Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all Americans celebrating out there! We are looking forward to a large family gathering at the Barber household. I remember that last year at this time we had just quit our asparagus picking job and we were in Taupo, New Zealand. Jay had pulled our sweet van, Tinkerbell, into a parking lot facing Lake Taupo and we chatted on the phone with our parents on Thanksgiving. It is a wonderful memory - I was watching all the Kiwis goof off in the summertime heat and the sun was warm on my skin (while I was thinking of everyone freezing back in the other hemisphere). The day after that I think we did a LONGGGGG day hike and then we drove to the coast so Jay could go surfing. It was good times then and it is good times now. Nothing gets better than spending this holiday with our familes.
We are not so good at the blog now, but after Thanksgiving I am hoping to finally have time to put up some of the better videos from our trip. Jay leaves for WA on Saturday and I've got the month of December to get a job, find apartments for Jay to look into while he is out there, taste test some food for our wedding, and research some new wheels for Jay out in WA (actually he is doing that, not me), and I want to organize photos! Lots to do.... so keep reading!

Adventures in New England

We have been home for about 2 weeks now and we feel like we have been more busy than ever! I have yet to upload some photos from our trip to Addo Elephant NP along the coast of South Africa (although I am hoping to do that today). We have spent all of our time hanging out with much missed family members and dear friends. Two awesome weddings, much wine and beer, and lots of hugs and laughter have all been part of the recipe for happiness since we have been back. Those photos are all online now for your entertainment. Jay leaves for WA to start his new job the day after Thanksgiving and I am planning on sticking around New England and NY for the month of December to look for jobs and get our lives ready for a western move. We have also been looking at a few wedding venues along the way (in case anyone forgot, we are still planning on getting hitched!). Actually, our family members have been finding all the wedding venues for us! This has been great because we are so darn busy visiting missed friends and family that we haven't had time to do much searching ourselves. But we are hoping this week to check some of those places out for ourselves and we are excited!

The Barber family clan

Henry and Jackson with Aunt Julie

Jay and Allison (Mom) on a walk to the beach

KP and Justin smear cake all over in a hilarious moment at their wedding in Newport

Allison and Brian during a toast at their wedding

Whale shark photos are finally up!

I wanted to update all our friends from the Mozambique tour - we finally got the whale shark photos up into Jay's picasa album. I am also in the process of uploading his underwater shots, but they will not be online tonight.

It has been simply wonderful to wake up each day and hang out with our families....today Jay's Mom left upstate New York (where my parents live) to head back to Cape Cod where we will meet up with her later this week. We drove to western MA and chilled out with my sister, her wife, and my nephews Henry and Jackson. It was FUN to meet the now walking and talking boys, they are a riot and I just love them to death. They are very good at geography and can pronounce Myanmar better than most adults! Very impressive nuggets! More blog updates and photo uploading is still planned. And for those that are wondering, we figured we would keep using this blog through our move out west. It is quite likely that we will stop it sometime after that, but who knows!

YES YES YES!!! Obama! Yahoo! oh yeah, and we are home

I can't even begin to tell you how WONDERFUL it is to have an intelligent, wise, young, vibrant person elected as president!  I also know that the rest of the world is celebrating - it almost makes we wish we had stuck around for one more day to see the overseas party!  We just heard that Kenya is turning our election day into a national holiday!  When we left Cape Town there were vendors selling their stuff with big Obama buttons on.  I can only imagine how Indonesia is celebrating, they love him there too because Obama lived there as a child.  He is really a hero to so many people outside of America.  And now Americans have really done something amazing, we have shown the rest of the world that we DO care about them! Man, I could go on and on and on.

Anyway - we are HOME.  The flight was long and longer and longerrrr.  Our immigration officer looked at our paperwork and laughed at us when he saw how many countries we had listed as "visited on this trip."  He said to us "ha, ha, you know....you are only supposed to list the countries you have visited on THIS trip.  Not all the countries you have ever been too."  Our reply was "those ARE all the countries that we have been to on this trip!"  Thus, the beginning of a long conversation with the officer about our trip.  Then we picked up our bags.  Some of our bags.  Jay's bag didn't show up and we had to deal with all the paperwork (good news though - they have found the bag in Abu Dhabi and it is on it's way home now too).  And they broke some bottles of wine we sent home as well. Poop.

Sleep has recovered us to some sort of normal life again and I think by tomorrow we will be fully normal (?? are we normal??) again.  =)

I am so excited to deal with the rest of our Africa pics - hopefully those will be posted this week sometime.  Thanks for all the emails welcoming us home.  We have amazing friends and family and it is grand to be back in this country.  We are lucky to be Americans, and now I am proud to be American.

15 hours to go

Greetings from Abu Dhabi (U.A.E.) and from zombies Julie and Jay. We are soo sooo excited to be done with flying (well, I think I am - Jay never seems to tire of it). Just waiting 2 more hours and then we board our 15 hr. flight and land at JFK at 8am the next morning. We had a 19 hr. layover in this city and we were able to explore it for a few hours. The most memorable sight - the largest mosque in the U.A.E. and the third largest in the world. Because it is built from white marble, you can only imagine how breath-taking this building was. Beautiful designs and structures.

Anyway, you probably won't hear from us for a few days after we arrive, but we have big plans to write many more blogs about the trip....something that we simply haven't had time to do during the trip. So stay tuned!

Rock the vote!

Hey folks!! We are leaving South Africa tomorrow to start our long journey home. We are excited and a little nervous as well, culture shock is never fun. But hey - if Obama wins that will be a darn good place to start feeling GOOD about being home (aside from friends and family). In case you are wondering, our votes have already been placed and are in the mail or in the hands of our town officials already.
We had a great trip along the Garden Route and in Addo Elephant National Park. We saw SO many elephants! Here are some shots....once we are home we will upload the photos (friends from the Mozambique trip - the whale shark photos will be up once we get home, maybe a week or so?). AND put more stories online....so don't give up on the blog once we are home - the updates will continue.

Red hartebeest and elephants

Kudu