Last Africa and Dubai Reflections

Greetings friends! We are now home in MN and reacclimating to "normal" life, however one may define that. Chris and I had an amazing time indeed, and came home with an increased awareness and appreciation of community and the true necessities in life. In this global community, we all have a common need to love, give, and receive.

I know I kept you all hanging after diligently blogging the first half of the trip, so I leave you with some photo highlights of our remaining portion of our trip along with short narration. Thanks for your interest and support as we traveled on 10 airplanes for 49 hours over the past 2 weeks to have this trip of a lifetime come true!

Our boat ride across the Mara River to our safari base at Little Governor's Camp. http://www.governorscamp.com/property_descriptions_governors_camp_little_governors_home.php

The view of our watering hole from our tent (!) upon arrival, with the elephant and giraffe there to greet us. I enjoyed them much more than the hippos who would graze near our tent overnight, whom I swear sound identical to Jabba The Hut. Good thing the Masai warriors were there keeping guard or I would not have been able to sleep.

A great highlight of our safari- seeing the mama cheetah and baby (behind gazelle) going for a live kill.

The majestic Mt Kilimanjaro mountain as we flew between Kenya and Tanzania.

The view from our Peace House Africa guest house in Arusha, Tanzania, with friendly sheep, students playing soccer, and Mt Meru in the distance.

Onward to Dubai, where we had a terrific informative tour of the Jumeirah mosque with Muslim guide below demonstrating their prayer rituals 5 times a day.

The famous Burj Al Arab hotel outlining the sillouette of a sailboat, and the largest 7-star hotel in the world, complete with its private helicopter landing towards the top.

At the Mall of the Emirates, Ski Dubai was a refreshing breath of indoor air to escape the 100+ degree outdoor weather. This was the largest mall in the world and dwarfed Mall of America!

I love this picture of Chris and his two new friends that we made after negotiating a great deal on a Persian silk rug near the Gold Souk markets.

Our last day was enjoyed on the Arabian sea at the Atlantis resort on the crescent of "The Palm" manmade islands off the coast of Dubai.

2 week old baby elephant sleeping, then waking up to realize he was far away from his mommy.

Wonderful song of the Tanzanian children at Peace House Africa:

The cheetah kill: