A day in the life

I saw on my friend Lisa’s blog that she had posted “A Day in the Life of Lisa”. I thought this was a cool concept and thought I’d give it a try. If you’re reading this, it means that I decided it was worth posting and not just scrapping. So, here goes my day:

7:00 AM – I’m up. I don’t know why I wake up at 7 whether I’m working or not, but I do. As per usual, I start my day by scanning emails and reading the important news of the day (ie the hockey preview section on tsn.ca. Looks like my beloved Canadiens are considered a strong contender this year. Too bad Sudanese broadcasters can’t spell hockey, let alone broadcast it) BTW, am I the only one who gets excited to get email, and then disappointed when I discover that most of it is spam? I guess this is the modern equivalent of expecting a letter from a friend to come in the mail, and having to wade through weeks of flyers and hydro bills and past due notices for your cable bill. (I just had a sudden flashback to university when one of my idiot roommates didn’t pay the cable bill and it was cut off during exams, causing my other roommate great anguish as he scrambled to find another way to procrastinate). Maybe I shouldn’t write this before I’m fully awake. But then any of you who knows me well knows that this is how I think.

8 AM – finish reading the headlines, and decide to finish writing my vacation stories blog (which you’ll find underneath this one, I presume). Start to get hungry for breakfast, but decide to hold off until my guests (friends who work in rural Sudan and have come to the city for a break) wake up.

9:20 – realize I’m getting more hungry, and decide to start my new morning routine. 4 days running of the rowing machine, followed by some stretching and strengthening exercises for my back and knee which had been bothering me a bit lately after intense squash games. Let’s hope I can keep this up.

9:50 – finished cleaning up. Have just enough time to grab a quick breakfast before heading off to church (since Friday is the Muslim prayer day, it is also my day off and thus is the day I go to church)

10:35 – arrive at church 5 minutes late for worship practice. Surprised to discover that others are showing up on time now, and slink into position behind the microphone. For those that don’t know, I have been singing as part of the worship team now, and have been teaching them a few new songs on guitar during our practices. It is quite fun!

11:50 – I got word during the pre service that the speaker today is known for his longwindedness, so I decide to make a run for it, since it’s 45 degrees outside and the church is not always well cooled. I justify it by saying that I have to get caught up on work, despite the fact that I have to get caught up on work mainly because I haven’t gotten much done in the last couple of days (which I justified by the fact that the rest of Sudan, including everyone else on my staff, was on holiday to celebrate the end of Ramadan. I, however, had grand plans of using this time to get caught up on work that piled up while I was away on vacation.)

12:10 – get home and have some leftover peanut chicken for lunch that Chris and Bev made the other night. The night before that, I made them a teriyaki stirfry. I love having guests around. Cooking is so much more fun, and I eat better and healthier.

12:30 – contemplate going up to the office. Decide to pause to update this journal, and remember that I was having trouble transferring music to my mp3 player. Decide to investigate this.

2:00 – finally made it to the office. I discovered that some of my music discs are scratched and don’t play properly. No matter. I have thousands more songs. While I was trying to load my mp3 player, I decided to watch an episode of Spin City to kill time. Time for serious work now though.

4:00 – well, that’s enough work for my day off. Looks like I’ll have to put in some time tomorrow though. Gonna catch another episode of Spin City, and then head off to squash.

4:30 – on my way out to run some errands when I ran into Tim online, a friend who is getting married next year. It’s sad to miss weddings, but it’s not cost feasible to make it back to Canada all the time. We’ll see what I can work out.

5:15 – ran out of time for the errands. Head to squash with Edwin. The squash game wasn’t all that great. We had a good game on Wednesday, but both ended up a little stiff and sore today. Still good fun.

7:00 - had some more peanut chicken for dinner. Got to use up the leftovers. Ran into Mike and Leah (two fellow African travellers that I met in a mission prep course in Canada before I went to Malawi) on line and chatted for a bit. It’s fun to keep in touch with fellow travellers.

8:30 - Decided to put on a movie, and watched The Bucket List. I really enjoyed this movie. Two all time great actors, Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, tell a great tale of two guys who just found out that they have less than a year to live, and decide to live out some life long dreams. A lovely little film.

10:00 – Chris and Bev (my visitors and houseguests) come back and ask if I want to watch a movie. I figured I might as well (Chris makes great popcorn), but didn’t want another heavy drama, so we settled on some really light, cheesy 80s romantic comedy called “Can’t Buy Me Love”. Totally cheesy and sappy; fun for the whole family.

And there you have it. A day in my life, that strangely managed to cover much of my Sudan experience. Hope you liked it!

European vacation - Fall 08 edition

Well, I finally made some time to write out my latest adventures in travel. For my first stop, I travelled to Belfast to visit my friend Jane whom I had met in Sudan. I enjoyed the warm hospitality of her and her family and was reminded of the peacefulness and simplicity of rural living. And she was very tolerant of my need to cover my two main cravings that go unfulfilled in Sudan: bacon and beer. Made for a great breakfast every morning :)

On the first day, we headed out to check out a rope bridge, and to check out the Causeway. It was a fun day of exploring, in spite of the cold rain. We then warmed ourselves by a fire before finding a great thai restaurant for dinner (another one of my cravings that I fulfilled quite frequently during my trip.) The next day, we went to a different city (I'm too lazy to go find the names) where there was a lovely walk along the water that led up to this mountain:

After that, we headed to Belfast to check out the Botanical gardens. Though not as impressive as the ones in Cambridge I saw last year, they were still quite beautiful.

After dinner in a great Mexican place, we went to see the movie Get Smart, a rather witty and entertaining piece of mindless fun (I also miss movie theatres in Khartoum)

On Sunday, I got to check out her church in Belfast, both the morning and evening services, which were excellent. In between, we had a lovely Sunday afternoon meal with the family which reminded me of family Sunday meals of years gone past. And we also went for a walk around a beautiful pond.

On Monday I was off to Galway to visit my friend Melissa, someone I met in Toronto years ago who is now managing a hostel on the Aran Islands, just of the west coast of Ireland. We met up in Galway and enjoyed a night of live music (yet another thing I greatly miss), before heading off to the island the next day. However, we also made the mistake of settling on seeing the movie Step Brothers when other movies were sold out. I could rant in great detail, but in short I cannot state strongly enough that you should not EVER see this movie. Unless you want to see 40 year old men acting like 8 year old imbiciles for 2 hours, with a generous helping of offensive, inappropriate, and not particularly funny jokes. But I digress.

Out on the island, I enjoyed 3 days of fun, relaxation, good views, good food, good company, good entertainment, and good Guinness on the island. I also got to watch the movie The Commitments in Ireland, thus accomplishing a loosely defined life goal. On Friday, I stopped in Dublin for a night and explored a bit of the bar district, checking out some traditional Irish music. Saturday I made a stop at the Thomas Beatty library where they had a very interesting and informative presentation of the major world religions, including some very ancient writings and artifacts. I loved it.

Saturday afternoon I headed to England to link up with Andy and his family (one of my coworkers in Malawi who has settled back into farm life in England) I always enjoy seeing him and his family, and it was fun to see the kids all a year older. Kezi into some of the music I have listened to, watching Caleb grow into a soccer player (I’m glad he’s found an outlet for at least some of his seemingly endless energy supply). I enjoyed some wonderful home cooked meals, and I always feel like I’m part of the family when I’m there. Andy and I also snuck away one night to see The Dark Knight, the latest Batman film. I generally avoid the superhero films as I don’t buy into the genre (I’m not a comic book guy), but I had heard so much press about this film that I had to check it out. I thought the movie was very good, and probably as good as it gets for this genre, but I think that the people who talk of it being an all time great movie are overstating things.

On Tuesday, I ventured down to London for a meeting with one of our partners, Tearfund. On the way, I was able to grab a quick lunch with my friend Karen, another friend from Toronto who had just the day before finished her work as a grad school student at UCL. I’m glad I got to see her before she heads back to Canada. The meeting was productive, and worth the trip. I also got to link up for drinks with one of the Tearfund staff who came to Sudan to do some training. I love that it can be such a small world sometimes.

The final stop on my journey was a long weekend in Utrecht with Lisa, another friend from my church in Toronto who moved out to Holland the same time I moved to Sudan. I was proud to discover that I was the first repeat visitor (and glad to be welcomed back and to see her again) We had more amusing, interesting, and thought provoking conversations about God, living abroad, the changes at our old church in Toronto, and what the future may hold. I love getting her perspective on things because she has a way of communicating things that is honest, unpretentious, amusing, and thought provoking all at the same time. I got to meet a few of the friends that she has made, by going to movies, drinks, and being part of a dinner party she hosted. I also got to meet up with one of my best friends in Sudan (Edwin), who is a native of Holland and was passing through on his leave. And while Lisa was at work, I got to explore some of Holland, including the Corrie Ten Boom house. For those of you who don’t know who Corrie Ten Boom is, read the Hiding Place. It’s a great book. Here is a picture of the hiding place itself, for those that know the story.

All in all, it was a great trip. A few random side benefits of the trip included:

- a useful meeting with a physiotherapist to discuss some lingering knee pain. She helped me identify the problem and showed me some good stretching and strengthening exercises that have helped solve the problem. Which is good, because I was missing my regular squash games. :)

- I had lots of airplane/bus times to get through some reading. I read a bunch of books on the trip, ranging from the light novels of Jeffrey Archer and John Grisham, to a classic by Oswald Chambers (Gems on Genesis), another good book by Philip Yancey, Fever Pitch (not one of Nick Hornby’s best), and finally Perelandra by CS Lewis (considered by some of my friends to be the best book they have ever read)

- I discovered the wonders of sweet chilli sauce, which is quickly becoming part of many new recipes for me. I discovered it at a very punnily named place in Dublin called Abakebabra

- I met a couple of South Africans during some long layovers at airports, so I now have a couple of connections if/when I ever get a chance to travel there

- I got to walk for miles a day at a leisurely pace in places that weren’t boiling hot and seemingly endless plains of sand.

- I got to visit my 12th country. I’ve still got a ways to go to catch up to my boss’ 90 something countries (don’t know that I really have the desire to attain that though.) I knocked Ireland off the list. Now, the tops on my list are Italy and Australia. All in good time.

Field visit the second

Well, I finally had a chance to get out to one of our field sites again. I really enjoy the field visits, as it is nice to get out of the bustle of Khartoum into some open spaces. It’s also very useful to meet all of the field staff, and to see firsthand some of their constraints and challenges.

A couple of amusing tales that arose out of my visit:

- our first stop was at a school, and it reminded me of Malawi in the best possible way. In Khartoum, foreigners are commonplace, but in the villages here in Sudan, foreigners are a rarity, and I was treated to being surrounded by thousands of curious eyes that followed me around wherever I went. Not something I want all the time, but it was fun to be surrounded by children again and see some of what my cheque signing pays for

- at another site, we were sitting under a tin roof when it sounded like rain had started to come down. As it turns out, in very hot conditions, you can actually hear the roof expanding. You may think I’m crazy, but I found this fascinating.

- Even more fascinating was a story I heard from our Program Coordinator as we were driving around. I was commenting on the dearth of chickens around, and talking about how in Malawi I was used to seeing chickens running wild in the villages. He told me that in Zambia, they actually paint the chickens to camouflage them so the eagles won’t swoop down and eat them

Anyhow, it was a fun visit. The next big thing on my schedule is a trip to Europe for 2-3 weeks in September. I’ll be visiting Ireland for the first time, and then travelling onto Holland, possibly stopping in London if time and money allows it. All for now!

Life in Khartoum - random snippets

Well, it seems my blog has been suffering from neglect. I just rarely find the time to write something that I think people would want to read. I was originally just intending to use this as a vacation blog, but since I haven’t had a vacation in a while (not counting a month back home in Canada), I haven’t had much reason to write. But I’ve been asked to provide a few stories of life in Khartoum, so here are a few anecdotes:

- the driving here is horrendous. People with no regard for road rules, and the bizarre contradiction that everyone seems to drive around like they are 30 minutes late for their wedding, but yet everyone seems so laid back and inefficient. I can almost guarantee that the guy at the phone company/government office/internet provider probably tried to sideswipe me because they were in such a hurry to get to the office, but if I want service this week, they seem to be in no hurry at all. Can't figure this out.

- Fortunately, I just moved into a flat attached to the office, so Idon't have to deal with the crazy morning traffic commute. Makes my life much better. And I have internet at home now so I can do things like catch up on personal email at 11 when I can't fall asleep rightaway.

- the heat is almost manageable again (down to the high 30s some days, low 40s in others). It’s really unbearable here for the better part of 3 months, but fortunately I have AC at home and in the office. And the rest of the year it’s quite nice, with not a hint of that minus 20 nonsense we get in Toronto.

- Me and my expatriate co workers derive constant amusement from the language mistakes that are made. Most of you have heard me tell of Malawi, where they mixed up l’s and r’s quite frequently, resulting in a headline in the national newspaper “General Erections to be held across the country on May 18th”. Now, nothing that funny has come up yet in Sudan, but the other day I got a list of our staff from HR, and it seems they didn’t know that the abbreviation for assistant is ASST. So, I was looking at our list of ass. Mechanics and wondering why we had so many proctologists on staff

Ok, that’s enough for now. I’ve got to give a shout out to my best friends Dave and Colin, who gave me the fantastic banner (pictured above my desk) for my birthday (you get extra friend points if you pick up the reference)

Random Facts about Me

So, it seems I’ve been meme’d. I don’t actually know what that means, but I assume it is blogger lingo for telling me I’ve been asked to do something. On my friend Lisa’s blog (http://lisatheknitter.wordpress.com/) there is a post of 7 random facts about her, and a request for me and 6 other bloggers to do the same on our blogs. Now, I wasn’t going to post this since it didn’t really fit in with my blog theme, but I figured 1) I haven’t really posted anything in a while anyway, so I guess the theme wasn’t working, 2) I was too lazy to start up a separate blog for random musings, and 3) attractive women can talk me into just about anything.

Mom, you can probably not bother passing this one around to the grandfolks. I’ll try to write a proper update later. Anyhow, without further adieu, here are some obscure facts about me:

1) I can solve the Rubik’s magic puzzle in under 5 seconds. Not the cube, the puzzle. Never bothered with the cube cuz I only like puzzles with defined beginnings and endings.

2) I can name the last 50 Stanley Cup winners, and more useless sports trivia than I’d care to remember, and this is the reason why I feel compelled to memorize Scripture.

3) When I was 15, I narrowly missed out on an invitation to the math Olympics.

4) I don’t drink coffee or tea, don’t like vinegar (and thus, most condiments). I like cooked tomatoes and cheese but not raw tomatoes and cheese.

5) I actually derive enjoyment out of aspects of my accounting job like reconciling the books, making fun and functional spreadsheets, and finding obscure patterns.

6) You know that dream some people have where they show up to school in just their underwear? I have an occasional reoccurring fear that something like this actually happened to me at one point.

7) When I was finishing school, I lined up a series of investment banking interviews, before realizing that I had no interest in investment banking. This led to a rather amusing stream of interview events, including:
· Quoting a book in an investment banking interview that basically talked about what a miserable profession it was
· Miraculously getting a second interview with the above company, and deducing that I had little chance of advancement, proceeded to take advantage of the free alcohol and issuing an open challenge at pool
· When another interviewee called me to inform me that I was being passed on, I responded with “That’s ok. I’ll probably see you in a couple years, working for your competition, and making you regret your decision. How do you feel about that?”

Sadly. My efforts were all outdone by a friend in a similar position, who: in the middle of the interview, recommended that the interviewers chase down the previous interviewee (the top student in our class) instead of wasting their time on him; and juggled in another interview, and when asked why, said “I figure this is all one big dog and pony show, so why not?”


So, there you have it. I don’t know if anyone really reads this blog, so these facts may remain obscure. If you’re reading this and you have an active blog, let me know, so I can actually follow the rules of this ‘meme’, which are:

The rules:
1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog. - DONE
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird. - DONE
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs. – NOT DONE (I don’t know 7 people who have active blogs)
4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Have a good one!

Extremely long Christmas vacation story

Well, it’s now 2008, and I get to reflect on my latest vacation adventure: a 3 week break over Christmas in Malawi and Mozambique. This post will be extremely long, so feel free to read it over several days or not at all. I’ll try to write it with good headlines so you can skip over the boring parts.

Part 1: Return to Malawi

I spent the first day in Lilongwe, the capital city of Malawi. I got to visit with the McLeans, a Canadian family that has been here for a long while. Then I had dinner with the Gondwes. This was a bittersweet reunion, as they had lost their mother, Esnatt, this summer who succumbed to a lengthy battle with cancer. Mrs. G (as we called her) was a coworker and friend while I was here, and she is missed greatly by her family, friends, and by EI (where I worked). However, seeing the rest of the family again was nice, and I got to have a long awaited pool rematch with Emmitt, who had moved away to the UK shortly after I arrived in Malawi the first time.

Return to Zomba

On the second day, I hopped on a mini bus for a 5-6 hour journey to Zomba. I was so excited to be returning to the place I called home for a year and a half that I wasn’t bothered at all by the typical African problems: not getting on the more comfortable and faster coach bus, wandering around in the rain to find alternative transport, having to switch buses because of breakdowns. I just kept smiling and enjoying the scenery. One highlight was when I was searching for breakfast and I came across a food stand with two sides. One side said “Nice Shop”. The other said “Cheap Shop”. I love Africa.

Upon arriving in Zomba, I met a few new CIDA interns, said hello to old coworkers and friends, and was told I needed to be ready for social squash in an hour. I was dreading a match with Mike, who had picked up the game in the past year and was reputedly getting much better. As feared, I was handily defeated. But I had fun, and it was great to see the squash gang again.

Prayer Day

Every month, the EI Malawi staff gather for pay day, and enjoy a meal together along with a few skits, a message, some songs, games, etc. Being as this was Christmas break, Prayer Day was a little bit different. For me, it was a great chance to see many of the staff from the field locations and say hello. And we held it at the lake, so it was also a chance for me to see lovely Lake Malawi once again. It was a fun time of fellowship, where I had a chance to play guitar and also to take part in a very elaborate game, organized by a Malawian, that was sort of a cross between Let’s Make a Deal, and the Price is Right. It was hilarious. While we waited for lunch, I reminded myself that I don’t know how to throw a Frisbee, and got to enjoy watching people playing beach volleyball with a basketball, and later with a soccer ball.

After the day was done, I gathered Mike and a bunch of the interns to head up to Zomba Forest Lodge for dinner. It is a tiny lodge nestled in the middle of the Zomba Plateau offering a cool atmosphere, great views of the sunset, and some of the best food I’ve had in Africa, or anywhere in the world for that matter. The meal was truly amazing, just as I remembered. I plied the crowd with some wine and they were kind enough to give me audience for a couple of new songs I’ve been writing. It was a wonderful evening, all in all.

The following day, Mike and I ventured to Blantyre (Malawi’s biggest city) to do some shopping and to try and play some golf. Unfortunately, between rain and the inability to rent left handed clubs (though there were plenty of caddies who would have offered to carve me a set if I was willing to wait), we weren’t able to golf. Another surprising thing to me was that even though I’m making more money now, I still couldn’t justify the cost of some of the things I passed on while I was in Malawi, though I did pay a relative small fortune to purchase some Reese Peanut Butter cups that I happened upon at an overpriced import shop.

We headed back to Zomba to meet the interns who graciously offered to cook us dinner, and joined them to watch High Fidelity (on a side note, I stumbled across the book that inspired this movie and just finished reading it, and this combo would make my all time top 5 list of books that were turned into movies, at least of ones where I’ve both seen the book and read the movie) Actually, that reminds me, if any of you have a copy of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (the book), that is a must read from what I hear. But I digress. I finished off the evening by introducing Mike to Ron White, one of my favourite comedians.

On Sunday, we had a lazier day, playing some squash in the morning and watching the Seinfeld biography Comedian in the afternoon. On another side note, I deliberately brought a bunch of movies that I had been raving about to Mike the first time we were in Malawi, so he could see what the fuss was about. In the evening, I was invited to dinner with Daniel and his family. Daniel is the Malawian that I trained to replace me as Finance Director. It was nice to meet his wife and children, and some children of relatives that were in for the holidays. We had a good chance to catch up and talk shop for a bit, and he seems to have settled in quite well, which makes me very pleased.

Afterwards, I caught the end of a carol sing at the Jones’ (my boss), and managed to arrive just in time for desserts and socializing, where I got to see a few more familiar faces. Our evening ended on a rather exciting note, as we managed to get stuck in the mud while driving someone home. With the help of 6-7 men and a few kwacha later, we were able to get home.

Well, I’m finally up to Christmas Eve. I thought about being more brief with this recap, but I figure I don’t have that big of an audience, so I figure I can ramble. And there was lots of stuff that I want to remember. Anyhow, we played some more squash in the morning (I only managed to win 2-3 games from Mike the entire trip, so I clearly need more practice), and then watched one of my favourite Christmas movies in the afternoon, Die Hard. J We managed to work our way into an invitation to have dinner on Christmas Eve at the Joshua’s house. I knew them because they housed my friend Ann when she was in Malawi, so it was nice to see them again. We had some wonderful evening food and some nice fellowship.

Christmas Day

Finally, we have reached Christmas day! On the spur of the moment, Mike and I got up on Christmas morning, and decided to hit the golf course. I hadn’t swung a club in 6 months, but somehow managed to play quite well, even parring the first hole. It was definitely the best round of golf I’ve ever shot on Christmas Day. After the round, we still had a few hours before dinner, so we decided to watch Die Hard 2, my other favourite Christmas movie. It was great to hear Let it Snow at the end, but I really wasn’t all that sad that it didn’t snow on Christmas. We had a wonderful Christmas dinner at the Jones’ place, where I stuffed myself on ham, which is sadly unavailable in Sudan. It was sad to be away from family, as always, but it sounds like they had a good day, and I will see them all soon enough when I come to visit in May, when hopefully the snow will be gone and it will be warmer.

Part 2: Mozambique

So, Mike and I got up early on Boxing Day to start our drive to Mozambique. The trip there went about as well as we could have hoped. No border problems, we never got lost, the roads were pretty good for the most part (except for one very bad stretch that we had already planned for) The views while driving were great, and the rains made for some awesome sky colours, as Mike had to listen to me try to explain that one of my favourite colours is the blue/grey colour that the sky turns just before a really bad storm. 13 hours later, we arrived at our stop point for the evening, where I ordered a steak and was shocked to get 2!! T Bone Steaks for my $8. Mind you they were tiny, thin, and fairly low grade, but the fact that I got two made me quite happy. We weren’t really into trying to explore the town after a 13 hour drive, so we split a bottle of wine at the hotel and watched a Mystery Science Theatre episode. If you don’t know about this show, then you should.

Day 2 involved a relatively short drive to our first destination: Ilha de Mozambique. It was a less touristy place on the ocean including some great history. The first thing we discovered is that finding English speakers was harder than expected, as most people speak only Portuguese. Fortunately, my limited French and Spanish helped me pick out a few of the basics. The first lunch, we were able to figure out that we were ordering chicken, but really had no idea how it would be prepared or what it would come with. Fortunately, it turned out to be very good. Dinner was a little less successful. Mike never got his meal due to some horrible misunderstandings, and I got what I ordered, a “simple hamburger” which turned out to just be a hamburger patty. Nevertheless, it was a good first day.

We started the second day by exploring some of the history on the island, including an old fort that was used centuries ago during war times. There was also an old church that was one of the oldest buildings in the southern hemisphere.

Finally, there was a very cool museum there where I got some really neat pictures before someone alerted me to the no camera rule.

Over lunch, we met up with some other Canadians passing through, and laughed about the general lack of tourists on the island and the lack of English. We found a pool at a nearby hotel to lounge by for the afternoon, before sampling some fantastic prawns for dinner. The group of Canadians was heading to Pemba a day ahead of us, so we said our goodbyes and promised to look them up in a couple days.

The next day we took a boat trip out to a small beach off shore. The beach was nice and the swimming in the ocean was fantastic, but the lack of the shade on the beach caused me to get severely sunburnt despite frequent sunscreen applications (it seems that waterproof sunscreen is not saltwater proof)

Pemba

On Dec 30th, we drove to Pemba, a tourist destination on the coast which was about a 5 hour drive away. We got there, linked up with our Canadian friends, and found some cheap one star accommodation until we got settled the next day. On New Year’s Eve, we upgraded our accommodation and did some exploring of the beach. We met another Canadian, Shannon, who is working in Mozambique, and made plans to link up later for a New Year’s Eve party. I enjoyed a nice time of reflection on 2007 in a lounge chair overlooking the ocean. We had trouble finding a place to eat dinner since most places had large New Year’s Eve gatherings, but we managed, and then ventured out in the rain to have a drink with our Canadian friends before heading out to the New Years party.

The party was an entertaining mix of shelter under construction, people who had been partying all day, horrible DJed music (including, sadly, the Macarena which still manages to get people to dance for some strange reason). Then after 2 countdowns (the slightly inebriated folks couldn’t seem to agree on the time), the New Year was marked by the same inebriated folks setting off some rather dangerous looking but mildly entertaining fireworks. We turned in shortly thereafter as we had aspirations of snorkeling the next morning.

On New Years Day, we were awoken by the sounds of people still partying into the morning. The revelers were finally halted by a large rainstorm, which sadly turned up the water and made snorkeling impossible for that morning (as well as the fact that the snorkeling boat crew was mysteriously absent from work early New Years morning) So, given that nothing else was open, Mike and I went to the fancy hotel and splurged on the all you can eat breakfast buffet, where we paced ourselves through a large feast of mounds of bacon, croissants, omelettes, more bacon, fruit, etc. It was wonderful. The rest of the day was a lazy day spent poolside with Mike and Shannon.

The following day we were finally able to get in some amazing snorkeling in the Ocean. I love seeing fish in their natural habitats, along with coral and other cool things of the ocean.

Having completed what we came for, we headed home over the next couple of days, arriving back in Malawi and stopping for pizza at the base of Mulange, the largest mountain in Malawi. We then met up with the other girls who had gone to Zambia, and we swapped stories for a while. All in all it was a great trip to the coast and a great way to bring in the new year.

Part 3: Leaving Malawi again

Once we got back from Mozambique, I still had a few days to say goodbye to old friends (and new ones I made) in Malawi. Some highlights:

- my boss got great pleasure from beating me at golf (it might have been the first time that happened) It seems my first round was a fluke, as I proceeded to play two very bad but fun rounds of golf before I left.

- In the second round I played, the highlight was when we had to pause on the third hole to try and coax a snake out of a hole in the ground and kill it. I kept a good distance and never really did find out what was going on, but it involved burning grass, long sticks, probably a panga knife.

- Saw a driving school car with the words “Leaner driver” in bold letters on the back. I love the signs in this country.

- Had dinner and played more squash with Lars, a friend from Denmark. He always has a very direct way of speaking that never fails to crack me up. He’s frustrated that he can’t beat my boss at squash, because as he says “I am getting in better shape, but he is just getting older and fatter.” Hilarious.

- ending my Zomba time by taking in the sunset with some friends.

Anyhow, overall it was an amazing trip, that allowed me to recall many great memories of my time there, and allowed me to add some new memories to that list. Now it’s back to full speed at work, while I get to look forward to my next adventure: coming home for a visit in May to celebrate Mother’s Day, my sister’s birthday, and the marriage of one of my closest friends. If you’re in Canada and you’re reading this, I can’t wait to see you then. If you’re somewhere else in the world, let me know where and maybe I can come visit sometime in the next couple of years. One of many things I love about working here is that I have the time to take a break and check out part of the world every few months. I miss you all, and hope to see you soon, or talk to you sooner!