city - Famously expensive.  Rachel discovered Housetrip.com, where you can rent people's homes, mostly studio apartment, for your stay.  At the last minute, the tiniest (and least expensive) place opened up, and we grabbed it.

Here were the photos we saw online:  As  you can see, it's a one-room studio with a loft, and a couch downstairs, with a kitchenette and bathroom to the left.  Note the fish-eye lens.  I don't think this is used primarily to make it seem bigger.  I think it's impossible to photograph the room while inside it with a normal lens.

But you can't beat the location.  We were "A".  The Louvre is "B" and Notre Dame is "C".  Google mapped the A-B-C route as 30 minutes walking. 

So, what was it actually like.  Well, the building has the most awesomely irregular stairs.  Ben loved to slowly climb them each day.  The wood was totally polished.  Our flat was on the 3rd floor (by the American nomenclature).

Note the lack of anything of anything level.

Here's a regular view in the front door.  The back of the room is right there.  Maggie slept on the couch, and Ben on a duvet cover on the floor next to her.  So, every night at 8pm, Rachel and I retired to the loft to study, read, and plan by the light of a single lamp until we went to sleep.  It was actually quite nice.

The bathroom wasn't insanely tiny, and the kids loved playing in it.

You can see here the back of the front door.  Note the window.  It opened into a 4'x4' space, where one could see the sky if you looked straight up a few floors.  I'm in the "kitchen" here, where we cooked breakfast every morning, and a couple dinners.  The TV table folded out to become a dining table, but then I was trapped in the corner by the table and ladder until eating was done.

So, all in all, it was perfect for our family, and we're thankful.

Less Famous Glimpses of Paris

We certainly filled our days in Paris with the most famous of sites.  There really are just so many famous places there that, in four days, it's hard to move on to anything else.  

But, in contrast to the more classic Madeline views, we thought we would try and provide some views of Paris that are not so ultimately familiar.

Looking up the Eiffel Tower from the 2nd deck.

These two in the subway chairs.  Ben loved them to the point of we wouldn't sit in them for just a couple minutes, because he was apt to cry when leaving them.

This is from in front of Sacre Coeur.  We had been told that there were a bunch of street performers there, and there were.  This guy was the best.  He was juggling a soccer ball on the concrete platform below.  Very impressive by itself.  Then he started spinning the ball on a little pen, stuck it in his mouth, climbed the lamp post, and swung from the light, with the spinning soccer ball outstretched with a great view of Paris at dusk behind him.  Click on it to enlarge.

If you asked the kids for the highlights, they would probably mention quacking at the ducks here.

Or maybe playing in the nearby playground in Luxembourg Gardens.

 This is looking out of Musee d'Orsay at the Louvre, on the opposite side of the Seine.

 The immensity of the Louvre was staggering despite expecting it to be huge.  This was looking out a window of one wing, looking at the other wing.

Notre Dame Cathedral turns 850 years old next year.  I think my favorite part of the exterior is the endless statues.  Here, above the doorway, there are just rows and rows of statues.  Do we know who they all are? Is it lost to history somewhere?

On a few of the bridges across the Seine, people take a lock, bind it to the bridge, and toss the key into the river, generally as a sign of undying love for someone.  This was the most lock-encrusted.

In this case, the rainbow came right before the rain.  The Hotel de Ville, under the rainbow on the left, was 2 minutes walk from our place.

Thanks to Nicholas Cage and National Treasure 2, I knew that there was more than one Statue of Liberty. We saw 3 in Paris alone.  I think this one didn't really count, because it was a model, but I think it's been here in Luxembourg Garden since the early 1800s.

From inside the Louvre pyramid.

I guess this is pretty famous, but Saint Chapelle's stain glass really was breathtaking.

Given the soft spot in my heart for buskers, I thought it was great when 3 accordions and a sax boarded our train for Versailles and started playing.

Our Travel Map from Last Year

I went to the trouble of making this map a couple months ago, so I figured I should post it.  This is our year in the US, at least the major travel points.  The red is plane flights.  The black is our boat to Alaska.  Whoa.

(click to enlarge)

(by the way, this is our 600th post on this blog)

Madeline's Paris

Well, we're back from our little foray to Paris.  It was a good and tiring time, and we'll probably put up a couple of posts on it.  For a general perusal of some of the famous sites of Paris that you probably already know, I thought we could do it through the eyes of Madeline.

To try and prep Maggie for this trip, we would read her copy of Madeline and point out some of the places that we were going to see.  Other people have done this kind of thing on the web already, but here you go:

First off, the cover shot, with the Eiffel Tower, the one Maggie was most excited to see.

It was blustery, but we did go all the way to the top.

Place de la Concorde is actually on the inset in the front of the first Madeline book, but I couldn't find a copy of that one, so this illustration is one of the later books.

And here, our photo of the same.

 "Invalides", or what Maggie calls "The Golden Dome".  I guess this was a home for wounded soldiers.  In Madeline, this is where the girls were "sometimes very sad".

We didn't have time to go into the courtyard, but we walked around it, while waiting for the Rodin museum to open.

Luxembourg Gardens: The girls took their walk "in rain or shine"

This is us sitting by the pool, with the same mansion behind us.  The kids loved the ducks as well as the nearby playground.

Maggie chasing the pigeons.

 Notre Dame is where the girls go walking "in rain"

This is the closest en face shot that we have.

Tuileries Garden, between the Louvre and the Place de la Concorde, is where Miss Clavel decides that it's a fine day to visit Madeline.  You can see the Louvre in the background with its big arch.

Here's the Louvre from the other side of the arch.  We didn't take a lot of pictures in the gardens, because...

 ...we were doing this instead.

 

Sacre Coeur, in the background here, really is beautiful.  "Madeline loved winter, snow, and ice."

Thankfully, no ice for us, but rather a carousel, Maggie's absolute favorite.  Ben went on too, but just wanted to keep switching animals.

Place Vendrome is where the girls "frown at the bad". 

 And the thief knew what he was doing, since these shops are expensive.  Rachel found earrings starting at 13,000 Euros.  I saw diamond skeleton Halloween earrings.  Really?

A Good Smash at the Ending

Trying to contemplate timing can be perplexing.  Take our car for instance.  When we got back to the US, we knew we would spend a lot of time relying on a car, so we bought a 2003 CR-V, and it has served us very well.  2 weeks ago, we hitched a trailer to the back and drove up to Michigan, where we transferred the contents of the trailer into our team's shipping container for Burundi.  We got it done, and the next day used the trailer and hitch to go to IKEA to pick up a few things.  We turned the trailer back into U-Haul, and breathed easy.  Now, we just had to hang on for a couple weeks, until we sold the car as we moved to France on the 23rd.

The morning after dropping off the trailer, I was brushing my teeth at Aunt Karen's house, where we're staying, and I hear a loud metallic crunch.  It sounded ominously nearby, so I rushed to the door, and see an F-150 pick-up "at one" with our CR-V.  The driver begins to pull away, and I go running, toothbrush in hand, out on the lawn.

Well, there was no need to run, since it was the neighbor across the street, who wasn't used to a car there, backed his truck out of the driveway, didn't look, and crunched our driver's side.  Here's the result, including a non-operational driver's door.

We couldn't have had a kinder man smash into our parked car a week before we needed to put it up for sale.  He apologized profusely, got his insurance info, even bought us dinner, he felt so bad.  His insurance picked up a rental, and will now shell out over $2000 in body work.  We'll get the car back on Monday, with a few days to sell it.  We sort of wish he had totaled it, as then we would have "completed" our sale automatically.

Now, about timing.  I suppose it was the best of timings.  It was the worst of timings.  We really needed the CR-V for various trailer-related moving tasks, which we had just completed.  We have rarely stayed put for a few weeks this year, and yet this accident happened when we weren't going anywhere for a bit.  And the vehicle's "drive-ability" wasn't affected at all.

On the other hand, we have quite a few big things going on right now, and we don't really need a bunch of paperwork, a small Ford Focus rental, and a short period of time to sell our car.

And I think it's often like that.  Because we can never see all ends in a situation, there is always an element of choice in our reflections on the meaning, the good or the bad, of a situation.  As Christians, we believe that God is good and in control.  So we try to trust in purpose bigger than what we see.  And the point is that this integration of a worldview is unavoidable, and any claim to pure objectivism is off-base.  Even when we strive to be objective, we still have choices to make regarding how we see a situation.

And yesterday, the body shop guy called to ask how much we were selling the CR-V for.  I guess some guys in the shop are interested.  Maybe this won't turn out to be so ambiguous after all.  At least the kids got to watch a tow truck in action.

Flying Without Kids

In a couple hours, Rachel and I are flying to Philadelphia for two days, to debrief some final things with the World Harvest Mission home office.  The kids are staying with some very kind friends, the Paternosters.  This will be the first time that we have flown together without kids in a very long time.

The result of this.

1. We will not get to priority board
2. People that see us might think we are savvy travelers.  In fact, we have become more adept and savvy at traveling since rising to challenge of flying with kids  But you would never know it to look at us.  There is no possible way to be smooth going through security with 2 small kids, a stroller, a diaper bag, 2 laptops, a couple cups of milk, and a electronic toy that needs to go through the scanner again.  But nevertheless, we have learned much.
3. You need not fear being behind us in the security line.
4. We will not check bags.
5. We may even read a book. =)

The State Race Continues!

As you blog readers and friends will know, Rachel and I had been locked into a race to get to all 50 states since we first met each other.  We were both far along.  We both had personalities that tended to make lists, and then get serious about accomplishing them.  And when we first met each other, we had already been to all 50 states between the two of us, which meant that, any new state for one person was not new for the other.

So, we had to work on the marital art of compromise.  Me: "Let's go to Maine for vacation!"  Rachel:  "Hey, you're just trying to sneak ahead of me again in the State Race."  Me:  "Well...we could go to Vermont on the way back."  Rachel:  "OK."  And so it went.  We often blogged about it, for example here, here, and here.

And then in June, Rachel got off the boat in Alaska, beating me forever to the fiftieth state, landing here in what was interestingly, my first state.  We had just visited Oregon for my 48th, and now we just got back from South Carolina, my 49th.

We started maps for Maggie and Ben, with the naive parental expectation that they are going to care about it later.  Mostly, we just like making maps.  Maggie has been to 30 states and Ben 27.  People ask if that should count, since they won't remember it.  We don't really think it matters.  Rachel remembers all her state visits, but there are four that I don't remember.  I asked Rachel if, after I get to Hawaii, I should set a new goal of revisiting the four I don't remember.  She asked what they were.  I told her it was Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, and South Dakota.  She said that, though there are some really beautiful parts of those states, they can be hard to get to, so another goal has yet to be set.

Eric's remaining states:

Rachel's remaining states (none as of June 2012):

Maggie's Remaining states:

Ben's Remaining states (currently the same as our travels during 2011-12):

My Round Trip

Monday:  Start at St. Joseph, Michigan
Drive to Grand Rapids, stay with Alex and Tabitha

Tuesday: Fly to Phoenix via Detroit
Land in Phoenix and drive to El Paso, TX
Stay with Melissa and Alfredo Gonzalez

Wednesday: Drive to San Angelo, TX
Stay with Mariah and Jonathan

Thursday: Stay in town
Update blog a wee bit since I've stopped running for the day

Friday: Drive to Oklahoma City, OK
Stay in hotel

Saturday: Drive to St. Louis, MO
Stay with Peter and Nancy Phan

Sunday, Drive back to St. Joseph, MI

I-40 is Like an Old Friend

We have safely arrived in Scottsdale, AZ, and are enjoying the company of our family.  It was nine days in the car, visiting with lots of great family and friends that we haven't gotten the chance to see in a while.  Incredible hospitality was ours, and we are thankful.  However, there is one old friend that we hadn't seen in a while that deserves special mention:  Interstate 40.

I-40, especially west of Oklahoma City is, for me, the quintessential American road trip, and that kind of road trip is truly a uniquely American experience.  Open roads.  High speed limits.  Vast distances with nothing in between except little peppered bits of classic Americana.

Western Oklahoma and the panhandle of Texas (still part of "West Texas", apparently) are about the same:  amazing flat nothing-ness.  In 2001, I took a rather famous road trip to the Grand Canyon with some friends, and I still remember someone (I can't recall who) telling me that the only thing that impedes your vision is the curvature of the earth.  I thought they were exaggerating.  But no.

America is big.

And then you get to Amarillo, a town of about a thousand hotels and restaurants, a big train station, and little else.  However, deserving special mention is "The Big Texan", a restaurant I have never visited, but has lots of billboards, which are really like the tour guide of I-40.  A 72-oz steak for free if you can eat it.  And a free limo service as well, presumably so that they can get you home to one of your many hotel options after your steak-eating attempt puts you into a uremic coma.  According to the picture, they are open for breakfast.  I can only imagine.

As soon as the majesty of the vastness of this region wears off (which may or may not take longer than the time it takes your car to accelerate to the 75 mph speed limit), you don't have too long to wait until New Mexico.  You have been subtly climbing thousands of feet since Oklahoma, with nothing to show for it except a reduced fuel efficiency on your car, and all of a sudden you are in the high desert at 7000 ft.  The scenery truly is beautiful, with the same vastness, but a little more to admire.

The thing about New Mexico is that you are constantly reminded of the fact that the I-40 you are driving is, in fact, the old Route 66, that once was "America's Main Street".  Nostalgic billboards are everywhere, and homemade roadside attractions are still of the type you would imagine from old road trip movies.  In fact, many of them were there then, and haven't changed much.

Every town has way more hotels than would be justified for a town it's size, testifying to the "stopover" nature of these locations, including the famous "Hotel el Rancho" in our old once-upon-a-time home in Gallup, NM.  According to the billboards, Hotel el Rancho is "Home of the Movie Stars", using the present tense for something that you're quite sure is now past tense, which further buttresses its charm of yesteryear.

Once you cross the Arizona state line, the environment has been distinctively Navajo for quite a while, and you can stop at Fort Courage if you like.  Don't be fooled by the gigantic "Pancake House Restaurant" sign or the prominent gas station.  Those services are no longer available.  We know.  We stopped there years ago to find a place to feed baby Maggie, and ended up huddled in an unused cubby hole of the remaining souvenir shop.

From there, it's a straight shot past the Petrified Forest and the Meteor Crater, on to Flagstaff.  Just hang a left and coast down 4000ft in altitude until you ditch the snow and enter the valley of the sun.

When you move away to another country, you may fear that some things will be changed irrevocably by the time you get back.  I don't have such fears about this little corner of my home country.