Travel to the US

Finding a moment to update my blog, I realize the vast time period since my last posting. It is shameful but for those of you who have been in touch with me recently, it would be obvious why I haven’t had much time. 

Uganda

So in order to catch up, I’ll start with late June. I had a travel-packed schedule in the weeks prior to my vacation/paternity leave. Among the various places I went, I returned to Uganda for a few days. There was nothing extremely eventful in the trip except for the fact that I crossed paths with the president of Kenya in the lobby of my hotel. I admit to being intrigued by the massive entourages of important people. For someone like President Kenyatta, he has many layers. He has people lingering out in the parking area, in the lobby, on the stairs, in hallway outside his room and of course more than a half dozen who walk with him, two or three of whom are well-decorated military. I’m assuming it costs a fortune to travel with all these folks. I suppose given the two countries’ close proximity they allowed a few more hangers on for this trip.

Amsterdam

Two days after returning from Entebbe, we were off to the US. The combination of traveling with a toddler and having friends in the cities through which we were in transit, we broke up the trip by scheduling a day in Amsterdam and a day in Minneapolis. We’d done this before and it worked out well. 

Buj airport - before the looong trip

In Amsterdam we saw our friend Anne. She and her family were friends and neighbors of ours in Burundi and we’ve been in touch in the couple years since they moved back to Holland. We spent most of our time in playgrounds but I suppose that’s ok since I’ve already done most of the tourist things in the city. I suppose that’s one of the advantages of having a family a bit later is that I’ve done a considerable amount of traveling and I’m quite content to do the sort of travel that is kid friendly.

perfect weather in Amsterdam

Minneapolis/St. Paul

Kiran didn’t travel well from Nairobi to Amsterdam which resulted in us both being very tired during our visit. But she rebounded well and we had a much easier time with her between Amsterdam and our arrival in the US. In St. Paul we stayed with our friend Kathy. She was Priya’s English teacher in India but is more regarded as a family friend. It was so nice to see her and catch upon things. It was a short vsit but we’ll take what we can get. 

playing ball with Kathy

 

On to Boise

We’d spent many weeks debating where we’d have our new baby. We’d had Kiran in Louisville and it worked out well. This time it seemed to make sense to have number two in Idaho, particularly Twin Falls. In hindsight it was wise for a number of reasons, most importantly the fact that we were able to stay less than fifteen minutes from the hospital – something that became critical with such a short labor. The compromise, however, is that we’d route our return trip through southern Indiana to stay with Priya’s family for a couple weeks so that they could meet the new baby.

So from Minneapolis we flew to Idaho where we would spend the next month preparing for the new arrival, looking to buy some real estate and doing as much visiting of family and friends as was feasible. More on Idaho later.

arrival in Boise - much awaiting us