I don't know about you, but I'm feeling 27

A couple weeks ago I turned 27- not a particularly momentous milestone as far as birthdays go. At 25 I could rent a car and at 26 I was kicked off my parents’ health insurance plan, but 27? No big deal.

However, within forty-eight hours of my birthday I had purchased a car. This was significant for several reasons:

1.    The car had four doors.

2.   I did all the negotiating myself, with only minor consultation with my father- a feat I firmly believed I was incapable of until the frustration of being confined to my house superseded my car-buying anxiety.

3.   I met the dealer at McDonald’s in Junction City (the halfway point between us, but admittedly an odd place to broker a deal), signed all the paperwork and wrote a check for the entirety of my life savings.

Hello adulthood.

If I needed further proof that I am practically a real adult I found it in droves Friday night. My friend Kimberly and I went to outdoor concert that included a dozen or so bands and 18,000 audience members. After the first two bands my feet were achey and I wanted to sit down. Or perhaps lie down for a short nap.

I noticed immediately that we were surrounded by youths. As in high school students who looked like they were eleven and were complaining about their moms. And I found myself thinking the following thoughts:

Where are your parents? Why would they let you come un-chaperoned to an event where there are DRUGS and statistically speaking MULTIPLE REGISTERED SEX OFFENDERS?

Although we had an awesome time, we left before the final band because that seemed preferable to waiting for the 45 minutes it would take for them to set up the stage.  Plus, our feet were very tired.  Plus there was a very dramatic (read: intoxicated) woman behind us who was inciting violence and it became stressful.

The good news is that I got home with plenty of time to watch a couple of episodes of New Girl on Netflix before bed.

Hello old age. 

all creatures great and small

Nairobi was my home for eight weeks during the summer of 2009. The minute we stepped out of the airport I inhaled a lungful of car exhaust and smog and smiled with the great satisfaction that only comes with the smell of a place very dear to you. My first time in Nairobi was fairly devoid of any touristy type experiences- a fact that Bruce set out to remedy immediately. First on the agenda was the giraffe park:

"Oh hello there!"

This is a magical place where you feed giraffes out of the palm of your hand. Trivia: In the sixth grade, my favorite animal was the giraffe and I wrote what felt like at the time  a very extensive research paper on them. Did you know that giraffes have seven vertebrae in their necks? That's the same number as humans. That might also be the only information I retained from the sixth grade.

This giraffe was either particularly gregarious or particularly hungry, because all of his friends were chilling in the distance.

Carefully avoiding the humans

The name "Giraffe Park" might be a bit deceptive, because there's also plenty of these guys:

Pumba?

Now I love giraffes and warthogs and basically any animal featured in the 1994 motion picture classic, The Lion King. But as we all know, my heart really belongs to BABY ELEPHANTS. Which was why our next destination, The Elephant Orphanage filled my heart with joy. Brace yourself, because you're about to be bombarded with more cuteness than you can probably handle. 

I warned you.

The majority of these precious little babes have been made orphans by poachers. We learned that they can't survive without their mother's milk until they are two years old. The orphanage rescues the babies and feeds them a vegetable-based formula:

Nom nom nom.

The babies are eventually reintroduced into a wild herd- a process that takes 5-10 years. 5-10 YEARS.

The moral of this story is never ever ever buy anything made of ivory. 

The one with the blanket is the youngest elephant at the orphanage. He's so little
that he has to wear the blanket to regulate his body temperature.

Let me leave you with a short video- so you can get the full effect. You're welcome. 

I apologize for leaving everyone in such suspense. We made it to Africa; we made it home again; and then I waited a month to write anything about it. But as I am better at articulating experiences via the written word (my apologies to everyone who has asked about the trip and received this response: "Uh, it was good, really good."), I thought I might as well blog the highlights.

Day One: Amsterdam

Preface: I arranged for us to have a 12-hour layover in Amsterdam on our way to Kenya. My brilliant thought was that we would sleep on the plane and wake up refreshed and ready to take on a full day of sight-seeing. I am notoriously able to sleep anytime, anywhere and under almost any condition. Unfortunately those conditions exclude sitting next to crying babies/screaming children who are too old to be screaming on a plane. Therefore, I got about forty-three minutes of sleep on the flight to Amsterdam.

 

In Amsterdam, before the exhaustion set in.

The lovely thing about Amsterdam is that it is relatively easy to navigate. You can take a short train ride from the airport into the city, most people speak English and you can see the majority of the touristy stuff on foot or by canal boat. We set out on foot at first, but then Bruce inadvertently wandered into the bowels of the Red Light District. If you ask him about this, he will deny it.

“What makes you think this is the Red Light District?”- Bruce

“Gee, Dad, I don’t know. Maybe all the red doors and the prostitutes?”- Me

“Where did you see prostitutes?”

“Standing in the windows.”

“How did you know they were prostitutes?”

“How did you not know they were prostitutes?”

Bruce was easy to spot in his orange shirt.

Fortunately, it was 9:00 in the morning and the RLD was not exactly a hotbed of activity. Even so, it’s not a place you hope to find yourself at any time of day with your old man.

After that we boarded a hop-on, hop-off canal boat, a decidedly more family-friendly activity. We saw most of the city that way. We hopped off for lunch at a sidewalk café. I succumbed to the temptation of something on the menu called an “American Toasty”. That was a mistake, but this espresso was the fulfillment of my European dreams.

Espresso and Heineken. Please note the absence of marijuana.

We visited some shops and Bruce had what he declared to be the best cheese of his life. He wanted to buy an entire block of it as a "snack", but I convinced him they probably had the same cheese in Kansas. We almost got hit by bicycles countless times before deciding to retreat to the canal boat.

I'm telling you... bikes. Everywhere.

Upon boarding the boat we had to squish into a booth with a lovely British family. But I was so tired, that despite the antics of the hilarious mum and a four-year old with blonde curls down to his shoulders, I almost immediately slipped into a coma-like sleep. I opened my eyes just long enough to see Anne Frank's house as we passed by, but couldn't summon the energy to get out my camera.  Bruce was dozing off as well, so we finally decided to head back to the airport. 

Thus concludes the pot-pungent first leg of our journey. Next stop: Africa.