Traveling the World like an M4

I know, it’s been a while since my last post….but I’m hoping these pictures will make up for it!    Between traveling to 10 different cities for interviews and taking a family trip to Tanzania and Zanzibar, it has been a very busy last 2 months- but I have enjoyed (almost) every minute of it :-)!

We all happened to have several weeks off at Christmas, and since the holidays can be kind of a hard time, it seemed like the perfect time to take a big family trip together.  Africa was somewhere we all happened to agree on- and I’ll have to say it was the coolest place I’d ever been.  Big shout out to my mom who treated us all to the trip of a lifetime… She is probably one of the most adventurous 60 year olds I know.

One of my favorite pictures: Zebra, Rhino, Buffalo, Elephant and Flamingos in the background in Ngorongoro crater.

We saw lions mating….

And Simba!!!

A mamma monkey holding her baby tight.

Water buffalo, and heards and heards of wildebeast and zebras during their great migration.

And elephants!  We took over 2000 pictures, but I thought I’d spare you all of them.  

In addition to the thousands of animals we saw, we also got the opportunity to go into the towns and meet some of the locals.  This is a Masai boy, who is sent away from the rest of the tribe for several months after being circumcised at the age of 15.

And to end the trip we got to spend several days on the beaches of Zanzibar.

Spending Christmas in a tropical climate is definitely something I could get used ot. 

When we got back to America, John was able to come with me on a few interviews, which proved to make the interview trail a lot more fun. 

We were able to travel the coast in California for a few days, and it’s safe to say I’m in love.  I’m not really a big city girl, but you can’t really argue with 75 degree sunny days in the middle of January.

And then my favorite part, we headed to Santa Barbara.  Probably my new favorite place in the United States.  I’d been there once before when we convinced our parents we needed to look at California colleges :-), but this time I was really able to take it all in.

We hiked up to inspiration point. 

Had some wonderful meals, and some pinkberry ice cream, and of course watched the sunset.

It was kind of hard to come back to the snow at DTW, but here’s to hoping Santa Barbara is hiring some docs in 5-6 years :-)!   I’m living the good life of a fourth year from here on out, so I’ll be back with some great recipes soon!  If you have any questions about going on a safari, feel free to contact me!