Here are my most recently played board games.

Set

RoboRally

Mare Nostrum - Mythology Expansion

Mare Nostrum

We played games again last night. Two board game days in one week... what fun!

Keythedral and Roborally were two of my favorites from last night. I got killed off early in Betrayal, but I could see myself liking it.

Happy New Year!

What a great relaxing week back in the US. My favorite Christmas gift is probably my new board game, Power Grid. I enjoyed game night on Wednesday night with Mike and Alexa, and looking forward to another tomorrow. Tonight is dinner with Chris, Ray, Carter and Kent. We haven't gotten to see any of those folks on the break yet, so that should be fun.

We have returned from our first ever trip to Africa. I slept so much on the plane, I couldn't sleep late this morning, so I have been up doing email and catching up with the world. The trip was fantastic, and I saw some amazing sights that are hard to describe in words. We spent 3 days in Egypt, 7 days in Arusha, Tanzania on safari, and 5 days in Zanzibar relaxing on the spice island.

Cairo - The Pyramids and the Sphnix were the highlights.
Arusha, Tanzania - We saw Mt. Kilimanjaro (no climbing), and went on a five day safari to see Lake Manyara, the Serengeti National Park, and the Ngorongoro Crater. These three have some of the best wildlife viewing in all of Africa. We saw zebras, giraffes, elephants, lions, cheetahs, leopards, wildebeasts, buffalos, impalas, dikdiks, and tons of bird species we had never seend before. All set in beautiful terrain that was overwhelming.
Zanzibar - This island used to be a major hub for spice trading between east and west, in addition to the neat history, it now a very relaxing beach area with the beautiful blue Indian Ocean.

We flew 7 airlines (in order): Continental, Air France, Kenya Airways, Precision Air, Air Tanzania, KLM, and Delta. Air France was the best with the personal video screen for two of the longest flights. I watched Cars, My Super Ex-Girlfriend, and Pirates of the Caribbean 2. It made them feel short. The KLM flight back with our seats with broken headphones seemed the longest.

We hit 13 airports (and 7 countries):
ATL -> Houston
Houston -> Paris
Paris -> Cairo, Egypt (stayed three days)
Cairo -> Khartoum, Sudan (didn't get off the plane)
Khartoum -> Nairobi, Kenya
Nairobi -> Arusha, Tanzania (our base for our safari, near Mt. Kilimanjaro)
Arusha -> Zanzibar (for our beach relaxation, and time on the spice island)

Then the somewhat brutal trip home:
Arusha -> Nairobi
Nairobi -> Khartoum (didn't get off the plane)
Khartoum -> Cairo
Cairo -> Amsterdam
Amsterdam -> Chicago
Chicago -> Atlanta

A great trip. I'll have to write more. So far the things I like most about being home:

• having all kinds of food options. I want lots of chicken - they don't have much in Africa.
• no one asking me to buy anything
• not having to worry about money (being able to use credit cards, or to have vendors have change is a fantastic convienance we take for granted in the US)

I'm off to Africa today for vacation - Egypt and Tanzania for 16 days. Should be awesome. Likely no blogging due to limited internet access. We got the roundtrip ticket to Cairo with Skymiles, which was awesome. That saved a few thousand right off the top.

Georgia Tech has had two really disappointing football games in a row. The UGA loss, and then the Wake Forest lost. I feel bad for our defense, who played two great games to see us lose both. Our offense has just not looked strong. Reggie Ball is being raked over the coals by the fans, and his play has been very poor. Just watching him play at UGA, I had little confidence that if the offense was required to score that it could. I would have liked to see our back-up QB play a little bit, but it is easy to arm chair quarterback. Our team was much better than UGA's in every category but Quarterback, and it was sad to see us lose. Also sad that their Freshman QB outplayed our Senior who has started for 4 years.

We drove down to Jacksonville to see GT's first ever appearance in the ACC championship game, and it was disappointing. The rain, and the very, very poor offense was sad to watch. Wake is a good team, but I still think we are better than them. There were so many deep passes, and so few connected. The fans were very upset over the playcalling.

I think leaving the country tomorrow, and not reading about GT for a few weeks will do me good.

On a side note, having lunch with Anit, Carter and Kent today at the Cheesecake Factory was great. I get to see friends in Atlanta so rarely, I really enjoy the time we get to spend together. Seeing Anit was a real treat as well. When that group gets together, we're bound to have fun.