Mali or Bust!

After a 3 hour call van ride (which thanks to the new Incheon bridge is closer to 2 hours now), a 12 hour flight to Paris, 4 hour delay in Paris, 5 hour flight to Bamako, 1 hour through immigration, 1 hour at baggage claim with 1 lost bag, and then a 5 hour packed van ride to Koutiala, we finally made it to the MacLean house!

This is our last plane from the view of the bus that took us about 300 feet from the plane to the terminal building.

Do we look a little tired? Shelby Grace is not quite sure where we are.

Immigration and baggage claim in a third world country is quite and experience, ok so madness is more like it. It took us about an hour at each place but we made it though. We received 5 out of 6 bags which we were pretty excited about. Of course, it was the bag with all of Grandma's Christmas presents that were missing. Sheri and Brett met us outside and we got our first cultural experience of porters and street kids helping with bags. Sheri and Brett had switched cars and had no money and we hadn't changed our money into frans yet so one guy got paid $5.00 and one guy got paid 2,000 won.

We We arrived at the SIL guest house in Bamako at about 3:00 in the morning. We couldn't wait to see the boys but decided to try and sleep some.

Can you find Shelby Grace under the mosquito net?

Zachary has quickly become at home here in the perfect boy world- sticks, rocks, and lots of dirt.

We stopped half way through our 5 hour trip to Koutiala in a town on the Niger River called Segoo. This alligator was a resident of the restaurant where we ate.

Not the best picture but proof that we have all five kiddos together.
From left to right- Shelby Grace (1), Zachary (4), Dawson (4), Silas (1) and Kenan (almost 3).

Zachary and Dawson picked up right where they left off and have enjoyed every minute together. It was hard even trying to get them to sit still to get a picture together.

We finally arrived at the CMA Mission Protestante in Koutiala about 6:00 pm on Monday- about 46 hours after leaving our apartment in Korea. The kids quickly began playing with the dirt and rocks once again.

Shelby Grace has picked up soccer since we've been here.

The Malian sun has already changed me. 6 hours with my arm out the window gave me a nice farmer's sunburn.

Shelby Grace and Zachary have become friends very quickly with Jeremie and Mart, the MacLean's house help and nanny. It is great to feel at home here already and the culture shock hasn't been too bad. If you took away the dirt and added cement in it's place, things are pretty similar to Korea, it's kind of strange.

Stay tuned for more adventures of the MacLean and Pinho Christmas- we've only taken about 1,000 pictures in just a week. :)