The End...What a Long Strange Trips It's Been

The time has come (and obivously not soon enough for my mother) but we are coming home.


Its been a long while but we are more than ready to head home.


The last few years have been quite the roller coaster with experiences that we will never forgot and others we only hope to forget. Peace Corps was good. Living with our family, the Gaelejwes, was by far the highlight. They taught us not only about their lives, family, and culture but showed total strangers an enduring love and affection. It was amazing and we miss them a lot already! Without them, the two years would have felt a lot longer!

Our travels have taken us up Africa and into Asia as everyone knows. There are many highlights and here are a few
Africa
Swaziland: Our first safari and white water rafting
Lesotho: Trekking by horseback through the hills
South Africa: Our host family, spending a month in the bush
Namibia: Sousselvlei, Etosha Park's lions, Spending 4 days in the desert
Zambia: Rafting the Zambezi
Malawi: Kayaking along the shores of Malawi, learning how to carve an African mask
Tanzania: SCUBA diving and snorkeling
Asia
Malaysia: Seeing the oragutans and proboscus monkeys
Thailand: SCUBA, Thai food, becoming a beach bum
Japan: trying to figure out the dinner menu, sumos, samurai, our 'last supper'

Our fondest memories are from the village and our family. Boredom was often but the community we became a part of was great. We are famous there!

As all good things in life, things have to end. I am sure everyone is thinking by now that we should both get back to having jobs and a real life...but what's the hurry. Early retirement is very nice!

A home, a kitchen, a fridge, a bed, and (believe it or not) a job to call our own have all been something that we have been looking forward to. The biggest thing we have missed though are our friends and family (which is now bigger with Dominic in the picture). And, of course, my Mama Lib's cookies!

We are looking forward to seeing you...

With that, I sign off. It's been fun sharing our lives in a different place. I hope you learned something and I hope you enjoyed.

Sala sentle (Stay well)
Adam & Andrea

PS. Check back as we will post pictures

Well, Adam scolded me yesterday because I forgot to write about a few of the more memorable things we have come across here. First though, an account of our last day in Tokyo. We started out early - ok, not as early as we should have, as we're still in a bit of the beachbum mentality - but early enough. Our early morning destination was the famous Tokyo fish market. We were too late to catch the auction, but wandered among hundreds of stalls selling all kinds of fish - some we never knew existed. There were shrimp of all sizes, miniature squid and their normal-sized friends, bright red octopus, pufferfish (for the infamous fugu sushi), eels, tuna that weighed as much as me that were cut up with 5 foot long knives, flounders, scorpionfish, and hundreds of other things we couldn't identify. Some were packed on ice, some deep frozen, some still alive - it was a maze of seafood, and chaotic with so many buyers running around and guys on little flatbed electric carts carrying the sold and packaged fish to and fro. Then you could wander around the corner to the resturaunts where they sell the freshest sushi imaginable. We went to look, but declined a sushi breakfast.

Our next stop was the National Sumo Museum. Unfortunately it's out of season right now, or we would have gone to a live match, but we had to settle for the museum where we learned the intricate process of making and blessing the ring, watched a few taped matches, and saw lots of old sumo art and photographs. A pretty interesting sport that we may just have to come back to see some day. We ended the day with a delicious meal where we cooked our own meat at the little grill at our table. It was delicious - the best beef I have ever eaten - it almost melts in your mouth. And we toasted our last supper as international travelers, although I guess tomorrow night's dinner on the plane may count as well.

So, on to the gadgets. First of all, the toilets here are crazy. Its winter here, and pretty cold, and many toilets have the extravagance of heated seats. No joke! It's over the top, but quite luxurious on a cold winters day! Plus lots of them have little control panels on the side so you can operate them. Many have bidet features on which you can control the pressure and temperature of the water, and a different kind of bum wash, though I haven't tried any of those. Most toilets have buttons for two kinds of flushes too, but my personal favorite is the 'flushing sound' button. No actual flushing, just the flushing noise... (?)

The only other one I'll mention is the menu machine. At some of the smaller resturaunts there is a vending machine looking thing out front where you order your food at the machine and pay for it before even entering the resturaunt. My favorite ones combine this with a display case containing plastic examples of all their dishes so you can see what they look like before you order. Aaaahhh, Japan. So entertaining...

Well, that ends it, I guess. Stay tuned for one more post which will go up sometime soon. We may also try to post some pictures at some point when we have the luxury of unlimited computer access. Thanks to all of you who have read this over the long journey. For now I will simply say sayonara " 'cause mama, mama I'm coming home..."
:o)
Andrea

We are on the eve of our last full day in Tokyo and are getting excited for home. We have walked for miles and miles over the past few days, and have seen a few interesting places along the way. We have seen the gardens of the royal palace (the palace itself is off limits), a number of shrines and temples, some big parks, two art museums, and two science museums. We have seen the premier shopping areas of this city on the weekend, when people walk their dogs that are wearing full outfits that probably cost more than what I am wearing. Just walking around the city, gawking at everything is generally entertaining enough. Ordering food in a resturaunt hasn't gotten any easier, but we have had good luck with our pointing at pictures and everything so far has been edible even though sometimes we don't know exactly what it is we are eating. The language barrier here is pretty intense, mainly due to an unshared alphabet, I think, though sometimes we feel that some people know more english than they let on. We have met a few friendly people who have come to our rescue with fluent english when we needed them most.

Today we visited a man-made island just across the river (bay?) from the downtown area that is home to some futuristic-looking buildings. And we finally got to see a few robots at a science museum there. We spent the day in two pretty neat and very hands-on museums, one sponsored by Sony, where we got to play with computers and see robots and think about the future. Adam has come down with a cold, so our nights have been quiet - just wrapping up in a big blanket to ward of the cold and reading. We are both pretty excited to get on that plane and finally fly towards home. Only one and a half more days to struggle through and we've made it.
Stay Tuned...
Andrea

20 Feb 2008

Well,

We arrived in Tokyo this afternoon after a long flight from Bangkok. The weird thing about the flight was before we left, we both were wearing shoes...those things for your feet and with socks none the less. That hasn't happened in several long months, probably 3-4 months ago!

Much to my surprise we have yet to see a robot or any flying cars or scifi stuff like that. This has probably been the most lost I have been in a forgien city. Knowing none of the language and not many of the people we have asked speak English. Dinner involved not one word of English with the waitress. Thank goodness that the menu was all in picutres and that I am a really good pointer!

Other than that, a nice city of what we have seen. And cold. Its nice though as we have missed the stiff cold air for 2+ years now.

Confused in Tokyo
Adam

19 February 2008

Greetings all,
Today we find ourselves on the brink of another big move. We fly out at the painful hour of 2am from Bangkok, where we have been for the last few days, to arrive in freezing cold Tokyo in the afternoon. It will be the last stop of this whirlwind trip, and we are both grateful for that. Not that we aren't having fun, we are, but we're ready.

We didn't stay in Samui long - there wasn't much to do there, so we fled the next day to nearby island Ko Tao. We stayed on a beautiful little bay that would have been perfect, had it not been the end of monsoon season. This equals rough seas, which ruins the wonderful snorkeling that was right out our door. We braved the waves a few different times, but didn't last long. Adam did get a brief glimpse of a blacktip reef shark one afternoon though, which was exciting. Since we couldn't snorkel, we decided to do one last day of scuba, and good thing we did. We were alerted to the presence of a whale shark just as our boat pulled up to the reef, so we got dressed as quickly as possible and hopped in. We had seen a whale shark before back in mozambique while snorkeling, but this was a bit different as we were down in the depths with it. Unfortunately news spread fast and soon there were about 30 other people down there to get a glimpse and it became quite crowded. The whale shark could have fled if it had wanted to, but it stayed with us for quite a while. It was about 4.5 meters long - 13 feet - which was smaller than the ones we;ve previously seen, but quite neat to be underwater with nonetheless.

We came to chaotic Bangkok a few days ago and have enjoyed our time here, crazy as it is. Everything is dirt cheap and we have started collecting new clothes which are drastically needed. We have been to see many temples and the royal palace too, but mostly have just wandered and looked at things and eaten fresh fruit on the street. We fly out tonight and are mentally unprepared for the cold we know awaits us in Tokyo. We;re a week away from home - can't believe it!

We'll write again from Japan...
Andrea

11 Feb 2008

Well, after a couple of days of nothingness. We decided to do a couple more SCUBA dives in the afternoon.

Very nice once again. Went to to small little islands with great coral reefs. We continue to get more comfortable underwater so you can see and experience things a lot easier. The highlishts of these dives were the two leopard sharks that we had close encounters with. The first one made me think of a coach potato as it was just laying on the bottom (even as we approach and get within a meter) and was having difficulty breathing or at least that is what it looked like. More Nemo and other cool fish. A shrimp which was cool because they are normally hiding in a hole. A jellyfish that floated by. And some more fish...

We have finally left my island, Phi Phi Island (I will never grow up) and we took a boat to Andrea's town, Krabi town. (hehe) From there some bus rides and another boat and we are now on Samui Island on the other side of Thailand, in the Gulf of Thailand. Nothing much yet as we just arrived, but big plans for more beach bumming.

Yup

Adam

09 Feb 2008

Yesterday

Woke up

Eat, lay on beach, snorkel

Repeat

A

06 February 2008

Well, being a beach bum now (officially speaking) the only way I know the date is because the computer told me so. We are still in Thailand and still wearing my swimming suit for the 20th straight day! I know but someone has to do it.

We are currently on Phi Phi Island (pronounced Pee Pee). Insert joke here!!! All is good. The town itself is filled with too many tourist spending too much money. We found a cool little hotel on its own little beach with great snorkeling from the shore. We have been here for a while now (more than a week, I think) and have been having a good time.

Yesterday we went SCUBAing again. We went in the afternoon which was nice as beach bums don't really like getting up early. So we went out on a private charter (noone else had signed up for the afternoon trip, lucky us) . I was great. Our own personal dive master to show us around. Some of the highights were swimming through a 2 meter wide canyon with sea fan and fish abounding on the sides, a weird fish (African pompano) which the dive master didn't know what it was, the tiny ghost pipefish, lobster, lionfish, scorpionfish, pufferfish and a very playful hawksbill turtle that played around us for several minutes. It was two great dives! I think we are heading out again tomorrow.

Dving, snorkeling, reading on the beach and eating thai food takes up most of our time nowadays....that and counting the days until we get home!

Adam