Enough procrastinating…
Okay, I have successfully avoided posting to this blog for the past two months. But now I am 72 hours from being in my new apartment in Zanzibar, so no time like the present, right?
This summer has seen us travel from Boston to Indiana, where we hung our hats for two months. While in Indiana, we drove to Iowa twice (to see Grandma-in-law, who is 96), flew to Dallas and D.C. for the wife’s work and to L.A. for fun (and so I could try to woo Daisy Duck!).
We hit about a dozen baseball games, with the best atmosphere being the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes home game in late August. And our favorite ball park was probably the Quad City River Bandits right on the Mississippi River. We also saw games in two different ballparks where “A League of Their Own” was filmed. The young ladies who work at the stadiums dress as the women of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League did and the ambiance was similar to what is seen in the movie.
And we ate our share of ice cream. The Sweet Basil Chocolate ice cream at Hartzell’s in Bloomington, IN was probably the best tasting, but my mixture of cotton candy and circus animal cookie ice cream at Farrell’s in Santa Clarita, CA was definitely the most colorful. (It is hard to beat neon blue ice cream).
Now we are in the midst of packing, with suitcases and carry-on bags all struggling to fit under the weight limits. Flying from the U.S. to the Netherlands to Kenya to Tanzania means that there are multiple plane changes and multiple sets of luggage rules that we have to try to abide by.
What the next 10+ months (we expect to return to the US sometime in July 2017) will bring for me, is still somewhat up in the air. I do not know what I will be teaching at the university, perhaps grammar classes, perhaps conversational English, hopefully some photography… We shall see.
And we shall see if I am able to keep up with this blog and enjoy photographing Zanzibar as much as I hope I can.
My wife’s blog can be found at http://blogs.umb.edu/angelastone/
Her adventure’s (the whole reason we are going) will involve teaching at the university and doing research amongst the three types of preschools that currently exist in Zanzibar. I highly recommend following her work.