One more day of our Great Namibian Adventure and we decided to spend it in Windhoek.  Great decision!  At first we weren’t sure, considering that most African capitol cities are noisy, dirty, and not worth a whole lot more than the airport and finding a road out of town.  But Windhoek was nice!  There was a central park with a playground, streets lined with shops and cafes that sold ice cream and delicious German bread, a museum about Namibia’s colonial history, and a pretty church in the center of town.  We are glad we planned to spend a day in Windhoek.

Wow, are we glad we did the whole trip!  The best part was being with our friends, the Bennetts.

Friends are people that take turns driving, who don’t mind making extra stops for apple strudel and sparkling water, who hand your kid a plastic bag to throw up in when he’s carsick, and who bring extra healthy snacks when all you brought to share was a bag of Twizzlers.  They understand that boiling water in the hotel room is a fascinating activity, because wow that electric pot is so cool!  And yes, we could go see some amazing German buildings down the street, but why do that when we could visit a laundromat?  They don’t ask questions when we show up late every morning for breakfast, they share their iPads and iPods to watch movies in the car, and they don’t dwell on the horror of one child stepping in a big pile of seal poo, whose shoe will now have to ride with us for the next six hours.  Oh, and did we tell you that our children like to pretend to be meerkats?  Sticking their blankets in their pants and running around the hotel room?  They don’t think that’s weird, either.

Jason, Kelly, Naia, and Gabriel, we are so grateful for you!  We will remember this for always.  We are so glad to be friends.