Ten Thousand Steps

Carol's feet get their 15 minutes of fame

Greetings and Salutations,

In preparation for the holidays, and as a bit of a fun flashback, Carol and I wanted to share with you some fruit from our experiences at Empowering Lives International (ELI) in Ilula, Kenya where we spent a little over three weeks in August and September.

If you will recall from our ELI update post, Don Rogers gave us the incredible honor of visiting with Wilson Kipsang, who went on to set the world record in the marathon later that month. Well, as he drove us back home from Wilson's training center in Iten, Don described a fundraiser concept that he hoped would challenge people a bit physically as they got excited about contributing to the projects at ELI. He called it "10,000 Steps" in the hopes that people would commit to walking this number of steps between November 22nd and December 8th as a way of raising support.

Anyway, he described to us the way in which he was hoping to get the word out for the fundraiser, so a few days later I got out my camera and Carol got out her legs and we corralled a few of the younger kids from the Children's Home and took a few photos. The poster image that you see above and on the ELI website is the result of that day, and we have to admit that we are fairly proud to have been useful in this way. We even put together a 10,000 Steps Team so that our legs could be not only photogenically, but physically fit as well, so if you fancy some preemptive burning of turkey, stuffing and marshmallow smothered yam calories, please feel free to join our team. There are no prizes, rules or consequences for not succeeding (which I realize isn't motivating for everyone), and I know there are some of you (to whom I might be related) who can knock 10,000 steps out in a few hours, but for a lot of people this is a real (and possibly welcome) challenge. If you do need a bigger challenge, you could always try 100,000 steps, 10,000 steps per day, or something along those lines. Let me know what you decide to do though, because I want to know how many steps my team does!!!

So, have fun walking (we will), and keep finding new and demonstrative ways to be thankful for the grace that you have been shown, in this life and the one to come. We will be thinking of all our friends and family a lot as the holidays approach, and hope that each of you are very well and full of joy.

-joe & carol

Dubai, of the United Arab Emirates

Greetings Moms and any other Faithful Blog Followers,

Dubai is rapidly becoming one of those places that is cool, but not necessarily exotic, since over 10,000,000 people visited the place in 2012 alone, but we thought we would do a quick update on our visit since we had personally never been there before, and it gives us an excuse to post some more photos.

The Burj Khalifa in all its competitiveness

First, if you like airports, then you will love Dubai. The entire city is pretty much organized like a huge airport where everything is indoors, man-made, and connected by crowded trains. We stayed at the Emirates Stars Hotel, which shows up in three different incorrect locations on Google Maps when searched for, but turns out to be within walking distance from Dubai airport on the business side (walking distance for our trip is defined as any location that can be reached in less than a day with a 25 kg pack on your back and airline food in your stomach). The place was well kept, and we actually got upgraded to a bigger room for the first night since they had run out of single rooms. Nice place, and relatively close (walking distance) to the Stadium Metro stop, which we made extensive use of. The Metro itself was fast, clean, and very convenient for getting into downtown Dubai and other places of interest. Carol was especially proud of being able to ride in the "Women and Children Only" car of the train.

Carol and the Dubai Mall fish tank

Aside from riding the Metro, other highlights included seeing the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa (it is possible to ride to the 124th floor, but we didn't book tickets in advance, and the rides were all sold out during our stay), standing in front of the world's largest fish-tank viewing panel in the Dubai Mall, eating shawarma at Ikea, Joe visiting an Ikea for the first time, watching the spectacular fountain-light-sound show at night along the promenade with Carol's friend Kerry-Ann, and just people watching in general.

Night view of Burj Khalifa and Dhows from the El Mansour dinner cruise

Our biggest adventure of the three days however, was a dhow dinner cruise along Dubai Creek one evening. We had already experienced a pretty taxing day, walking an estimated 10 miles (not an exaggeration), and miraculously found our way to the Al Mansour dock without a map and just a few minutes shy of departure time. We were instantly transported to a very peaceful environment of an open air table for two on the upper deck with live traditional Arabic music emanating from the lower deck. The food was amazing, and there was lots of it which was almost dangerous for the two of us since we hadn't eaten a whole lot that day. While we munched away happily on hummus, salads, kabob, more kabob, and Umm Ali (a wonderful Egyptian dessert that we originally sampled in Jordan) the boat meandered down into the Persian Gulf, and then circled back, passing quite a few other colorfully lighted boats on similar missions. I have to admit that it was pretty wonderful despite my prejudice against big cities, and a great way to end our time in this crazy place.

With all our love,

Joe & Carol

Istanbul and Doha

Greetings!!

Joe and I are currently at the Doha airport in Qatar and have a moment to reflect on the most recent leg of our journey.

Joe and Carol in front of the Hagia Sophia, Istanbul

Mom Schweichler helped us book our Turkish Airlines flight from Cape Town, South Africa to Doha, Qatar and we got one with a 15 hour layover in Istanbul, Turkey with the hopes of being able to see the city during that time.  We weren't sure how/if that was going to work out, what we'd do with our large backpacks and whether or not we would be able to even leave the airport.  Fortunately, though, we were able to check our bags all the way through to Doha and found out from the in-flight magazine that Turkish Airlines offers a FREE 9 hour tour of the city!

We were a bit sleepy from our overnight flight from Cape Town, but were super excited about this FREE tour that included 2 FREE meals, FREE transportation and FREE entry to some neat sights like the Blue Mosque (aka Sultan Ahmed Mosque), Hagia Sophia, Basilica Cistern, Hippodrome and a really cool spice market where we got the best Turkish Delight we've ever tasted (one flavor had dried rose petals on the outside..yum!).

As promised, the FREE tour brought us back to the Istanbul Airport in plenty of time to catch our evening flight to Doha, Qatar to meet up with some of Joe's very good friends from his Cambridge days: Todd, Anna and their two sweet children.

Downtown Doha at night from the Museum of Islamic Art

We arrived into Doha at 1:45am (eek), made it through passport control without any glitches, and were warmly greeted by our friend Todd and homemade chocolate chip cookies that Anna had made. We did have our souvenir bottle of South African Amarula confiscated at customs with the promise that we could pick it up on our way out of Qatar, but at two in the morning that didn't phase us much.

Dinner on the Corniche with the Thompsons

Our four days in Doha were so fun, with Todd and Anna performing excellent jobs as tour guides! Todd gets especially high marks for not getting into any traffic accidents (driving in Qatar makes LA freeways look like Autopia at Disneyland). In just a few days we got to see many cool sights like the Museum of Islamic Art which a fascinating exhibit on the famous Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca known as the "Hajj" and had an amazing dinner near the museum on the Doha Corniche (a waterfront promenade extending along the Doha Bay) with tasty foods like tahini with pine nuts, Armenian sausages, tabouli, and lemonade with fresh mint.  We also got to to the Doha Souq Waqif, an outdoor marketplace with loads of souvenirs, spices, restaurants, Shisa lounges and exotic animals for sale (like baby chicks dyed psychedelic colors).

Psychedelic baby chicks for sale

One special outing we took was to the unique "singing dunes" just outside of the city.  These are massive sand dunes that make a deep humming sound when you slide down them on your bottom. The dunes are actually quite difficult to find using any of the guidebooks, and we were very thankful that we had the Thompsons as guides. If anyone is interested, the exact location is apparently at the following coordinates: N25° 02.446' E51° 24.540'. Joe is currently working on a scientific theory to describe the phenomenon and Carol still has sand in her hair.

Sunset atop the Singing Sand Dune

We also got to visit a place called The Katara which is another coastal promenade with an amphitheater, strange and wonderful statues and lots of space for William (Todd and Anna's 3 year old son) to run around in. We enjoyed crepes for dinner and Chapati and Karak coffee for dessert. Karak coffee is a special kind of coffee in Qatar made from unroasted coffee beans.  With lots of sugar, it's quite tasty.

We learned a lot of new things about Qatar as we both new very little before arriving.  For starters, it expanding and growing VERY fast. Todd and Anna told us that they can't even use road maps printed only 6 months ago because they are already outdated.  Qatar is also an interesting combination of East meets West with local men and women dressed in traditional Qatari attire.  The men wear a Thobe which is a long garment shaped a lot like a dress shirt women wear and Abeya which is a long black cloak with full head coverings as well.  At the same time, you'll see the men and women drinking Starbucks, driving SUV's and shopping at malls with stores like the Gap (which I actually got to pay a visit to, I was so glad to get a new pair of jeans as my previous jeans got pretty beat up in Africa with several holes!).

Qatar is extremely wealthy (per capita GDP one of the highest in the world) due to the oil and gas reserves and the price of gas is only about 90 cents per gallon.  Qatar is also very international with local Qatari people only making up about 20% of the population while remainder includes a large number of Indians and Filipinos as well as various other nationalities.

Scene from Souq Waqif in Doha

The highlight of our time in Qatar was most definitely just the chance to catch up with old friends and enjoy the time of fellowship and conversation. Todd is a professor at Qatar University and is an extremely knowledgeable historian and was able to give us so much background and history in to the Arabian Peninsula and Islamic life and culture. We also go to share with him about life and culture in So Cal (such as the best rides at Disneyland and where the closest Ikea is) since he and his family will be moving there this December following acceptance of a position at Biola University.

As always, thank you for following our blog and thank you for reading!!

love,

Carol and Joe

PS A very happy (belated) birthday to Wesley, Mom Schweichler, Dr. Jelbert and Cousin Jenn!