One of my favorite websites of the Obama administration is the Flickr feeds where they publish all the official photos. My favorite remains the Department of State photo stream taken at the UN General Assembly. The Obamas posed for a photo with every interested world leader or government representative who attended the assembly. I learned a few things from this photostream.

1. The Obamas are incredibly photogenic. How can a couple hold a smile for so many hours? This is the first photo of the night

And this is 135 photos later

2. The Obamas are tall. In fact, they are taller than almost all of the world leaders. I like this. This height difference with the president of Vietnam is not unusual.

This guy is the Prime Minister of Montenegro and is one of only a handful of leaders taller than the Obamas. Plus, his wife is hot! Great dress and shoes.

3. Most of the first ladies and wives of ministers are very attractive. Most are wearing great outfits. I love when they dress up as they would in their own country. West Africans do the best job pulling this off. This is because they have some of the best fabric in the world. Liberia’s foreign minister looks great

My favorite is the First Lady of Burkina Faso. I want her dress!

This First Lady from the Comoros definitely had a bold look with her dress, as does her husband with his outfit. I love it!

3. It is fun to try and guess what country each leader comes from before looking at the caption. To see the names and countries of the leaders while watching the slideshow (and you should view it in the slideshow, it is mesmerizing) click on “Show Info”. It will list the position of the person and the country they come from.

Minister of Foreign Affairs for Indonesia

President and First Lady from Tuvalu

Some other photos that caught my attention

The president of Finland was placed next to Barack which tells me that the order in the photo is not by gender but by status

This one creeped me out but then I read that it was the Foreign Prime Minister of Laos and his daughter. Phew.

This is the only one with a third person and it turns out it is the interpreter for the President of Kosovo. That is sweet for them to have her stand in and get a photo with the Obamas.

I love how in this one the Foreign Affairs Minister’s wife is holding Michelle Obama’s hand. Also very touching.

Two photos got the most comments in the photostream. This one is the president of Cameroon Paul Biya. A lot of comments were left by Cameroonians criticizing him and criticizing Obama for posing with him. The rest of the comments were left by Americans asking what is up with his wife Chantal Biya. Upon further investigation I learned that she is 38 years(!) his junior and he is, in fact, very corrupt. To stay in power in Africa from 1982 takes a bit of election rigging. Perhaps he deserves such a ridiculous looking wife.

The photo that got the most press in the whole feed (and was taken down soon after it was posted) was the photo of the family of Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. He had his daughters photographed with him and his wife and the goth-style outfits they wore created quite a stir on the blogosphere.

Finally, the president of Tanzania Jakaya Kikwete was also in attendance, minus his wife. It would have been fun to see her.

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Merry Christmas from the Temba Clan! If you don’t exchange Christmas cards with us, here is what we sent out this year.

After Esther was born my mom moved in for three weeks to help us transition into parenthood. It was great – a custom practiced around the world that has been often neglected in the States. On her first day in our home she quickly decided we did not have enough freezer space. She was right, of course. This problem was compounded by the fact that I cooked a huge pot of Mtori (a Tanzanian soup women eat post-delivery) and loaves of zucchini bread during my nesting phase. With a visit to Sears.com she ordered us a half-chest freezer and Julius picked it up that day. It was fabulous. Relatives brought meals to stock it along with many trips to Costco and Trader Joes. By October we realized that things had gotten out of hand. Our freezers were both full and we were eating mostly out of the fridge! Thus, our freezer challenge.

Starting in October we decided that we would do no more grocery shopping until both freezers were emptied of food. The only things we were allowed to buy were condiments, milk, eggs, flour for bread and satsumas (they only come once a year and we need to eat them while they are in the stores). It turned out to be a lot more food than we thought. Now we are coming into mid-December and we have about a week and a half worth of food left. We have wittled it down to two packages of chicken, a severly freezer burned piece of salmon (hopefully no more than nine months old), a mexican dish from my cousin, vegetarian chili, shrimp scampi and tail-on shrimp. We also agreed to try and use all the dry goods in the cupboard so we have been eating a lot of beans, curry, coconut milk and rice. I even made a dessert out of the sweet sticky rice that I bought by mistake at the Asian grocery.

It has been a great challenge that has saved us a lot of money on groceries. I, however, am most looking forward to the shopping sprees that we will take to Cash and Carry, Costco and Trader Joes when it is finally over.