Umuganda.... and the days in between

So here in Rwanda, the government has this required thing once a month called Umuganda, which is a day of work to help beautify and maintain the environment and such here in Rwanda. It's required of all people, and if you get caught not doing it, then you're fined. How strictly this is regulated I am unsure. I know many people who have not been to either of the two that I have attended since being here. Anyways... Yesterday was Umuganda, the last saturday of the month. Being on American time after roughly 23 years of living that way, I was up and ready to go early in the morning. (OK I realize the morning part of that sentence does not sound like me, but I have been living on my dad's schedule here, up at 6 and to bed by 9. No electricity and functional daylight hours - 6 am to 6 pm - are kind of what dictate my sleep schedule!)

Somewhat to my Rwandan family's dislike I rushed out of the house without my morning cup of tea, or any of the porridge they had made especially for me, with the family hoe in hand. As we walked (thankfully with my teacher) we continued to ask people where to go, to which Rwandan directions standardly replied with over there, complete with a flip of the wrist. So we arrive, on American time. To explain, here in Rwanda, things are a little bit more relaxed. Much to my sometimes frustration, they like to greet everyone as they walk down the street. They walk at a very slow pace a lot of the time, and they arrive, when they arrive. We often have to clarify with our training director, "Do you want to leave Rwandan time, or American time?" In other words can we take our sweet time showing up as maybe we want another cup of tea.

Another qualifier for this Rwandan time theory, is that they do not go out in the rain. To their credit, when it rains, it really rains. But it usually only lasts briefly. So unlike Eugene, it does not rain all day, almost every day! Sorry, another story real quick. My host family's toilet is outside. To get there I must go through 3 very squeeky doors, one with a double lock on it. Last night we had a crazy rain storm at about 10pm, to the point that it sounds like it'd be quieter outside in the rain, but it's so cool. Unfortunately I really needed to go to the bathroom at exactly 10:07ish last night. So I crawled out from under the mosquito net, put on my flip flops and rain jacket, trekked through the three squeeky doors, dove across the back yard area under the cover of my siblings porch roof. Then I tip toed through the mud, and raced around the corner into the bathroom. I'm so freaking happy I brought my head lamp! hahaha

Anyways, about Umuganda, we were in the first batch of 10 people to arrive. So we discovered work for ourselve. With two hoes and a shovel, we set to work trying to remove stumps from where they would later build a house. Before we started we tried to guess how much of the Rwandan's time would be spent watching the abazungus (foreigners) work. I was definitely off by saying 67%, in actuality, it rounded off probably around 96.4%. So as we went to work hacking apart a stump and digging it out of the ground (using hoes only) everyone watched, including our teachers and the family members that had gone early. After an hour of work 2.5 stumps destroyed later, and at least 150 Rwandans leaning on their tools watching us, we headed back down the hill, for bucket baths and a trip into Kigali (the capital of Rwanda).

It was a crazy and very thereapeutic adventure, although I have the crazy blisters or rather open wounds going on my hands right now. I took out a lot of agression apparently on that stump. But, now I am down to two weeks left of training. We just had a language evaluation and I received very high marks, which was gratifying. We also had check ins this past week, and the training director said he really didn't have any worries about my survival at site and my ability to intergrate into the community. That was really nice to hear, whether he does have worries or not! So two weeks and I will be an official Peace Corps Volunteer (how long has that process been in the works? OY!) As I said, I love Rwanda and I'm so pleased that this is my assignment.

These pictures are of the area where I have lived for the past two months. The first one is a view from one of the other PCTs houses. The next is the road through my village with two small kids walking to school, and the last is of a few boys laying (where the elephant sleep). It's called the Inzofu (elephant) something or another, but it's a grass park-like area. It's so beautiful!

The forest, some tea and times in Komonyi...

Welcome to Rwanda... The below is where I will be living for the next two years! Crazy right?

This past week was spent on what they call site visits. I traveled out to my where I will be working and living for the next two years. It is so amazingly beautiful. In general Rwanda consists of probably somewhere around one million hills which makes for beautiful scenery but a lot of winded treks up hill. My health center is on top of a hill (no surprise there) overlooking kilometers, in every direction, of tea plantations. But they are planted precariously on the slopes of these hills. It’s quite a site. I’m also within walking distance of Nyungwe National Park, which is gorgeous. There are 13 different kinds of monkeys and chimps in the park, but as of yet, I’ve had no run-ins.

The trip was really awesome and I will more than likely have electricity, which is kind of awesome in regards to computer-ing. I will potentially be working with community health workers CHWs – there are two at the health center, which serves 30 villages (umudugudus) and there are 6 CHWs per village. This means I will be doing outreach and training and similar things with this population which is pretty exciting, but daunting as it is very open-ended. My site visit was amazing and frustrating. My supervisor is currently on maternity leave which left me a little lost at times, but everyone was very friendly. I had the awesome opportunity to help distribute various tools to the CHWs which also allowed me the opportunity of introducing myself to all of them. There was a great reception, especially when I continued to participate and communicate (in Kinyarwanda) with each of them.

The Below picture is of Nyungwe National Park.

Anyways, one of the volunteers who will be close to me and myself spent Saturday in the nearest town, where we went to the market. We both wanted to buy igitenge (sarongs) but the merchants continued to try to charge us white people prices. After we stopped by the bar for some Guinnesses (YES, they have Guinness!!!!!!) and brochettes (commonly known as meat on a stick). They are so good and more than likely they were goat, but I spend very little time dwelling on what it is I’m eating here. One of the downfalls of not having electricity is that there are no refrigerators. But please don’t let this deter you if you have left-overs. All you must do is simply re-boil it the next day! Yeah, as I said, I try not to dwell on some of these details!

I am now back at home with my wonderful Rwandan family who called me all week checking in to see how I was faring. I dove out of the peace corps car with backpack and some other bags through a crazy down pour right into my awaiting family. I am very well taken care of. My site visit really solidified the Kinyarwanda I already know as well as fostered the learning of health-related words which was much needed as now I usually focus on the ones I need all the time. Today we covered past tense, which is kind of daunting.

I’ve shared with some of you, but Kinyarwanda is a very difficult language to learn. In English, there are 2 noun classes, singular and plural. Spanish, French, etc. have 4 masculine plural, masculine singular and the same for feminine. Kinyarwanda has 16! I can’t even begin to explain them! Anyways, I finally understand the difference between learning a language in country versus in the classroom and I would pick it this way any day! I also invite everyone to visit. This country is quite incredible/interesting in beauty, politics, social norms as well as everything in between. I am so happy to be here.

The above is a picture of me with my youngest brother Saj and my sister Chantal, the second oldest girl of my four Rwandan sisters! It's not necessarily tradition in Rwanda to smile during pictures, so I'm always telling them, "Urasecca!" or in English "You Smile!" Then they laugh at me so it tends to work surprisingly!

There have been some flaws of course. One is mold, yeah I know, nothing new in the Willamette valley of Oregon. But we have what we refer to as Lincoln log beds. They are only a couple inches off the floor and have about 25 pieces to them. The design is really cool and great for storage, but they are moldy here. Also, we have to clean our rooms once a week (at least) to keep the chiggers and other scary bugs away! By cleaning the room, I mean removing all the bedding (including the bed) and putting it in the sun to kill, mold, bed bugs, everything potentially thriving there. Then we must sweep and mop the cement floor, which is a lot of work as I have to clean up my footsteps as I walk around as I refuse to take my shoes off out of fear of Chiggers.

OK, Chiggers are evil bugs that are found in the dust that bore into our soft soles of our feet and multiply very quickly. They need to be removed individually by needle. Gross I know. Fortunately my site is colder, so I’m hoping there is less concern of snakes and the like. I do need to be wary of monkey bites though, at least when I go into Nyungwe! I am doing very well although I miss everyone. I do have a cell phone (whether I’ve mentioned it or not, I don’t know) but if you want to give me a call, get in touch with one of my parents! I also just bought a modem so I should be able to skype soon! So that’s an avenue as well.

More to come as always…

Murokose Rwanda!

Africa has been so wonderful so far. As it has been a while, I'm not exactly sure what I have and have not shared in my blog thus far. But to start...

My days are so crazy. Monday through Friday I have class from eight to five and since I get home around five, I only have one hour of light left in the day, which is usually spent being confused about Kinyarwanda and trying to help my family with chores, like cooking over a wood fire. Then on saturday I have class from eight to 12ish but this is usually practical language lessons. The first saturday I learned how to wash clothes by hand, and then (being that it was my birthday) I got to go do some birthday laundry followed by a quest for some birthday pineapple! Which, was totally amazing!

This past Saturday we were ordered to buy things at the market, so they drove us there, dropped 11 muzungus (foreigners) off and left. It was intense but I drive a hard bargain. I bought all the fixings to make homemade spaghetti sauce and it was SOOOO amazing. I probably should of prefaced that by what my usual meals are here. Every meal has some combination of beans, rice, potatoes and cassava. Literally every lunch and dinner. There's also sauce, but it's not super flavorful and sometimes there's meat, but it's not my favorite. Not bad, but I don't often opt to eat it. Anyways, that day I went home and took a very long time to prepare spaghetti but it was so worth it! It was nice to have diversity.

The next day we went to Butare in the south of Rwanda, which was nice because we got phones, so I have a cell phone, not that it is cheap for anyone in the states to actually call me. We also went to Murambai Genocide Memorial which was really really intense. It's hard to explain, especially if you know nothing about the genocide, but to generalize, it was brutal, it was violent and it included an entire population. Neighbors killed neighbors. People killed other people brutally and tortuously because of cultural differences. If you want to know more I can recommend some reading, but anyways, back to the memorial. It was so intense. There were hundreds upon hundreds of mummified bodies laying in rooms at this school where over 50,000 people and students were massacred in 1994. We entered each room and saw the bodies and went on to the next one. There was no glass between us, there was no protection from it. It still makes me feel physically ill to think about it. It was so informative and so intense. I will leave it at that.

That night I slept horribly as I also had come down with bed bugs. The past few days have been intense as I had to wash all of my clothing and bedding to try and get rid of them, also had to wash my bed with bleach to kill mold and leave my mattress in the sun to kill the bugs! OY, then I had to go back to Butare as I needed to replace my phone charger because the one I bought didn't work. That was an exhausting day and turned out to be a horrible representation of both cultures as cuss words were thrown around and insults were passed back and forth. This was not on my part, but it was a pretty stressful experience. We did get passion fruit flavored ice cream afterwards which made my day so much better!

I realize that this is relatively vague, but to do a blog affiliated with an experience had in the peace corps comes with much more awareness and more visibility. Anyways, I feel constantly busy, which is nice, but is catching up with me. I feel very tired. I have had so many cross cultural experiences and it has been amazing. I live across the street from the church so all hours of the day, night and everything in between I get to hear singing which is awesome, and also vaguely reminiscent of living across the street from Max's bar in college. Sometimes the singing has been ruined by technology as it's almost as if certain people were never taught how to use the equipment they have and therefore the music is often drowned out by static, poor electronic musical instrument playing and too loud of speakers. But the dancing is always fun.

I am still having trouble uploading pictures on this connection. I do have some up on facebook so if you'd like a link to that and don't have a facebook, e-mail me so that I can send that to you, so you can see them. As always, you are missed and know that Rwanda welcomes all of you! More to come as always!

Mwiriwe from Komonyi, Rwanda

Mwiriwe!!! Which means hello, good afternoon and a pluthera of other things I haven't learned so far. But, either way, hello from Rwanda. It is beautiful here, reminds me a lot of Indonesia but that should be slightly expected because of location in the world. My journey has been amazing so far. Even the things I expected to be really hard like bucket showers and squat toilets have proven much easier tasks than I expected. Kinyarwanda on the other hand is a very hard language to learn. But, it's easier living with a family and learning all the time. Some time soon I should learn how to get water and how to cook over a fire.

It has been crazy since I got here. They held the flight for us in Belgium because we sat on the runway at JFK for three hours so were running slightly late, but because of the close flight, they didn't get anyone's luggage on board. Therefore we got to stay in Kigali another night. Training has been very shotgun. Lots of training, then we were trucked an hour outside of Kigali to Kamonyi where we live with hosts familys. Mine just happens to be the family of the pastor, so when I was dropped off there were hundreds of people outside which was a little overwhelming, but my family is amazing!

I have seven Rwandan brothers and sisters and they all help me learn different things. The two youngest help me go over numbers, body parts and whatever else we can think of. The four girls are in the middle and they teach me chores, how to take care of myself and other words. And finally the oldest is Nafta, a year younger than me and speaks enough English to communicate with me and translate at times which is really nice. My Rwandan Mama is very sweet and I want to get to know her but there is a definite language barrier. Papa Bonkey is really nice and sweet, but he does ask me at least once a day if I pray. It's definitely a positive place though. Every time I'm successful at something, they all clap and cheer. It's almost easier being with my family than in class which is kind of draining throughout the day.

I've learned so much in only a week! OY! Now I can say, I want sleep, I want food, I have this, I have that! Simfite Inzara is a common phrase of mine, I don't have hunger! They're always feeding me! But it's good. I've been eating lots of carbs, beans, rice, cooked green banana, greens, unknown meat, but it's good. And I love the tea! They drink it just like in Ireland. It's only been a week. I have nine more to go with my host family and if I pass the tests and make it through, I will be sworn in to the Peace Corps as an official volunteer in July. We've very unfortunately already had two people terminate early and go home and they will be very missed. It's definitely an intense experience, but I'm happy so far.

Anyways, there will be more later, I promise, this is just an initial blog to let everyone know that I exist, and I exist well so far in Rwanda. I miss my friends and family very much and I love you all. More to come soon and know that in my times of sadness, you are my comfort! Pictures to come!

The Last of the South West...

So my time in Arizona has come to its end. Tomorrow I head back to Oregon to see all the wonderful people that I love and to pack and get ready for my African Adventure. I received my staging info the other day. May 2nd, I fly to Phillie and then the 4th I fly to Africa. I'm definitely getting more excited and nervous. But I'm excited I have a month left and get to see my family and friends. Anyways... back to Arizona the past two months has been spent in Arizona. Most recently I traveled Southwest to Kitt Peak and Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. Kitt peak is the national star observatory for the United States. There are over 25 telescopes on the top of Kitt Peak. The photo below is a picture of the valley from the road up to Kitt Peak. This picture is of some of the telescopes. It was really cool, but we couldn't look through any of the telescopes without doing a tour, and we really didn't have time as we still had the monument to get to and then head back to Tucson. The stop was well worth it. If you call ahead and make reservations you can come back at night, but it was cool to see during the day as you got to see the skyline of all the telescopes.

We finally made it to the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, but ironically there weren't really a lot of organ pipe cacti in the park, at least along the main road. It was exciting however because the desert was finally starting to bloom (took long enough)! Below is a picture of an ocotillo I believe. I love the red blooms on top of them. Everything started to really green up as well. The brief 15 mile paved drive through the park was really pretty even though we didn't take any of the dirt side roads. My car can only take so much.

The next day after Kitt Peak and Organ Pipe, we went to the Pima Air and Space Museum which had a collection of over 300 airplanes. The one below is Air Force One for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. I ave another picture of me hugging the propellor but it's from pretty far away. There were lots of war planes (especially from WW II and Vietnam), and helicopters. It was much more interesting than I thought it would be. There was so much to see that, even with a driving tour I was kind of overwhelmed with the 76 acres of planes. There was tons of plane information as well as history. I skipped over most of the history lessons as I was trying to retain all there was on the planes. OY! But it was really cool.

The week before, Dash and I went to New Mexico to go camping and to see Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument. The above picture is of the national forest on the way back into Arizona, whereas the one below is of one of the cliff dwellings. The dwellings were really cool and the forest surrounding it was a nice reprieve from the desert landscape I've been in. It's getting way too hot here by the way... in the 90s. I feel as if I'm starting to melt. Anyways, these are some of the only cliff dwellings in the US that you can actually walk through. Most like Mesa Verde National Park, you can only see them from afar. Here you can actually walk through some of the rooms in some of the caves.

There was a nice little one mile nature trail that followed a dry (of course) creek bed through the forest up to the cliff dwellings which you can see in the distance below. The trail also follows the Gila river a little ways which was definitely a site for the eyes. I have enjoyed the sites but I have to say I'm definitely a Pacific Northwest forest, river and mountain girl. The desert is nice to visit but I max out around 90 degrees here.

Heading way back, the week before the Gila Cliff Dwellings, I also went to Carlsbad Caverns which is where the photo below was taken. Unfortunately it was spring break so there were quite a few crying babies, and two elevators were down so it took 50 minutes to get out of the cave. It was really cool to see though, although it was kind of hard to get a good idea of the size of the cave. It was amazing though and it was definitely worth the nine hour drive to get there.

The last real hike I did here in Arizona was to a place called Bear Canyon which was to a place called seven falls, which was really pretty as we were hiking along a creek (with REAL water)! The water falls were beautiful but it was so hot we finished our water before we even made it back down the nine mile hike. I felt so dehydrated afterwards but it was beautiful and I really wanted to go swimming. I understand why everyone has a pool here. I would spend all my time in the pool and I would probably sleep in it as well with how hot it's getting now. The picture below is from that hike.

Anyways, it's off to the next thing here shortly and I'm both sad and very very excited. I enjoyed my desert safari, but it's time to go back to responsibilty and yet another advenutre. Until the next time I suppose. I will try to keep this blog up through the peace corps, but we sha'll see how often I will be able to post.

Africa to Arizona

So to begin, I finally got my Peace Corps assignment for those of you who weren't updated yet. I'm headed to Rwanda, Africa leaving the beginning of May. Yes, I'm nervous, but I'm also really excited. I never expected to go to Africa and now that it is my destination I am soaking it up and wrapping myself around it. I am going to be a community health volunteer with a focus on development. Generally they say I will probably working at a health clinic addressing HIV/AIDS as well as working to promote awareness and the development of the clinic in the area I am serving. I will also probably be working to address the issue of domestic violence as well. So there's the update on the Peace Corps currently. I'm shipping somewhere on May 4th, but I will let you all know more to come!

So how've I been spending the last month or so you may be asking... Well I finished up my time in Oregon and headed to Arizona. Before I left I attended the memorial of a very good family friend named Dave Hunt. Dave has known me much longer than I was a conscious enough creature to know him, but he was a constant in my life. He patched me up on rafting trips, treated us to herbs from his garden, went hiking with us, and always always had a wonderful smile on his face and came with lots and lots of laughter. I have nothing but positive memories of this man which is something that can rarely be said. I was fortunate enough to have him in my life. Other than this, I spent a short stint in Bend with my dad and I even made it up to Mt. Bachelor with Felice.

For those of you not priveleged enough to make it to Oregon in your lives, Mt. Bachelor is a 30 minute drive from Bend. It is part of the Cascade Mountatin range. In the top picture you can also see the three sisters to the left and broken top mountain through the trees. It was a perfect day on the mountain, other than a mild crash that almost rendered me immobile for the next who knows how long. It was still a wonderful day for the books on the mountain. Not long thereafter I took off for Arizona until April when I head home to pack and say my temporary good byes.

Within the first week of being here I got a job with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Tucson. I've enjoyed the job as well as the people I work with. It's also allowed me a lot of time to catch up on reading, therefore I am learning a lot about Rwanda and Africa. I'm about to finish a really wonderful book by a woman named Susana Herrera about her time in a Cameroonian village while in the Peace Corps. It's called "Mango Elephants in the Sun". On my days off, I've enjoyed hiking, lots and lots of it, as well as adventures about the area.

I first headed into the Ironwood National Forest, being unsurprisingly misled by the word forest in the name, thinking there were trees... nope... but there were lots of cacti. I know that's really surprising! haha. This is kind of northwest of Tucson and was still very pretty. The next day we went hiking South of Tucson in what I think is called the Coronado Wilderness Area. Not only did I find a forest of wonderful coniferous trees but I also found snow on this hike. Unfortunately I was dressed for Tucson so the snow and being 8,000 feet up as we hiked towards the top of Mt. Wrightson, was a little on the chilly side. It was beautiful though and I loved being back in places that reminded me of home. You can see the snow and part of the view below. Below that is a better picture of the trees.... so exciting.

The next week, I did a quick trip down to Bisbee and through Tombstone. I wanted to do one of the underground mine tours, but we missed them, unfortunately. We did get to see this though, the lavender pit mine. I've seen a few mines since being here and it's really interesting as I've never actually spent any real time around them. The whole process is seemingly exhaustive by the look at the results. I'm enjoying learning about it.

Next we hiked the Hugh Norris Trail in Saguaro National Park. The first half of this trail stair-stepped through a forest of Saguaros which were so huge, they towered over us like 8-10 times taller than me. It ws really cool. The second half of the trail wrapped itself around the sides of several mountains until a steep switch-backed climb to the top of Wasson Peak which gave a phenomenal view of the park, but also all of Tucson.

It was a perfect day for hiking as it wasn't too hot, but it was sunny. Fortunately I put sun screen on before I went otherwise I'd be sunburned yet again. It is March right? Once getting on the open ridgelines, we had a breeze which was absolutely refreshing.

The below picture is looking west of Tucson towards the O'Ohdom Indian Reservation, and directly behind it is the city of Tucson. Other than a multitude of hikes I've just been working and trying to prepare myself as best as possible for leaving for the Peace Corps. I'm not sure exactly what that means, but I'm making lists, reading books, and continually thinking about how to prepare myself. I'm pretty sure the hiking helps this process. Anyways, as always more updates to come. It's getting hotter here in Tucson even though it snowed less than a week ago, but still, I'm almost ready for sitting in front of an air conditioner. OY, I am missing the 300+ inches that Mt. Bachelor has gotten this year, but I'm also glad I don't have to drive in the snow. There's nothing but blue skies here!

Can't get enough of the road... Driving with my mom

This past week I went on a vacation/road trip with my mom. We began the trip with a stint in VEGAS of all places. We went to see KA a Cirque Du Soleil show at the MGM Grand. It was a lot of fun and a very interesting performance, much different than Love which I got to see back in September. After the show, we walked the strip a bit and still loved the Bellagio's water show. There was also a really great moon above the Excalibur outside our hotel room window.

The next day, a beautiful day, we drove the 30 miles to Hoover Dam, which was really quite interesting in terms of the engineering that went into it. The day was really perfect and quite warm. We walked around and crossed the dam after we drove over it. We saw a pair of big horn sheep grazing alongside the dam underneath the high water mark. It was quite amazing how much water the dam could actually hold.

We didn't walk up on the bridge that gives you a far away view of the dam, but standing on top of it, leaning over the edge, definitely gave a person a feel for how big the dam was. After our visit to the dam, we headed back across Nevada where we stayed in the small cowboy-esque town of Pahrump. The next day we headed off into Death Valley, which was incredible.

We drove into the southern end of Death Valley National Park and headed north until the central part of the park. There was almost no-body in the southern part of the park. We even saw several coyotes. We stopped the car and they ran towards us, and after we drove past them they would chase after us. It was a little upsetting how unafraid of humans they were. This also shows how often people feed them, which (to get on my soapbox) is absolutely horrible. Because of this animals have a harder time finding food on their own and they die due to human related cause, like car-accidents, more frequently.

Anyways, the area was beautiful and the weather was in the 60s. There was snow in the mountains and the whole environment suggested that we weren't actually in the desert. We even saw several patches of water. It was pretty cool to be 200 feet below sea level and in such a unique environment.

Finally we began heading west again, missing the northern half of the park. But we did get to see sand dunes and did a short walk through a slot-canyon called Mosaic Canyon. Which can be seen below. The area was so diverse and we even got to camp out at 4,000 feet. The moon and stars were so bright that night I could see everything even inside my tent. The ground was pretty rocky though and as a result my tent did collapse around me once during the night... not my favorite experience, but it was worth it. We got to see beehive charcoal kilns and wild burros as well while in the park. It was a really phenomenal place, but I am definitely convinced that it was not somewhere I'd like to be during the middle of the summer.

The next day we drove through back-country California to Sequoia National Park. I'm pretty sure we drove the windiest roads that exist throughout the world, and I've been on horribly windy roads. It was to the point that I was beginning to feel a little sick, but again they were absolutely beautiful and worth it. We got to Sequoia National Park in the afternoon and drove the road up to the top.

Here we got to see the world's largest tree, seen below. It was, not surprisingly, a sequoia and it is the largest tree by mass in the entire world. The visitor center at the top was almost completely covered in snow and we had to trek through some snow-banks to reach the tree. It was beautiful. We caught sunset on the way down, and then connected to some more windy roads to Fresno, where we stayed that night.

After our stint in Fresno, we traveled straight to Yosemite National Park. Again we approached the park from the south and got to drive the relatively secluded southern portion. The picture below is taken along this stretch of road. I love trees so much and mountainous forests. I will always miss them when I am away.

The below picture is probably the most photographed picture in the entire park. You have El Capitan to the left, Half-Dome in the distance and Bridal Veil Falls to the right. This view is also known as tunnel-view. My mom and I decided to walk the 1,000 feet from the parking lot to Bridal Veil Falls. Unfortunately it was entirely a sheet of ice and people were sliding and falling all over the place. We made it to the falls although it probably took four times longer than ever necessary to walk that far. The falls was amazing and the creek rushed right by the overlook platform we slid our way to.

I was really amazed by the number of people that were there in the park, but one can understand why with views like this. I am glad that we were here this time of year though because the summer would have to be crazy and busy. After almost a full day in Yosemite we headed out and back north to go home.

The trip was awesome and I got to see some amazing places. I would like to go back to Sequoia and to Kings Canyon National Park as between the two of them there are over 800 miles of hiking trails including Mt. Whitney which is the tallest mountain in the continental 48 states. I'm very glad that my mom was able to take the time off to travel and to see all these really awesome places with me. I highly recommend them.