Tuesday Safari

L:

We had such a good sleep our first night home. It's amazing what a difference that makes (especially after 2 weeks lacking sleep)! Our second night was a different story. Tryana and Kalysta woke up around 2 a.m. and thought it was time to start a new day. It took about an hour and a half to get them back to sleep. We were so thankful it didn't take any longer because the rest of us wanted to sleep more. Unfortunately, Nick and I weren't able to sleep much after that. After feeling some refreshment yesterday, we felt pretty crummy today. After I finish this post, we're off to bed and hoping for more than 4 hours tonight.

Continuing with our attempt to summarize our trip...Tuesday was safari day for the families who adopted 2 children (the Woodman, Snead, and Dokolas families). This was definitely a highlight of our trip. We headed out early in the morning for a driving safari through Nairobi National Park. Alyssa wrote down each of the big animals we recognized or our driver identified for us. There were about 20! Some of the animals we saw were gazelles, warthogs, giraffes, zebras, and ostriches. Of course, we had to stay in the van, but sometimes it seemed like you could just get out and walk right up to the animals and pet them.

After lunch, we walked through the Nairobi Animal Orphanage, which is like a zoo for animals that have been injured or abandoned. It was fun to see lions, leopards, and cheetahs since all the cats were hiding from us on our safari. The kids were intrigued by each animal and it was difficult to get them to move on to each new animal.

Then we did the Nairobi Safari Walk. This was also a type of zoo, but the animals had more room to roam around. We saw even more new animals. We were impressed by how well the kids held up during this long day. And we took tons of pictures!