How's This for Awesome?

A reader was complaining that the blog had turned from an adventureblog to a visitingfamilyblog.
Well, sometimes the two go together. Check this shit out:

Yes that is a cheetah. Yes we are touching it. We are touching a cheetah. Unfortunately I can't tell you where this happened, because it was definitely not on the regular menu at this attraction.

INDIA UPDATE
The visas were awarded without much ceremony. Yes, it took three trips, several hours of waiting, and almost $100 apiece, not counting travel to Nairobi. But really: fine.

Here is what we have in store for our trip to India:

• Feb 26: Depart Nairobi, 5 hour flight to Dubai, 4 hour layover, 3 hour flight to Kochi (aka Cochin)
• Feb 27 - Mar 1: Three days stay at the Hotel Excellency in Kochi, travel around some "backwaters" and get ourselves an Indian SIM card. We will be 10.5 hours ahead of you, so expect phone calls in the late evening from the following month or three.
• Mar 2 - 3: Overnight train (11 hours) up to Goa. Romantic! Air-conditioned!
• Mar 3 - 10: Stay Palolem Beach, South Goa at the Laughing Buddha Cottages with our friends Ben Dahlberg and Katie Lazarowicz! This will be awesome. We we regain the tan we lost. We will get spiritual. We will do yoga with Ben, who is training to be a jedi master. I mean yoga master.
• Mar 11: Travel by train with Ben and Katie to Mysore (with a stop in Bangalore), where Ben has been living and studying to be a jedi master.
• Mar 12 - 15: Hang out in Mysore.
• Mar 16: Travel to Kodiakanal so that we can....
• Mar 17 - 23: Go to the Bodhi Zendo for a week of awesome zazen!
• Mar 24 - 26: Travel up the East Coast to Chennai. Hopefully something dreadfully scenic should appear. Ruins, or temples, or something.
• Mar 27: Fly from Chennai to Kathmandu.

So that should be fun. I hope to write a Kenya wrap-up post soon, but I may not get to it until i'm on the beach.

Blog Fail

So it's been long enough since the last update that people have actually started complaining. What can I say? We're just so freaking cosmopolitan and in-demand that we've simply been too busy living, dahlings, to bother about blogging doncha know.

The house is now at its fullest strength: 11 people total in the same space that Bridget and I were occupying all by our lonesomes for the first 2.5 months. Much of the readership is family, but for those of you who don't know the cast, here's who we've got:

1. Jeremy (our hero)
2. Bridget (our heroine)
3. Debby Rooney (Bridget's aunt, founder of BEADS)
4. Bill Rooney (Bridget's Uncle, Debby's husband, BEADS Treasurer, Eagles fan (the band, not the football team))
5. Sue Heersink (Bridget's mother, given the nickname Fisi Wakitabo ("book hyena") for her rabid efforts in bringing books, maintaining the library, reading out loud to kids, and running book clubs during her annual month-long visits)
6. Dr. Ben Heersink (Bridget's father, Sue's husband, volunteering his opthalmalogical expertise at the local clinics and killing an average of 20 flies per day in the house -- with his bare hands)
7. Alexandra Heersink (Bridget's youngest sister, helping out in various ways, but mostly teaching two Maasai warriors, who are particular friends of BEADS, how to read)
8. Dr. Deirdre Heersink-Brown (Bridget's immediately older sister, lending her medical expertise to the clinics, too)
9. Marc Brown (Deirdre's husband, lending his special education expertise to the school)
10. Fiona Heersink-Brown (age 6) and
11. ... Myles Heersink-Brown (age 3) (children of Deirdre and Marc, here to attend classes for a month of serious adaptation)

Whew! It's exciting.

JEREMY'S HEALTH UPDATE
Since many readers seemed captivated by tales of parasites, I will provide more detailed info on my health. Two nights ago I felt nauseous around bedtime, and at 1am I got out of bed and threw up. Now, this wouldn't be such a huge deal except that I haven't thrown up since... (pause for calendar check) ...at least October of 2008, the date of my first hiatal hernia surgery. One of the side effects that some people experience from the surgery is an inability to vomit, which if you check out the wiki entry for the Nissen Fundoplication you can see why. So I've been living with the fear that when I needed to vomit I wouldn't be able to. Good news! I can vomit! Well, good news because it's good to be able to throw up when your body wants you to. But potentially bad news if it indicates that my second surgery -- which, if you haven't heard, I had TWICE because it failed the first time -- also failed. Which, honestly, I think we already know it did, because I still have bad enough heartburn that I am back on daily Prilosec to control it. Sigh.

But so I threw up, then spent much of the following day unconscious on the couch, drifting in and out of a light fever, not hungry, with slight nausea. Today, I am better.

YOU NEED VISAS FOR INDIA
Okay, so we probably should have known this. But as I said above, we're very busy, cosmopolitan people. We're going to India on February 28, according to our plane tickets. But they will put us right back on a plane unless we get some visas. Tomorrow's trip to Nairobi will include a visit to the High Commission of India, where I suspect we will stand in very long lines for very long times. We will surrender our passports (and our will) to the Higher Power of Visa Issuance and hope for the best. It may mean we won't get to go to our favorite shopping place! But we love an adventure, even a bureaucratic one. Wish us luck!