I made it home

I made it safely back to the good ‘ol USA, and let me just say … that first bagel was glorious!! I was really excited when I saw that there was an Einstein’s Bagel shop in the Phoenix airport, so excited that I almost missed the shuttle from Phoenix to Prescott while I was running around trying to find it

So I know this isn’t as exciting as when I was giving updates from exotic locations on the other side of the world but I plan on keeping this blog going for a little while. I still have a lot of stories from this summer that I never got around to writing down. I was also thinking about jotting down some of my thoughts about things I’ve learned and conclusions I’ve come to now that I have a little time to reflect on the crazy summer that has just come to an end.  So keep checking in if your interested in hearing about:

• my goat-herding adventure
• the time I was standing in the middle of a angry mob, watching people with sticks and rocks in their hands head toward me
• what it feels like to completely lose your anonymity and have everyone who sees you assume that you’re filthy rich
• a description of the wonderful work my group did in Kenya this summer
• and more ……

London

It’s been really nice being back in a developed country. It’s great to have clean bathrooms, potable water out of the faucet, hot water in the showers, and it takes so much less effort to get around when everyone speaks English. I’ve only been in London a couple of days but I’ve done a lot and I am already falling in love with the city. So far I have:

• Walked along the Thames (for many hours)
• Gone on a pub crawl
• Seen the London Eye, Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and much much more
• Watched the USC football team play (on TV) with the London USC Alumni club
• Seen a West End production of Wicked (It was really really good)
• And today I went to the Chelsea vs. Tottenham soccer match

The soccer game was amazing, the game was sold out as most are and the fans were so passionate. It was a home game for Chelsea so the stadium was a sea of blue and the Chelsea fans didn’t stop singing and chanting the entire game. Here’s a shot of me inside the stadium 45 minutes before kickoff:

This is gonna be another short post since I’m wiped out from the game and I’m gonna go take a nap. Gotta rest up since I might go Salsa dancing later with a nice girl from Mexico I met at the hostel. I’ll see you all stateside in just a few days!

Egypt was outstanding!

I had an incredible time in Egypt! My friend Johnny ended up arriving the day after I did, he and his family were wonderful hosts and took me all over the place. Here’s a link to some of the pictures Caroline (Johnny’s sister) and I took while I was there:

http://picasaweb.google.com/cstoehr/Egypt

My flight to London leaves in just a few hours so I gotta run. I’ll catch you in England

Cruizin’ around Cairo

I have safely arrived in Cairo and it’s pretty damn cool, seeing the pyramids at Giza from the plane was quite an amazing sight!! Right now I am sitting in a little internet cafe right near the Nile. I expected the Nile to be all brown and dirty but what I have seen so far is beautiful and blue.

Unfortunately the friend I was supposed to be staying with in Cairo hasn’t made it here yet. He was playing basketball in LA the night before he his flight to Cairo and he came down on his ankle akwardley and heard a few nasty popping sounds. He’s gonna be ok but he’s on crutches and won’t make it into Cairo until at least tomorrow evening which means I’m rolling solo until then. Until he arrives I am staying in a hostel in downtown Cairo, just a 15 minute walk from the Nile. Well, I think it’s a 15  minute walk … I got really lost on the way down here and it took me a lot longer than it should have so I can’t be completely sure   Getting lost wasn’t too hard, very few of the intersections have street signs and most signs are only in Arabic which isn’t incredibly helpful to me. To be honest I should admit that I have actually been lost twice already. Due to a miscommunication between myself and the cab driver who brought me from the Cairo airport I got dropped off quite a ways away from the Hotel Osiris (the hostel I’m staying at). He didn’t speak much english, I don’t speak any arabic, and I’m pretty sure he couldn’t read because showing him a map of where I wanted to go didn’t help the situation at all. (According to my Lonely Planet book the iliteracy rate here is pretty high) The cab driver did seem to understand the name of a city square somewhat close to where I am staying and that is where I got dropped off. 20 minutes later I managed to get to the hostel, nicely soaked in sweat from carrying 3 heavy bags around in the 100 degree heat. It didn’t bother me though, I’m too excited about being here to be bothered by much

I’m off to go find some food, I haven’t eaten yet today and it’s 2pm here so I’m getting pretty hungry. I’ll try and get some Cairo pics up soon …  I hope you all are doing well!

P.S. Don’t be shy about commenting on my posts or sending me emails, it gets a little lonely out here on the road and I always appreciate hearing from people.

New Post

Follow this link to see my latest post: http://cstoehr.blogspot.com/

More Pictures

Just posted some of the landscape pictures I took throughout the summer. Click here to check them out:
Kenya Landscapes

This link will take you a page showing all the picture albums I have posted so far this summer:
Christian’s Album Index

I hope you enjoy the pictures … I’m off to go try and find a place to watch the USA Basketball Team take on China in their Olympic opener tonight.

Return to Civilization

I arrived back in Nairobi early this morning having just completed my two month camping adventure. I am sad that it will be quite a while before I see Lions, Hippos, Elephants, or any of the other amazing Kenyan wildlife species in their natural habitat again, but I am also really happy about not having to be in a tent again for a long long time

I will be in Nairobi until Thursday morning at which point I will begin the whirlwind of travel that I outlined in my previous post. Most of the rest of my group flies out tonight so I am heading off shortly to say goodbye to many friends I have become quite close with over the last few months. It will be a sad parting but we will also be celebrating all the good work our group has accomplished during our time here. I will put up a post soon detailing the work we have been doing and I will also post some of my more interesting adventures.

Since you will have to wait a bit for all the fun details I have uploaded the following for your viewing pleasure:

This is a shot my friend Lukeine took of me as we were driving out of the Maasai Mara for the last time.

The Sahara looks pretty cool from a plane, almost as cool as the last fifteen times I flew over it :)

Well, it’s taken me a long time but I have finally got my travel plans all sorted out. Having a super-slow internet connection and minimal access to a phone that doesn’t work very well definitely makes setting up travel challenging but here’s what I managed to cobble together:

• Today I will return to Maasai Mara (probably with a stopover in Narok tonight)
• I will be in the Mara working with the students and other project members until August 7 when we will all return to Nairobi.
• On August 9th all the students will fly home to the U.S., I will stay in Nairobi for a further few days to work on computer related tasks for MCPP
• Then on August 14th I will board a plane in Nairobi headed for Mombasa where I will relax in a nice tourist resort, explore the city, and recover from 2 months of camping
• August 18 will find me flying back to Nairobi where I will spend a day preparing for the next stage of my journey
• On the 20th I will hop on a Egypt Airlines plane bound for Cairo where I will meet up with my friend Johnny who I met at USC. He has family in Cairo and has kindly offered to give me a place to stay and to show me all the sights.
• I will fly back to Nairobi late on August 26th for the sole purpose of catching my August 28th flight to Heathrow out of the Nairobi airport. What is that you say? … Yes, Yes … I agree with you, it is completely ridiculous to fly all the way south to Nairobi from Cairo in order to get to London. All that I can offer in my defense is two long trips to the Nairobi airport where I spent over 6 hours waiting around to talk to a British Airways agent. Why didn’t I just call British Airways? Well I did, and they informed me that they don’t accept credit card payments over the phone for flights originating in Nairobi so if you want to change your flight you have to go to the airport … where it turns out … British Airways ticketing agents only work when they feel like it and they don’t publish their schedules so you just hop in a taxi bound for the airport and pray you can find a BA employee on duty. And then …. you finally find one and they spend 30 seconds informing you (in very anti-climatic fashion) that your travel agent booked you a ticket that is non-refundable, non-tranferable, and non-upgradable, you can change the date of your flight but nothing else.
• Ya that pretty much sucked … and after exploring my other options, it became clear that the most cost-effective way to get from Cairo to London was by shifting the date of my Nairobi-London flight and flying from Cairo back to Nairobi … oh well it’s not that bad and I get to go see Cairo!!
• So after needlessly criss-crossing the African Continent a few times I will arrive in London on the morning of Friday the 29th. I will hang out there for a few days and then board a flight on September 2nd for Phoenix.
• What comes after that I don’t really know … I imagine I’ll sleep for a few days to start things off tho

Throwing Christian to the Lions

In case any of you didn’t believe that I was in Kenya I just thought I would post this picture as proof :p My friend Becca took this when we were driving through the Maasai Mara Reserve about a week ago….

London Suggestions?

As I mentioned in my last post I am thinking about spending a few days in London on my way back to the U.S. It occurs to me that some of you out there may have spent time in London so I thought I would ask for your advice. If you have any suggestions of things I should do, places I should see, or a hotel I should stay at, please either post a comment to this post or email me. Your input is much appreciated … thanks!