Where exactly is Uncle Matt?

So where exactly is it that I am spending 6 out of every 8 weeks for the next year you ask? Why what a great question my dear nieces! Auntie Lisa said you guys were curious at your Dad's Birthday dinner on Sunday (happy Birthday Trevor - I am a terrible brother in law for forgetting, sorry!) so I thought I might do a quick post to explain to you two where I am.

Madagascar (you know - the island with the lemurs and the musical animals from the movie we watched) is almost as far away from Canada as you can get on a plane from your house! It's 15,830KM away, which is roughly the same distance as if you lined up 1,256,349 of your school buses nose to tail! If you could walk on water and you started walking today and you walked for half of the day every day it would take you 236 days to get here, that's 2/3 of a year! In other words - it's pretty far!

Anyway, Madagascar is an island - a really big island! - off the Eastern coast of Africa (that's the big continent with all the animals, think Lion King). It's so big that it's actually the 4th biggest island in the world.

That's it - right there!

The neat part about the island is that it was isolated for nearly 90 million years (that's a looong time - almost as old as mai mai) so most of the plants and animals on the island are found nowhere else in the world, like the Baobab trees pronounced bay-o-bab.

Baobab's are neat!

It's also home to a whole bunch of different kinds of Lemurs (those are the annoying singing things we saw on the Madagascar movie). They are curious, cute little animals but like all wild animals have to be shown proper respect so you don't upset them. I got to meet some last time I was here but they didn't want to say hi to me, they were more interested in throwing poop at each other. Pretty funny hey?

Ring-tailed poop throwers or as I like to call it - Taras!

Not only is it home to a whole bunch of neat plants and animals but it's also home to nearly 22 million people or almost 22 Edmonton's worth of people. The best part is, you guys would have no problems talking to people here because most of them speak French! I on the other hand am begrudgingly having to learn French again. :) Maybe when I'm home at Christmas you can give me lessons.

Anyway, that's all I've got time for tonight. Next time I'll post a bit more about where in Madagascar I actually live. I hope you enjoyed my little post, in the mean time be sure to keep being good for your Mom & Dad and to give Auntie Lisa lots of hugs for me when you see her! :)