Christmas Eve

I'm positive I mentioned that Hanh and Eleanor spent Christmas with us, but did I also mention that we had a little party on Christmas Eve? We did!  And it was really fun.  It's a nice part of being an expat to be able to have a party on Christmas Eve because nobody else really has anything to do either (if they are still in town).

My friend Frannie (who is moving!), Hanh and Tommy wearing a cape.

A nice one of our patio with friends.

I actually hadn't realized how many cookies she must have consumed until I saw these photos.

I think Grace had some, too :)

The craziest thing:  we had carolers!  In Muscat!  And they sounded pretty okay!

Drinking Manhattans!

Just before collapsing into bed.  My goodness Christmas is a lot of work.

Safari - Final post, no pictures

Here is my list of the animals we saw each day.  I want to remember it so I'm posting it here, but I promise there won't be a test on it (so you can just skip it).

Lake Manyara Park (Day 1)

trumpet horntale
olive baboon
blue monkey
impala
warthog
cape buffalo
wildebeest
egyptian geese
blacksmith plover
hadada ibis
goliath heron
sacred ibis
black winged stilt
crowned heron
ground hornbill
elephant
hippo
helmeted guinea fowl
vervet monkey*
tawny eagle
nile monitor lizard
water buck

Lake Manyara Park (Day 2)

olive baboons
white backed vulture
giant kingfisher
elephant
impala
giraffe
rufous  (?) falcon
buffalo
wildebeast
dik dik (tiny gazelle)
ostrich
zebra
grey-crowned cranes
african fish eagle
crested guinea fowl
trumpet hornbill
hippos

Ngoro ngoro Crater (Day 3)

elephant at lodge
grant's gazelle
wildebeest
thomson's gazelle
warthog
tawny eagle
marabou stork
common jackal
grey crowned cranes
abdim's stork
ostrich
flamingo
golden jackal
hyena
hippo
black rhinos
cape buffalo
black billed bustard
olive baboons
kori bustard
lion
elephant

En route to Serengeti (Day 4)

giraffes
zebras
thomson's gazelle
wildebeest
white storks
tawny eagle
kori bustard
stork
ruppell's griffon vulture
lappet faced vulture
jackal
ostrich
grant's gazelle
hyena
warthog
lion
hartebeest
agama lizards
elephants
leopard!
lion pride
hippo
white backed vulture
lilac breasted roller
egyptian geese
crocodile
impala
waterbuck
leopard tortoise

Serengeti (Day 5)

elephant
impala
warthogs
zebras
buffalo
thomson's gazelle
topi
eland antelope
bat eared fox
crown plover
guinea fowl
pin tailed whydah
superb starling
white headed buffalo weaver
spotted hyena
grant's gazelle
dik dik
african fish eagle
leopard!
giraffes
squirrel
hippos
vervet monkey
baboons
lions
white backed vulture
black headed heron
hyrax
marshall eagle
goshawk
secretary bird

*A funny story about the vervet monkey.  We couldn't always understand perfectly what our guide was saying because he has an accent (although his English was very good).  So when he told us we were seeing vervet monkeys, all the adults in the car thought he was saying velvet monkey.  We have had a wildlife book since our friends the Engstroms gave us theirs and Tommy had spent some time reading it.  So when I said it was called a velvet monkey and suggested he look it up, he found the monkey, pushed the book toward me and said, "try to keep up, Mom."  

Safari - Serengeti

The final stop on our safari was the Serengeti.  The Serengeti is beautiful - but you work harder (drive for longer periods, on bad dirt roads) for the payoffs (animals).

Our second leopard!

This is just a small picture of what Banu claimed were anywhere from 200-400 hippos.  It smelled bad.

At the entrance to the Serengeti.

Some Masai ladies trying to sell things to mom.

It looks like he's journaling but he's actually drawing gory battles (or maybe designing superheros for each member of the family)

This is what wildebeest migration looks like during the day.  They run at night. 

At a rest area in the Serengeti we saw TONS of these gorgeous agama lizards.
Tommy loved them, so we have about 50 photos of them.

Tommy does this with his hands in all photos now.  We don't know where he learned it.

This was a bus near the entrance to the Serengeti.  My guess is these are the people who work in the park.
We watched in amazement as they packed more and more people onto this bus.  Very impressive.

This was one of the best moments on the trip.  This herd of elephants crossed the road right in front of us,
and it was so quiet that we could hear the grass swishing as they walked.  

This is the plane that we rode back to Arusha. 

Safari - Ngoro Ngoro Crater

The ngoro ngoro crater is an amazing place to see wildlife.  Animals are everywhere.  When we went out to get in the car in the morning, there was an elephant in the parking area.  Just wandering around.  This was the first day we had an early start - Banu commanded us to eat breakfast at six and meet him at six thirty, and so we did.  It was freezing leaving the lodge and driving down into the crater and I wished I had brought warmer clothes.  (My parents did not have this problem and I attribute my wimpiness to living in Muscat.)  Anyway, we drove around for hours and saw LOADS of animals.

Our guide Banu telling T & L a story; this is actually at our Lake Manyara hotel as we packed up to leave to go to Ngoro ngoro.

Our first view of Ngoro ngoro crater.

With Banu.

Two black rhinos.  It's a big deal to see rhinos.

It is not a big deal to see zebras, but I liked this photo.

Hyenas

A comfortably sleeping lioness.  As our guide pointed out, they'll pretty much do anything they want as they're not afraid of anything.

She woke up briefly.

Giraffes do not live in the crater because there isn't enough acacia, but they live around it.

Safari - Lake Manyara

I want to start this post by mentioning that I had intended to finally write a post about Christmas, but I can't find the photos.  So I'm fast forwarding to the Safari.  This post is going to have almost all the photos Eli has starred and not much else.  One day I spent 40 minutes on the treadmill watching a slideshow of the safari photos and I didn't finish.  We're going to make a photo book and anyone who wants to see if will be welcome, but I will not be inviting anyone to view all of the photos.

Our safari was borderline magical.  We were all impressed by Tanzania's natural beauty, and seeing so many animals roaming around was surreal.  On our first day, as we drove to Lake Manyara National Park, there were a couple of zebras and a giraffe on the side of the road and we were all SO EXCITED.  By day two, we were looking for something more exciting than zebras as we'd already seen about fifty.

Playing cards at our hotel in Arusha

Our first elephant of the whole trip.

A Nile Monitor Lizard.  Tommy spotted him.

Olive baboons - there are many in Lake Manyara and around it.

Tommy in the land cruiser with his journal.

Lulu in the Land Cruiser with her journal.

The first day we were very bug-protected.  Then, we realized there weren't any bugs and we just wore t-shirts.

Tommy...

This morning I stopped to talk to Tommy's teacher.  (I love her so much that this is not really a chore.)  I needed to tell her that for the second time, Tommy came home with money given to him by another child.  I have no idea why the kid is passing out cash, and no idea why Tommy accepts it ("Mom, would it be okay if XXXX gave me a little bit of money?" he asked last night) and now that I think about it, I'm not sure I asked him those questions.  In all honesty, yesterday contained some pretty bad parenting moments on my part, but more about that later.

So I told Katie Kriefall (the best second grade teacher ever) about the money situation, and she said she had something to tell me, too.  I felt anxious from the first sentence which was, "So yesterday, I wore brown eyeshadow, which I don't normally do."  Oh dear god, what did he say to you about your eyeshadow?

She continued, "During morning meeting, when we were going through the day, Tommy raised his hand.  I asked him if he had a question and he replied, 'no, I have more of a comment about your eyeshadow.  You look a little like a vampire.  And if you got your skin paler and put on those teeth, you know what I mean Mrs. Kriefall?, you'd look just like one!' "

Thankfully, Mrs. Kriefall has a sense of humor.  She said that she later told Tommy she was going to publish a book of things that he says, and he said, "Okay, but you have to give me fifty percent."  Would you or would you not say my kid is pushing his luck?

So back to the bad parenting.  We went to the park yesterday after school, and there were a bunch of second and fourth graders there -- and they were doing a lot of wrestling.  I was chatting with moms and not really attending to my children, and all of a sudden, he comes Tommy crying.  Some fourth grade girl called him and his two friends IDIOTS - and this was after she punched Tommy in the stomach while wrestling.  Her mom was sitting right with me and didn't do anything, so I walked off with Tommy and tried to convince him that nothing really had happened.  Because I had no idea how to have some big hard conversation with his mom.  And I had no idea what she would do!  It was all so horrible.

We left shortly afterward, came home and drew pictures of all the things he wanted to do to the girl (these were gory pictures with lots of swords) - which I hope hope hope is an okay way to process those feelings.  Then during dinner we role played, thinking about the conversations he may have with her at school.  My kid is so amazingly sweet that he flinched when I (acting as the girl) told him he was being a baby.  By the end of the evening he felt okay but I didn't.

****

A totally unrelated Lizzie:  last night at the dinner table she suggested that when Daddy got home we could all four get in a circle and take turns jumping as high as we can, like the Masaai.