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Flashback: Bauemersgulley Extravaganza!!!

In both 2005 & 2006, we were blessed to be able to spend long weekends in the mountains around Gatlinburg, Tennessee with our good friends Mike & Ann Baur and Matt & Nikki Gulley. Mike is my best friend and one of the best guys you will ever meet, and he and Ann have been [...]

Pendjari National Park

Pendjari is a game park in northern Benin, about 3 hours from Kara. It’s a true safari experience; those East African safari parks are nothing more than big outdoor zoos, with animals just sitting around and lazily watching yet another batch of cheesy tourists drive by in the Sam’s Safaris tour bus. In West Africa, [...]

Olympique Lyonnais

Almost every country in the world besides America loves soccer. To say that they love it is actually a huge understatement; words like passionate, insane, frightening, and postal are probably more appropriate. Living in France is no different, and it just so happens that one of the best club teams in the world plays about [...]

Piazza della Signoria

When my parents visited us this past October, we took them on a 6 day trip to Florence and Rome. I know, it’s not enough time, not even close, but we made the most of what we had and we got to see alot. I would never even attempt to sum up such a trip [...]

Flashback: Togo 2003

I realized today that a blog of my travels that begins in October of 2006 is missing more than a decade of amazing places and experiences. In no way can 8 pics sum up my 2 month stay in Kara, Togo in the summer of 2003, but I’ll at least try. I’ll save the elephant [...]

Chateau Chantemerle

Here at language school, we are off every Wednesday and many Saturdays. It’s good to break up the learning so that we don’t get burned out, but I mostly appreciate the chances to have whole days to explore the amazing region of France that we live in. This past Saturday I went with a classmate [...]

Chateau Saint Bernard Menthon

About 30 minutes from Albertville, in the hills above the city of Talloires (TAL-wah), sits a beautiful castle that was once the home of the famous Saint Bernard. The story goes like this: as a young boy, Bernard Menthon lived in great splendor. His father was a very wealthy nobleman, and he ruled the [...]

The Places I’ve Been

In some ways, it’s not really a very good title for this blog. It would be impossible for me to go back and post about all of the places I’ve been in my life, so a better title might be “The Places I’ve Been Since October 3rd, 2006″. That title is a little cumbersome, however, [...]