Our New Nairobi Home...

This August we moved from our urban apartment to a lovely house in a quiet neighbourhood called Loresho. We have a wonderful yard, gardens and patio, and the house has a fireplace and a separate TV room for teenage gatherings. It's fantastic! Best of all - it's very, very quiet. Hannah says it's so quiet that her ears sometimes ring. We figure that's just about perfect.

Motoring around Ontario...

The bulk of our summer was spent motoring around Ontario. Using Peterborough as our home base, we tried to spend as much time as we could with Rebecca (in either Ottawa or Peterborough). Additional highlights included Kincardine, Toronto (especially Steffi's birthday party, watching the Blue Jays play at the Rogers Centre, and enjoying martinis at the Royal York), Sudbury (heavenly Sudbury) and visiting family and friends.

Perfect Paris...

After five glorious days in London, we spent another five wonderful days in Paris. The two cities are so different and both are so fabulous. Highlights included: Notre Dame and St. Chapelle cathedrals, the Louvre, our downtown loft apartment, cycling at Versailles and lots of incredible food and wine. Who does cuisine better than the French? Oooh la la.

London lay-over

This is a very belated post, but in June we spent five glorious days in London visiting Fausta, Jonathan and Nadia, and surveying the sites of England's capital. Highlights included: the Tower of London, the Dr. Who Experience (awesome!!), a day with our friend Emily, the Globe Theatre, the British Museum, double-decker buses, shopping at Primark (this was NOT a highlight for Brian), a sacred service at Westminster Abbey, and enjoying as much fish and chips as we could manage. Oh, and ale... lots and lots of delicious ale.

Updates Coming Soon!

Oh my goodness, the summer melted away and here we are, back in the swing of the 2011/12 school year. We have photos to share from the summer (including our 10-day trip to London and Paris and our adventures in Ontario) and from our return to Kenya. It is good to be back in some semblance of a routine and we have settled into our new home in Loresho (a suburb in Nairobi). We have a lovely 4-bedroom bungalow with a big yard and a working fireplace (lovely during these chilly "winter" evenings in Nairobi) and I promise to post photos really, really soon. :)

The smallest church in the world...

We have driven past this little church dozens of times this year and finally stopped in on Saturday. It's a tiny chapel in the Rift Valley and it was built in 1942 by Italian POWs. According to Mrs. Miller, the woman who has been restoring the church over the last several years, this is the smallest church in the world (although we're not sure of the validity of that statement!). It is a very tiny church and the original paintings are still preserved. The story goes that the POWs built the church on their lunch breaks over a period of five years.

Last visit of the year to the Vumilia IDP Library...

On Saturday, June 4th, we made our last trip of the year down to the Vumilia IDP camp in the Rift Valley. ISK art students had painted an old desk for the library (to serve as the librarian's desk) and their vibrant designs gave the desk a new sense of life and purpose. We delivered the desk on Saturday along with a box of books from Canada that arrived last week. A wonderful selection of Robert Munsch stories, Clifford and Franklin stories, and young adult fiction titles have now joined the offerings on the library shelves. During our visit we were able to chat with the country director for Habitat for Humanity; he was on site to direct a team of 200 doctors and church members building houses for the day. We are already looking forward to finishing up projects at the library in 2011/12, and we are also excited about the budding women's cooperative and our involvement with their economic empowerment projects. What a blessing to be involved with this community!