Monday, June 21, 2010

The Day My Babies Came to Visit

This is actually an old post.  I had saved it as a draft on June 7th and forgotten about it.  I decided just to post it as is, rather than try to go back and edit the time frame.  Gosh, I miss this!

Last Wednesday the kids that we tutor from the YWAM house came to visit the ship.  It was so fun to be able to invite our friends to our "home."

waiting for visitor passes

seeing my classroom

YWAM kids with my 4th and 5th grade class

group photo outside the academy

juice and cookies

Lukman

Claude and Shalom

tour of the bridge

group photo on deck 7

in front of the ship

me with Shalom and Claude, the kids I tutor on Monday nights

A bientot!  See you soon! 

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Beauty

Mooching again...

"Beauty" by Jenn.  You don't want to miss this one.

Saturday, June 5, 2010

Should I give up, or should I just keep chasin' pavement...

even if it leads nowhere?

We couldn't stop laughing when "Chasing Pavement" started playing on Kelly's iPod just past the halfway point of our trek across Togo two weeks ago. I'm not sure why we thought it would be a good idea to attempt to walk 35 miles without stopping, but let's be honest, how often do you get to say you walked across an entire country in a day? One group from the ship had already tried and failed, so that made the challenge all the more enticing.

The plan: touch the Ghana border, walk across Togo, touch the Benin border.  We named it the Trans Togo Trek.  (I know, we're dorks.)


leaving the ship at 4:45 a.m.

starting out at the border of Ghana--5:10 a.m.
from left: Estelle, Kelly, me, Jenn, Ben, Liz, and Tim
(Jenn, Liz and Tim just started with us so that we'd have a big group before dawn.  They walked back to the ship shortly after sunrise.)

 
My friend Murray offered to drive a "support vehicle" alongside us for safety and, of course, water breaks.  He took some really cool photos along the way.

 
And then there were three...Estelle dropped out just shy of halfway because of blisters. 
 
the African coast...beautiful, isn't it?


 
halfway!!!
  
 
palm trees along the road

 

 
Tampico break
  
 
We reached the marathon mark!


 
shirt change--Ben decided to change jerseys as we got closer to each country.  He started wearing a Ghana jersey, changed into a Togo jersey about a third of the way through, and then switched to a Benin jersey for the last leg of the trek.
  
 
still in good spirits at this point

  

 

 
Ok, this is about where we renamed the trip the Trans Togo Trudge. Our favorite lines, "How much longer?"  "Um, I think maybe just another hour and a half."  We seemed to say that, oh, about every hour and a half.

 
some beautiful scenery to brighten up the last 2 miles

Hi from the bridge, just on the outskirts of the border town.  We think we can...we think we can.

almost to Benin!

 
We made it!!!  We reached the Benin border at 5:30 p.m.

No, that's not a sock tan.  That's the line between our dirty legs and our white feet.  I'm not sure how Kelly's legs were the dirtiest when she was the only one wearing pants.

I've never been one to do stupid things just to say I did, but I think this may be the beginning of a new habit. We had so much fun, and it was a great way to see the countryside.  (I also gained an appreciation for why boys are proud of their "battle scars."  I have a bruise underneath my toenail from our little adventure, and I refuse to paint my toenails so that I can watch it turn colors.  I think I gained cool teacher points from my fifth grade boys for that...ha.)  Besides being one of the stupidest things I've ever done, the Trans Togo Trek will undoubtedly be one of my favorite memories from Togo.