Tag: Vacationing Page 1 of 6

On December 31st, I sat with my eldest daughter on a perfect tropical beach on the magical island of Zanzibar. We watched her dad and siblings heaving sand balls at each other made with famous white Zanzibari sand, so powder-fine that it has the silkiness of clay.

“You know, this time next year, we could be in the snow,” I told her. She looked at me in shock. “Sure,” I said, “Hopefully we won’t be living in it, but we might be close enough to visit it.”

We sat together with our feet in the warm sand and listened to the breeze rustling the palm fronds and let that sink in. A year from now, everything will be different.

In the next six months, we will sell or give away all of our earthly possessions except which fits into several suitcases. Every piece of furniture, our dishes, our car, our dogs. We will say goodbye to people we have known for almost 20 years and roads and beaches and restaurants that have become familiar and routine and ordinary. We will land in a new city where we’ve never lived before and start new jobs and schools. We will find a new church and new grocery stores and clothes that keep us warm instead of cool. We will buy a house and cars and an entire household of furniture.

Everything–everything will be different. I won’t fall asleep to those eerily chanting night-birds; I won’t wake up to roosters. The Call to Prayer won’t be a part of my background noise. All of the electricity coming into my house will be normal and I won’t need to buy an extra long extension cord, just so that I can find the one outlet in the house that happens to be getting enough electricity to power the fridge today. I won’t smell burning trash; I won’t associate piles of roadside pineapples with Christmas; I won’t need to strain yogurt to make cottage cheese. I won’t ride in three-wheeled Bajaj rickshaws; I won’t hang clothes out to dry; I won’t speak Swahili. I won’t visit a tropical island on Christmas vacation.

It’s more than just moving to a new place. It’s like leaving life on one planet and boarding a spaceship for another.

For a while I’ve had the thought, “I wonder where I’ll be this time next year.” But now it is next year. 2020 has come, and this is happening. I have no idea where we’ll be seven months from now. I just know it won’t be Tanzania, and everything will be different.

We spent last week on Zanzibar. It was our Christmas present from grandparents. We walked through a mangrove forest and held sea turtles and rode quads through little villages and snorkeled with schools of angel fish and chased dolphins. Many times, I would turn to one of the kids and whisper, “Capture this moment in your mind.” Because that’s what I was doing.

Yes, that is a real, live sea turtle.

And she’s feeding one.

Shopping on the streets of Stonetown

And those are 50+ year-old tortoises.

Pointing out to the kids how the original buildings in Stonetown are made from coral

with our dolphin-chasing boat

Four Continents in a Week

By Amy Medina

On July 13, 2019

In Other

When your flight plan takes you through Istanbul, Turkey, why not go ahead and just hang out for a few days?

And while you’re at it, why not just head over to Greece too? I mean, as long as you’re in the neighborhood.

Why not? Well, visiting Greece involved missing the last few days of school, so just Grace and her Daddy got to be the lucky ones to do that part. Pretty awesome experience for my 13-year-old Percy Jackson fan. The rest of us left the day after HOPAC finished (Which, yes, this did mean that I departed Dar es Salaam by myself at 3 a.m. with my three remaining children. But no worries–only two of them threw up on the plane. That was totally fun.) Ahem. But hey–Greece for my daughter and husband: Worth it.

We met up in Istanbul, which we explored as a family for four days. We visited the famous Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia–the church turned mosque turned museum, and the massive underground Basilica Cisterns. We visited museums full of ancient statues, thousands of years old, and other pieces pillaged from Egypt and the middle east during the reign of Constantinople. We traveled by ferry and tram and bus and suspended trolley.

But our kids’ favorite part was probably the food, especially since they had been inculcated by Mark Weins’ food videos for a few weeks before the trip (who happens to be the son of a friend of ours). America sells nachos and hotdogs in their park stands, but Istanbul sells corn-on-the-cob and chestnuts. We never got tired of the thinly sliced meat and the piles and piles of Turkish delight. And of course, the ice cream sellers who always tease their customers with lavish performances before finally handing them a cone.

Since Istanbul has the distinction of being part of two continents, we were all pretty impressed that we went through four continents in a week: Africa, Europe, Asia, and North America.

She’s a runner, and now she’s run in the original Olympic stadium. How cool is that?

Back together again in Istanbul

He went through four continents in a week, and I think his favorite part was this kitten.

Josiah Went to the Amani Rainforest

By Amy Medina

On March 10, 2019

In Other

(So did Gil, who took all these wonderful pictures.)

Going to Amani in fifth grade is the highlight of the year, and since that tradition started way back when I taught fifth grade at HOPAC, it’s especially fun to see my own kids go. In fact, one of my first posts on this blog was from an Amani trip!

African violets are native to the Amani Rainforest.

So are chameleons of all shapes and sizes.

These guys are much more interesting in the forest than in my bathroom.

It’s Not Really About the Cold

By Amy Medina

On January 26, 2019

In Other

The first five hours of the drive to Lushoto take us north through the flat savannah of Tanzania–shrub brush, miles of pineapple and sisal plantations, villages of stick-and-mud houses.

But after those five hours, we get to a junction where we make a sharp right, and the road winds another two hours up into the Usambara mountain range, where the town of Lushoto is located. We drive past waterfalls and rock formations, sharing the the curvy mountain roads with elderly women carrying enormous bundles of sticks on their heads.

Our family has a tradition when we make that right turn up into the mountains. We note the outside temperature, which is usually somewhere around 34 degrees (94 degrees Fahrenheit) and we make bets as to what the temperature will be when we hit Lushoto. This year the winner had predicted 24 degrees (75 degrees Fahrenheit), which is just about as luxurious as we could expect when escaping the heat monster of Dar es Salaam.

We say that the reason we love Lushoto is because of the cold, and that’s why we’ve been there over a dozen times during our years in Tanzania. But there’s more to it than that. Because we’ve never gone to Lushoto alone, but always with people we’ve called family during that particular year.

This year, Johnny busted open his knee one night while the kids were careening around in the dark, and we realized pretty quickly he was going to need stitches. Lushoto is remote town, and there’s no 24-hour urgent care we could take him to, so we needed to wait until morning. But our friends immediately sprang into action, collecting bandages and painkillers and sticks to act as a splint. (In the end, one friend found a random pair of nunchucks in a shed, so Johnny had the most awesome splint ever invented.)

Somehow we keep going back to Lushoto, even though not all the memories are happy. Ironically, the only other time our family has experienced stitches was also in Lushoto, when Gil put his arm through a glass window seven years ago. Then there was also the time a different year when friends were robbed of their computer and camera while we were all eating dinner. Or the time when one teenager got typhoid, or the time when one family rolled their van on the way home.

But I think the common denominator each time has been that whether we are playing games or reveling in our long sleeves and drinking cappuccinos (not me–blech–but this is the highlight for my friends), or whether we are figuring out how to splint a seven-year-old’s leg with nunchucks, life has just kept throwing us together with these people. And Lushoto kind of encapsulates that for all of us–the highest highs and the lowest lows–which in the end create these kind of bonds that usually only happen when you share blood.

One of these families is leaving Tanzania forever next week, and another is on their way to leave this summer. We’re not sure how many Lushoto years our own family has left. So the bitter mixes with the sweet in the midst of all the memories. But that’s kind of what makes memories stronger, isn’t it?

Grace’s birthday always happens when we’re in Lushoto, and this year she found out she’ll get to see Hamilton this summer.

These two…someday they’ll get their own post.

This is Tanzania

By Amy Medina

On November 18, 2018

In Other

This is Tanzania:

Kigamboni Beach, Dar es Salaam

During our October mid-term break from school, we visited our favorite beach for a few days with good friends.

This is also Tanzania….

Mufindi, Iringa region

Mufindi is a long way from Dar es Salaam, so it’s a place we had never visited before–but always wanted to. So when Anja, one of our favorite former students, invited us to her wedding in Mufindi, we knew we couldn’t pass up the chance to go. We all took off time from school, got on a bus for 14 hours each way, and spent three days at Mufindi Highlands Lodge.

We rode horses, played croquet and lawn tennis, ate absolutely amazing food, and enjoyed being really cold.

That’s Johnny, and yes, shortly after this picture was taken, he did fall in.

….which is why he’s naked in this picture.

Lily and lily.

And yes, Johnny did fall off his horse too. Don’t worry, he’s fine.

Those are jacaranda trees….just imagine what they look like when they are in bloom.

One of the best parts was that everyone’s favorite two-year-old quadruplets came too! (Ironically, several years previously, I had been at their parents wedding in Kenya as well.)