Downtown Dar es Salaam. We made it!

We made it.  For real, we are in TANZANIA!  Apart from sitting on airplanes, we have not stopped packing, moving, traveling, and then packing some more in the last few months.  This post is basically a recap of all this ‘what what what’ (a Tanzanian colloquialism, can also be replaced with ‘blah blah blah’).  ‘What what what’ can be used here when you aren’t really sure what to say, or you don’t have the time to properly fill it in.  We received so many great questions over the last few months from friends and family curious about why and how and when and ‘WHAT?’ and we weren’t able to answer most of them.  Hopefully over the next few months everyone will start to understand our ‘what what what’.

All that packing made Max tired!

MAY:  Our great East Nashville house was put up for sale.  We started packing for Tanzania and packing the house for the move.  We checked off a bucket list item and stayed at Mt. LeConte Lodge in the Smokies.  Nathan was the Best Man at his brother Ryan’s wedding in Birmingham, Alabama and now Shannon has a new, wonderful, caring, fun, good-cooking sister-in-law, Caitlin!

Nathan turned 30 and Shannon made sure everyone knew.

JUNE:  Nathan turned 30, finally.  We spent a few days at Gulf Shores with Nathan’s family and had a great time playing lots of Dominoes and not thinking about packing.  We learned Grandpa and Grandma Holmes are very good at games.  Shannon attended the first WAC (Women’s Adventure Club) Wedding in Colorado with her party-starting friends Jenny and Krista.  The wedding of Laura and Mark was perfect and we can’t wait to welcome them to Tanzania for their 1 year anniversary!

Shannon cut off (and donated) her hair before the move.

Shannon donated her hair for the 4th time because major moments call for short hair (graduating from high school, then college, finishing Master’s, and now moving to Tanzania).  Shannon said goodbye to Warner Park Nature Center, and they said goodbye in the cutest way possible…singing a farewell song to the tune of ‘In the Jungle’.  Our parents visited Nashville to help us pack several times and we are forever grateful!  At the end of June, Shannon led a trip with Global Explorers to Cambodia with her friend Krista, whose students did over 35 hours of meaningful community service across the country.

Phnom Tamao Wildlife Rescue Center, Cambodia. My monk curiosity continues.

Old vs. new in Frankfurt, Germany.

JULY:  We sold our house in Nashville (with the help of a great realtor, and Nathan’s dad)!  Then Nathan moved temporarily  to Germany for training with GIZ.  Shannon came home for 1 day to say goodbye to her parents and best friends Melissa, Robin, and Max.  Shannon then met Nathan in Frankfurt, Germany where they saw some castles, drank apfelwein, and ate lots of things with sauerkraut…and watched Germany win the World Cup!  Just last week, at 1:30 am on July 15, 2014 we arrived in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, our new home!

It’s hard to fit everything you want for 2 years in Tanzania into 2 checked bags…

…but Max and space bags are good helpers!

AUGUST:  We hope to send out a post in a few weeks with updates on Nathan’s new job, the apartment search, and Shannon’s Swahili (which is currently terrible).

NERD ALERT:  Each post we will have some trivia or fun fact for y’all so you can learn more about Tanzania.  You can guess who had this idea.

Tanzania is about SEVEN TIMES larger than Alabama at around 365,000 square miles!