Whoopee! Hoopoe!

We have a hoopoe! I've seen it twice, both times in the driveway picking through the gravel. 

When I arrived home from work yesterday I noticed the hoopoe. I quietly walked across the driveway so as not to disturb it. Ellie was at the door, watching through the screen, in a tizzy. It had just rained and many birds were taking advantage of the cool temperature and the last few minutes of daylight to forage in the front yard.

By the time I got inside and then thought to grab my camera and go back out, it was gone. Sometimes it's better to just sit and watch, rather than miss the experience entirely while trying to capture it forever on film.

Hoopoes are commonly found throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia. You don't see them in large numbers and their exotic plumage makes people like us, who aren't used to seeing them, think they are rare. Really, they're just new to us. And very cool.

And it's fun to say "hoopoe," pronounced "hoo-poo." You can't say it without smiling.

Rencontrez les poulets

Introducing Little Jerry and Snowball Two. They're both there, Snowball Two standing in front of Little Jerry. They don't like me and they won't stand still long enough for a good photo. I unfortunately haven't had any bonding time with them. Hopefully once I give them some treats they'll come around. 

We have chickens

Mike made a lovely chalet du poulet yesterday and this morning we got a hen and a rooster. I’ll post photos later.

The coop is open on two sides and we can’t get the chickens interested in it. They love the patch of bamboo right behind their coop. The rooster hopped into the chalet for a few minutes and their food and water are next to it so hopefully they’ll figure out that they need to go back there for safe and sound sleeping tonight. Also, I don’t want to go tromping through the bamboo searching for eggs and I don’t want hidden eggs to become surprise chicks. (Well, actually I do, but it wouldn’t be very practical right now to have a bunch of chicks. It would be fun though.)

Peeps in Places; Us Going to Places

Check out National Geographic Traveler's Peeps in Places photo contest. If only I'd brought Peeps with me to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro!

I've got traveling on the brain because we're sort of being forced into some vacation time. A labyrinthine series of rules and regulations boils down to us taking vacation in May or losing certain travel perks. 

Well, if we have to, we have to. 

But where to go and what to do when we get there? I'm obsessed with NGT's Intelligent Travel blog, searching for answers:

Now through April 27, Alaska Airlines is offering 30% off its tickets from select airports. Each day, the airline will chose one airport that will offer the deal.
Gogo Inflight is offering 20% off internet use on Delta flights through April 30.

Folks in London and Stratford-upon-Avon are celebrating Shakespeare's birthday this week. Celebrations will include a free open day at the Globe Theatre.

Intrepid Travel is offering  20 percent off some of its most popular tours through April 20, like  The Road to Budapest, Colors of Morocco, and Majestic Peru.

Get the kids outside. Junior Ranger Day is April 25 and many National Parks are hosting events to celebrate. There's even an essay contest where junior rangers can enter to win $1,000.

Snakes on a plane! No, it's not another Samuel L. Jackson flop. Twelve pythons got loose on a Qantas flight from Alice Springs to Melbourne. Although only eight of the snakes were found, the plane is now back in service.

Fat tax? United Airlines just announced plans to start charging obese passengers for two seats on full flights.

Check out BrilliantTips for their top 11 pop culture memorials around the world.

Actually, I think we'll go to Paris. We've never been and why the hell not?

Don't mail Netflix without drinking morning coffee first

I've been a Netflix subscriber for several years now. At least five, maybe longer. And this week for the first time ever, I made a mistake. One morning I opened the DVD player, took out the disc, put it in the envelope, and gave it to Mike to drop in the mail slot at work. Just like I've done hundreds of time. 

Last night I was straightening up the DVD area when I saw the disc that's supposed to be on it's way to Netflix. (Here's were I reveal something totally embarrassing: Mike and I are hooked on The Tudors. We're on disc 3 of season 1.) Okay, not the end of the world. I can double up discs next time I send one back. But, wait a minute... what disc did I mail back? I haven't figured that out yet. But Henry VIII is looking up at me from the TV table and he creeps me out.

I blame coffee. Some days I don't drink it at home; I bring it to the office instead. On those mornings I have a proven track record of doing ridiculous things before arriving in the office.

Netflix customer service is pretty good, but tracking down an errant disc among the thousands they receive every day is probably a Herculean task. Adding to the annoyance is that all our mail gets funneled through a U.S. address, which makes shipping a breeze, but also makes it long. It takes at least 3 weeks for a Netflix to arrive at the facility after I've dropped it in the mail here. I doubt I'll see my disc again.

My one hope is that the mail hasn't gone out yet this week from Mike's office. Usually it goes out on Thursday, but sometimes Friday. Keeping my fingers crossed for a slow mail week this week!

No power to the people

This morning the power went out just after I woke up but just before I made coffee. The guards couldn’t get the generator running. We have no fuel for the campstove. I was about ready to fire up the charcoal grill when the power came back on. I raced to the kitchen to get the coffeemaker started before the next outage.

The local electric company has been having problems lately with flow and distribution. The level of electricity fluctuates so wildly that the lights will dim and re-brighten, dim and re-brighten, continuously throughout the evening. Just when it seems like the lights can’t get any dimmer without actually going off, they’ll go off. Normally, this happens a couple times a week and our guards run the generator for a few minutes and then regular power is restored. In the last two weeks or so this has been happening several times a day and the generator isn’t always able to solve the problem.

The generator doesn’t seem to be registering the electricity flow, or lack of flow. There will be electricity flowing to half the house, so the generator thinks everything is a-okay. Or the generator runs and runs but for some reason electricity doesn’t get into the house. And it’s not just our house or our generator. This is a neighborhood-wide problem.

I don’t really mind the power outages much, except for times when they interrupt my coffee flow. They are a reminder that I should be reading instead of watching TV. We are among the lucky folks here who not only have a generator but it works most of the time. In many neighborhoods, the power goes out at 10pm for the rest of the night every night, if they even have electrical service at all. We learn many lessons in being thankful for what we have here.

Just Testing

I'm trying the blog-by-mail feature. Stephanie From the sunny shores of Lake Tanganyika Blog: http://whereintheworld-stephanie.blogspot.com/ Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/15217562@N00/collections/

Long Time, No Blog

Pheeewwww.

That's me blowing the dust off of ye olde blogger.com.

1. Grendel. His passing has left a cloud over our household and I just haven't been in the mood to blog.

2. Social Engagements. Many of them work-related, have left me exhausted.

3. Study. For now I'll stick with generic Career Development as an explanation. My reading stack includes Middle East for Dummies, Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, and Essentials of World History. I also have to read the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Economist regularly. You know what I really dislike? Reading the newspaper online. I love the aesthetic of the paper and the cup of coffee. Flipping the pages. It's just not the same on a computer.

I actually have lots of things to talk about and I hope to get around to them soon.

We saw monkeys

Today for the first time since we moved here, we saw monkeys on our street. It's been a pretty standard rule of thumb that the monkeys, vervet monkeys to be precise, don't come down the mountain as far as where we live. They get to about two streets up from us and stay there. They are seen as a pest here and some people get dogs and big rubber snakes to scare them out of their yards, and other people feed them. I've seen a couple monkeys tied up as pets and I saw lots of monkeys in Tanzania, but I hadn't seen them "in the wild" here in Burundi.

We were driving down our street this morning when a small, furry gray body with a long tail ran across the road and jumped a wall. I said, "Cat or monkey?!?!" and when we pulled up to the spot where the furry little body had crossed, we saw two vervet monkeys in a tree, calling to their friends that were in a tree in a yard across the street. We could hear dogs in the yard barking. We sat there watching the monkeys for a while. They just sat there screeching and we decided it was time to move on when the attraction became the two muzungus watching monkeys rather than the actual monkeys. 

The novelty of having monkeys, rather than say, raccoons or skunks, is still pretty cool to me. We wonder if it was a fluke that they came down into this neighborhood or if they're on a quest for new ground. We have fruit trees and no dogs, so maybe we'll actually see them in our yard some time soon. 

Maybe I should look in to getting that rabies vaccination, if we're going to have monkeys in the yard.

(Photo from wikipedia.)