Introduction: Daily Africa

Thanks for the feedback, on- and off-blog, on a daily Africa picture post. Truth is, I'm just overwhelmed at the amount of time it would take to upload even a 100th of our pictures, so daily pic it is. BUT since several of you wanted more details, I'll try to cover the basics here as far as background goes (I aim to please), and then continue on with the pictures for...a while? Who knows how long. Until someone gets super bored with them and speaks out, I suppose. I'll try to supplement with other posts, of course.

SO! Africa! My MBA program (that I just finished! yay!) has a global consultancy requirement. So I knew going in that I would have to some sort of global project. Last spring, we got to put in our preferences for where we'd like to go (Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; Johannesburg, South Africa; Sao Paulo, Brazil; or Shanghai, China). As I've been to Asia several times (and will likely go back) as well as to Brazil (also, will likely go back as Dan served his mission there), we figured South Africa was a good bet.

So I put in my request, and, as luck would have it, got my first choice! We were, of course, ecstatic, as neither of us had ever been to Africa before. We planned from the beginning for Dan to come along because, well, why not? We also knew there would be a little one entering our lives in the near future, and we thought that if we could swing it, that we'd like to bring him, as well.

So we planned and planned and racked up frequent flyer miles and planned some more and had the good fortune of connecting with several friends of friends in the country, which totally made the trip.

All in all, we were in Africa for about 3 weeks, and visited the countries of South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Botswana. We also stopped in Spain for about a day. So yes, our baby had visited 6 countries before his 6-month birthday. Spoiled little tyke.

I'll leave it there for now, but it was really beyond amazing. I'll do some follow-up posts along the way - any requests? One for each country/major city? My project? Traveling with a baby? How to keep your cool (or not) with incompetent airline representatives? The incredible people?