Holidays begin!

Exams are over and graded (all of our students passed their classes this first term -hallelujah!), and the holidays have begun!

Sarah and I left on Monday for our week in Paradise/Zanzibar and just returned last night. It was beautiful, fun, restful - all of the best parts of a vacation! We went snorkelling one day, and I kept thinking 2 things: I HAVE to watch Finding Nemo again, and wow! Isn't God an amazingly creative God?! I know that, but seeing some of those fish, I just would have laughed, if I wasn't afraid of drinking in too much (Indian) ocean water! I have always imagined Him saying to the angels about the stars, planets, galaxies, "Just wait till they see this one!" Or when He created zebras, "How cool would white with black stripes, all the way from their manes to their tails be?" Now, I could just hear Him chuckling and saying, "That black and white thing worked so well on the zebra, let's do it with fish!"

That day also included about 4 hours sailing on a boat to and from snorkelling and was just so relaxing. We had lunch on a private part of the beach, met people from Holland, the UK, Sweden, just very international. It also fit in with my theme of having seafood at every meal except breakfast (only because I couldn't convince them to make a shrimp omelette!)!

The next day, we took a spice tour and a Stone Town tour. I had done both before, but our guides were very good and very informative, and I enjoyed both of those again.

The next day, as Sarah said, we just "relaxed." That was so funny to me because that's what we'd been doing all week, in one form or another! I mean, we didn't sail the boat or drive the cars for our tours or even have to memorize dates and names of plants and sultans! So, relaxing was something we pretty much had down!

Every breakfast we ate at our hotel, since that was included, and most lunches we ate at little local places but with lots of different options (as long as you wanted chips-french fries- or rice as your sides!) and local prices, as well - under about $5 for seafood dinners! Some dinners we also ate at those or at one of the beach hotels. One part of almost evry day was a trip to a shop for ice cream! After all, we were on vacation, at the beach! Hmmmm... wonder if that's how I gained a kilo in a week! Good thing I also did water aerobics every day, walked, kicked my fin-encased feet for an hour snorkelling, or I'd have gained 2 kilos! (I dreamed in kilos one week at Karanse! We eat rice for every lunch there, have chapatis for morning tea, which are mostly fried dough, and have bread with our soup for dinner. But, one night I dreamed I lost 6 kilos in one week! Aside from being physically impossible, all of my Australian, British, and New Zealand friends thought the funniest part was that I dreamed in kilos!)

We just got our latest and final mentor today. Her name is Shelley, she's from NZ, and she will be Sarah's fellow mentor in Magugu. That puts our household at 6 women for now. Joanna gets married in just under a month, and she'll be moving out then. More on all of this later. I will try to download some picture from the last week soon.