Happy New Years!

Christmas & New Years were good to us, and now we're back to work in what we're calling "Phase 3" of our African trip. We will only be here in Nairobi for another two months or so, and then we'll be spending a month or so traveling before returning to Canada somewhere around mid-April.

The holidays were great, and we had good times with Jenn & Paul on our return to the Aberdares, our trip to Tanzania, and lounging around the house playing cards and drinking holiday concoctions.

In late December we were somewhat annoyed to discover that Housing had made a mistake here at ILRI which would necessitate our moving from the house back into the hostel. We put up quite a fight, but in the end nothing could be done. The guy in charge of Housing felt pretty bad about the whole affair, and ended up hooking us up with the one of the nicest rooms in the hostel. It is much nicer than our previous room here, and in addition to having our own balcony and a queen size bed (we used to have to push two singles together), the room has a killer view:

It's much brighter than our house was too, so all in all things are pretty good in our new abode.

Things at work for me are going quite well. Without nixing myself for talking about it too much, a team I'm part of has just advanced to the final stage of a competition for a fairly significant governmental grant. We find out in mid-Febuary if we get it, and if we do it'll have a huge impact on what I will be up to for the next 3 years. I'm crossing my fingers...

In other news, we have finally decided where we will be going for our end-of-trip trip (that's not a typo). Here is a big clue:


Can you guess?? Post your answer in the comments if you know...