HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY MOM!!!!!!! I don't know if you saw, but I called you! I got a special calling card and everything! It was supposed to be a surprise :) I think you were at church, though. I left a voice message so make sure to listen to it. You are the best Mom ever, never forget it! I love you, and have an amazing Mother's Day. 


I purposefully didn't post anything yesterday because I decided to just clump the weekend into one post. It was a wonderful and successful weekend! Sometimes, I just wish I could rewind time and redo my exact weekend just to be able to experience it again. On Saturday I climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro!! Not to the top....but nobody needs to know that. The only downside to this day is that it was an extremely rainy day. All day ranging from a mist to a downpour, and it only gets worse as you near the mountain. The hike was gorgeous though, with tangled vines draped with moss, lush green rainforest, rivers running through the thicket, and a mist rising from the ground because of the rain. We also saw monkeys! Blue ball monkeys, they're called. They swing through the trees, jumping from branch to branch, making the leaves rain drops down on us. I got extremely close to a baby hanging on a tree. We sat there, staring at each other for a straight minute. It was so incredible. The entire hike up was beautiful, but exhausting. We trekked approximately 4 1/2 miles up, and 4 1/2 back down - 9 miles altogether. Going up was steep, rocky, and by the end my legs felt like jello. After my body was broken down and pleading for nutrients, I downed my lunch, and then we made our way back down. The hike down was much more pleasant. I felt like I was really able to take in the scenery. 

This is the little one I had a "moment" with

One thing to note while climbing Kilimanjaro - safari ants. You can barely make them out on the trail until you really focus, but they gather into clumps crawling on top of one another by the thousands. When you first see them it seems like an illusion because it looks like the ground is moving. Then you get closer and realize there are thousands of ants crawling on top of each other all in a clump. The worst is when you don't see them and step into one of these clumps. They latch onto your shoe and slowly crawl up it, inside, and then ever so lightly make their way up your leg. The thing is you don't feel them crawling up you, so you don't know they're there until they bite, you yelp, reach into your pants and find a dead ant laying between your pinched fingers. I must have had extremely accessible shoes, because this happened to me multiple times throughout the trip. It's not that I stepped in the clump, believe me after the first time I was very cautious, but where there is a clump there are stragglers a couple feet before it that you can't make out. I was bitten on my feet (4 on my right foot, 3 on my left), knee, upper thigh, and back! Don't know how that last one got there, but they'll find a way! It was annoying to say the least, and Trent, I have no idea why you're investing so much time into those devil critters or anything related to them, but it definitely made the trip less enjoyable. 


The next day, today I guess, I hiked through Arusha National Park. This is a park that is well known for its giraffes, buffalos, and hippos. What is great about this park is that you can walk through it. There aren't any aggressive animals so walking is allowed. Of course a ranger with a gun comes with you just in case, but overall a really safe environment. We also got to paddle on canoes up to where the hippos live. A lot of the trip includes driving in a safari car because the park is relatively big, but a lot more "hands-on" as far as safari trips go. It was amazing! I got to walk right up to the buffalo, there were warthogs or "Pumbas", zebras, dik-diks, and an assortment of birds and storks. Being non-aggressive in nature, of course they run away most of the time, but it was still really neat. Paddling in the canoes made me miss home in Minnesota, but the hippos did not. It was a little scary because they kill the most people out of all the animals in a typically safari trip, but we stayed far enough away that it wasn't a concern of mine. It's just that they can stay under the water for 20 minutes tops, so if you canoe over their territory they'll come up and kill you even though you had no idea they were underneath you. They make the funniest sound, kind of a like a really loud grunt. I saw a Momma and her baby with Daddy protecting the two. I saw a python!! It was curled up on this little island right off shore, and as we were looking at it's curled up body it's head popped out and started slithering towards the edge of the island! That was my cue to start paddling the canoe backwards in a very rapid motion. I also think I was better at handling a canoe than the tour guide. On our way out from the park, a herd of giraffes were crossing the road and eating right in front of us!! They are such beautiful animals. Pictures don't do them justice. Like zebras, their patterns are so intricate, vibrant, and unique. The animal itself has such a graceful and elegant delicacy, it's beautiful in nature. Most of the ones we saw were either babies or very young. Also on our way out we saw colobus monkeys! They are black and white and have the looongest hair. They look bigger than a typical monkey, maybe more like a sloth. It was so exciting to see so many different animals on this trip, most of which were very close. Really an amazing day. 

Can you see the python in there? If you look at it long enough, you can make out it's head and eye. It's at the top of the body, its eye looking at you between the grass. 

How many giraffes can you count? (Answer: 5)

I got this one in the process of jumping from one branch up to the next

After we got home I remembered something important I needed to do. If you remember from a couple posts back, I told you about the kids across the street and how they had asked "do you have a futbol?" and they had nothing to play futbol with. Following that story Dad sent me an email telling me to get those kids a soccer ball! So this afternoon I took their brand new futbol funded by Dad, and they were SO excited. I told them that I had told my dad they didn't have a futbol so he told me to go get them a futbol! They smiled at that and immediately thanked me for it. Right away they began playing with it. I think the oldest boy, about 9 years old, was the most excited. He LOVES soccer, so right when he got it he began to show off tricks that he knows. It amazes me that to give them something so simple can make them so happy. Thank you, Dad, for telling me to do that and giving me the means to buy things so I can do things like that.