Black Tie and Dry Chicken

So, apparently when you blog about your shoes, people with messed up priorities want to see what you're WEARING with those shoes. I got a couple of emails from my vast fan base asking for pics of Andy and I in our black tie finery, so here goes.

The soiree was at the Royal Artillery Toodly-Pop... Some kind of military-ish club, or something, and if you haven't guessed, I have made its name up, because I can't find it anywhere.

Anyway, it was quite nice. We arrived and were immediately handed glasses of champagne, and I was swilling that all night. Glorious.

The building was definitely kind of weird, for instance there were random stuffed animals. To wit:

I especially enjoyed this bear, because it kind of looks like he's doing my signature dance move, "The Happy Crab."

There were also busts of evil, slave-labour employing, 16-year old mistress-having Belgian kings

Btw: If you're at ALL interested in Belgium's history in the Congo (and who isn't?) read King Leopold's Ghost -- awesome book, where you get all the dirt on the big guy.

Speaking of the big guy, here's Andyroo, looking very debonair and suave in the tuxedo he bought at a vintage place in Massachusetts:

My dress, I am pleased to say, is from the clearance racks at the Fanshawe Park Road Winners in London Ontario. My fabulous purse, gift of my fabulous sister, is from a fabulous bag store in Paris, on St. Honoré, and the wrap is from a very cute Parisian boutique just off Place des Vosges, also in Gay Paree.

The dinner itself was beyond weird. There were a lot of tiny, little old British men who seemed to have stepped out of 1948. One bustled up to us, assumed Andrew was the Cambridge attendee (which is the truth, but I don't like that kind of assumption) and talked about how they tried to bar spouses (or I should say, wives) from Society events, but found that attendance plummeted. What's more, according to this guy, what they were now seeing were more and more WOMEN graduates of Cambridge. Women! Apparently they're going to university these days! Some are even getting jobs and wearing trousers.

When we sat down, but before we could begin eating, we had to do various toasts. We toasted the King and Queen of the Belgians, the University, and then, very emotionally, Queen Elizabeth herself. That was odd.

This is us at the table. I assume that that's the Cambridge flag (?) behind us, I don't know. I tried to conceal my lack of enthusiasm about the glories of a Cambridge education, but the evening kind of wore me down, you know? It was very very self-congratulatory... There was a speech, by another, tiny, little old Brit. The topic of his speech was, and I am not joking, "Cambridge: A Future As Golden As Its Past." We had another one of these little British men at our table (I tell you, they were everywhere, like well-read, white-haired rats) who kept muttering "hear hear" whenever the guy making the speech said something particularly complimentary about the school. He was like a caricature of a befuddled but pompous Oxbridge grad.

This is the friend we made. He's Belgian and gave us all the dirt about the crazy Belgian political system. Then we gossiped about Scientologists and Tom Cruise. See, the whole evening wasn't erudition and intellectualism... I am proud to say that I was able to lower the tone considerably. If I'd had another glass of champagne, I probably would have started "Happy Crabbing."

Andrew didn't have as much luck with his seating partner... She was a lobbyist to the EU (snoozzze) who lobbied on behalf of ACCOUNTANTS. Yikes.

This is my artistic shot of us in our elevator on the way home. Andrew is very tall.

Oh, look at how adorably cutely wonderful he is:

Kind of a nerdy James Bond.

One more shot of the shoes, the beloved, beloved shoes.

And we end with Andy's weird, male model pose. I don't know what was going on there, but it was the end of the night, and I was pretty wobbly from wine, and frankly, the beloved, beloved shoes.

New Shoes!

So Andyroo has joined the Cambridge Society of Belgium, which means that we went to their annual black tie dinner last night.

I was quite excited about it because it meant getting all gussied up. Initially I had plans of buying a new dress, getting my hair cut, having a facial, getting a pedicure and wearing blusher. I was going to go ALL OUT.

In the end, I settled for buying a new pair of shoes... But what a pair they were. Yes, yes, I know I am undoubtedly crazy, but I have taken several pictures of these lovely ladies.

Prepare to feast your eyes on beauty, sassiness and fantasmia. Prepare to see my shoes...

BEHOLD!

Oh, look at how adorable they are.... The flowers behind are beautiful birthday bouquets given to me by my loving husband and a very nice friend. Not to belittle the kindness of their gestures, but don't the flowers look kind of drab and sad next to my beautiful, beautiful shoes.

Another view. Look at their sweet little bow, which is just slightly off-kilter, so you don't take the shoes TOO seriously. They're shoes with a sense of humour, people
It's possible that my shoe-purchase was influence by this blog post by "Things I've Bought that I Love":
http://mindyephron.blogspot.com/2007/11/shoes-with-bows.html
(Truth be told, this whole post is a rip-off of her website, but la la, I don't care).

That's my foot IN the shoe.
(yes, yes, my toes were completely numb by the end of the night, but if I had wanted comfort I would have worn Ugg boots)

Oh, look who's visiting again: My shoes! This time they're "roughing it" on my dining room table. Oh girls, you're too much.

Oh, and here I am, actually walking. Hurray shoes. Beautiful and useful!

Help a sister out?

So, I wrote a novel. (well actually I wrote two, but the first one is so horrible that only a few friends and family have ever seen it... It was a Harlequin romance called Love's Bouquet featuring a "plucky" florist, 'nuf said).

Anyway. I finished the second one in June. It's a murder mystery set in Canada's national archives. I hope it's kind of funny and kind of suspenseful, but who knows?

On a whim in November I submitted it to the amazon.com breakthrough novel contest and I found out today that I had made the semi-finals! They received 5000 entries, and picked 836 semi-finalists... so that's pretty good, right? Finalists get flown to New York and wined and dined and the winner gets his (or hopefully her) novel published. Very exciting.

This is now where you come in. Amazon wants to generate public interest in the contest, so they've posted excerpts from all of the semi-finalists on their site. A key part of the whole contest is customer reviews of the excerpts. Basically, Amazon is going to be picking finalists based on people's posted reviews. Here's what Amazon has to say about it:

From now until March 2, we're inviting Amazon.com customers to download, read, and review excerpts from our semifinalists and help decide who will make it to the Top Ten. Penguin will select manuscripts to read from the semifinal round based on customers' feedback and Publishers Weekly reviews. The 10 finalists selected from this round will be announced on March 3. Customers will then vote to select the winner, to be announced April 7, 2008.

So, you guys would be doing me a huge favour by checking out the excerpt from my novel (17 pages) and if you're inspired to write a review, posting it at their site. I just looked at it (but didn't post a review of my own work, that would be lame, right?) and it looks pretty easy and straightforward.

Checking out my entry will, at the very least, offer you insight into how I waste my time when I should be writing my dissertation.

La la la.

As an added incentive to the oodles of love I would throw at you, Amazon is offering prizes for the best reviews. Here's the info:

When you read excerpts from the semifinalists and post reviews, you’ll be in the running to win a prize package (including an Amazon Kindle, a $2,000 Amazon.com gift certificate, and an HP photo printer) for providing the most--and the most high-quality--reviews.

Also, if you like what you read, or just like me, and feel like spreading the word about the contest and my entry, I would appreciate it.

For the full info on the contest including a short section on "how to write a good review" check out:

http://www.amazon.com/b?node=332264011

To get to my entry, go here:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00124COWA

Thanks, dudes!

PS The deadline for helping a sister out is March 2.

The Masai Mara

This is my last Kenyan post and I will soon go back to scintillating entries about life in Belgium (for instance, last night while jogging through a park I saw two tiny little old Belgian ladies in enormous fur coats being sternly reprimanded by a police officer because they had failed to clean up their little frou frou dogs' "caca". So glorious to hear! I cackled as I jogged past them, even though I know it is wrong to laugh at the elderly.)

So, back to Kenya. The last park we visited is right next to Tanzania, and is known as the more famous Serengeti on the other side of the border. While we saw no rhinos in this park, we saw all of the other animals plus lions aplenty. Fun!

This was a giant bull elephant who is known to be very territorial. (Elephants are the most dangerous animals in the wild -- true fact, because they are so territorial. Nothing kills an elephant, not even a lion. Lions don't even kill baby elephants!). Anway, this elephant didn't like our truck being on HIS road, and he did this head cocking thing at us, which meant he would charge. He didn't, because we drove out of there lickedy split, but then the elephant actually did chase the truck behind us! Very exciting.

Hippos! They never came out of the water enough for us to get a good snap. I don't blame them though, it was HOT.

The only time we picnicked in a park (usually getting out of the trucks is forbidden). All of us whities are dutifully wearing our sun hats. There was a couple of hyenas not far from us, waiting for us to leave so they could scavenge any leftovers.

Warthogs might have been my favourite because they are so cute. Also, speedy little runners.

Lions!

Sleeping lion

Jackal and vultures feeding on a dead wildebeest. It was quite exciting to watch, because the jackal was totally outnumbered by the birds, but he kept them at bay by occasionally lunging and biting at one.

This is a serval cat, which is a "small cat." It kind of hopped as it hunted for mice in the grass. Quite cute.

This is a big cat.

This is Andrew being frightened at how very close we are to this large lion.

Lioness

Gazelle with her baby. Those suckers run fast. 20 minutes after being born, a gazelle runs too fast for a lion to catch. Not a cheetah, though. A cheetah can totally catch a gazelle.

Buffalo with a bird on his nose.

Andrew and Sbig, the Polish dad who was on our camping trip with his 15 year old daughter. Sbig loved cold beer and his little sun hat.

This is a crowned crane, which is the national bird of Uganda.

Giraffes in the beautiful Masai Mara.

A zebra. I cheated with this one because it's from Lake Nakuru National Park, but what evs, I forgot to put it up the other day.

Me, acting out all of the lions we saw that day. This was our deluxe camp at Masai Mara. It had fancy tents we didn't have to put up ourselves and toilets with running water. Very very swanky.

Andrew with our driver, Richard, after our trip. He is from the Kikuru tribe, which has been facing many reprisals as a result of the election. I hope he is okay.

Another cheating one. This is from Samburu National park. These cheetahs were sleeping under a bush and we couldn't get very good photos of them. Then the elephants started moving towards them, heading for the river for a drink, and the cheetahs got up and ran away. Like I said, all of the animals get out of the way for elephants. They are meanies.

The road to Lake Nakuru

One less than great thing about the trip was that it required a lot of travel along bumpy African roads. Still, we'd stop fairly often, and they kept us well-fed, so I didn't get cranky.

Here we are at a pretty waterfall.

Andy at a viewpoint overlooking the Rift Valley, which stretches from Syria to Mozambique.

Me pointing to the Rift Valley, in case you had missed it.

We didn't do much hiking on this trip, but one walk we did do was to the Mau Mau caves, which is where the Mau Mau rebels holed up for years as they were fighting to kick the Brits out of Kenya and gain their independence.

That's part of our group at the Equator. We had a demonstration of the movement of water through a drain here. Bart Simpson was right, it really does go counter-clockwise South of the Equator.

Lake Nakuru is famous for its flamingos.

This is me, keeping a safe distance from the giant, heaving mass of BIRDS that fill this enormous lake. I tried not to think of them rising in formation to attack me. I think you can still kind of get how nervous I am from my posture, though...


Pretty animal, whose name I have already forgotten.

Buffalo

Man.

Woman

This hyena is hunting flamingos.

See?


Storks are super creepy. I wouldn't want one going anywhere near a baby. It would totally eat it.

Rhino-palooza!

Rhine-tastic!

Baby Rhino! (Woodgy woo).

Samburu National Park

Samburu was the first of three national parks we visited.

This was the first animal we saw upon entering the park. It's a gerenuk, or giraffe antelope, so called because it gets up on its hind legs to eat the bushes.

These were the first elephants we saw, and Andrew was grinning from ear to ear. After watching them for five minutes, he said that the whole trip had been worth it, he didn't care if he didn't see another animal and he could go home then and there happy.

20 minutes later, he's already getting blasé.

We saw tons of antelopes, gazelles, and these guys, which are oryx's. One of my favourite moments was when we stopped the truck, turned the engine off, and a herd of oryx crossed the road in front of us, the pounding of their hooves the only sound for miles. It was beautiful.


This was where we camped for the first two nights. Our site was just in behind the trees on the right.
A troop of baboons lived at the site, and plagued the cook, Isaac, by constantly trying to steal our food. Isaac spent a lot of time throwing stones at them to chase them away. They were also a handy early-warning system, because they would call in the middle of the night if they spotted a lion or leopard prowling around. If you heard the baboons yelling, you knew there was a "big cat" out there...

"Our" baboon troop crossing the river.


A crocodile watching their crossing...

Andy's spot throughout the whole safari: Standing up at the back of the truck, on the lookout.

Kenya

Andrew and I had an amazing Christmas vacation in Kenya. The weather was incredible, meeting different Kenyans was fascinating, and the animals we saw were stunning.

It was really interesting to be there during the elections, where I saw for the first time just how important an election can be... Kenya regularly has 80% voter turn out, and is still quite new to the whole democracy thing (as we have now sadly seen). Unlike Western democracies, voting in the right candidate will have a direct impact on your quality of life -- if you vote in a corrupt MP or president, your village might not get a water bore, or school.

Our safari drivers and the tour guide spent a lot of time explaining the electoral process to us, and the different tribal alliances that complicate voting. Still, it was definitely eye opening to return to Nairobi the same day that President Kibaki had himself quickly sworn in. We were told to remain in the hotel because it was too dangerous to go out. Our drivers were particular anxious to drop us off and get home to their families, because most were of Kikuyu tribe, who have now been facing reprisals.

It's been heartwrenching to hear about the violence happening in that country now, and I hope that everyone we met on our incredible trip is safe with their families.

In defiance of the usual Amy-Andrew camera debacles, we brought it with us, kept it charged and never even dropped it! We took 250 photos, which is a staggering amount to us, but was NOTHING compared to what most people took -- one couple had hit 300 on their first day!

The next few blog posts will be of the photos we took. The ones below are from our first day in Nairobi. We were exhausted, jet-lagged and a tiny bit freaked at our first visit to a third world country. We ended up doing some very very touristy things, including visiting a "safari walk" which is a glorified zoo. Here are our photos from that:

A pygmy hippo. It sweats red, which you can sort of see glistening on his tiny, adorable nose.

Our zookeeper-guide person let us into the cheetah compound and encouraged us to pose with the big cat. He promised that it was thoroughly tame (they'd raised it from the time it was two months old). Still, I was extremely leery about the whole thing.

I kept envisioning the headline: "Idiot tourists go into a cheetah compound and get mauled by animal." I think you can read my misgivings in my face...

Andrew was more comfortable, except when the cat rolled over him. Yikes!

It was all worth it for this shot, though.
The zoo keeper said that they exercise the cheetah (and themselves) by tying a tennis ball to a piece of string and RUNNING through the park, with the cheetah chasing them... Crazy exercise regimes like that might explain why Kenyans are such renowned runners.

On our first night in Nairobi we met the group we were going to be traveling with. A bunch of us went out to this famous Nairobi restaurant that serves tourists and locals alike. It's called "Carnivore" and they serve huge amounts of meat on giant skewers. It's like a buffet, except you don't even get the exercise of walking to the table. Instead, they come to you with this mounds of meat. One man was carrying a whole turkey on the skewer, which he sliced off with an extremely sharp knife.

The next day we left for our camping safari, so stay tuned to the blog for more pics...