Beginning 2020

The new year started off with a bang!  I am very thankful that God has given me one very good friend here who is my age, has similar interests, enjoys adventure, and is a great buddy to go places with.  We decided to squeeze in a little vacation before going back to work in January, so we flew over to the nearby Z island.  It is still part of our country, but has a completely different culture and feel to it.  This is where we rang in the new year!

Beautiful doors throughout the Town

Old forts

View of the market through the fort tower

Rooftop lunch in the traditional stile

Church built on the location of a former slave
trade market - talk about a picture of redemption!

I found breadfruit!!!  At a pop-up night food market.

A few days at the beach where we could have meals over the ocean

Our places had dik-diks, rabbits, guinea fowl,
and chickens running around in the garden

We were on the west side, so we got to watch sunset every night

Happy New Year!  Fireworks on the beach!

That was quite a memorable way to ring in 2020!  I came back refreshed and energized for the new year ahead.

The new school year started very smoothly.  All my teachers came back for one more day of training before welcoming all the students back on the 6th of January.  How exciting to see them all again!  I am not kidding, they had all grown and changed in just 4 weeks.

A beautiful morning for starting a new school year

Even our brand new 3 year-olds joined us for morning assembly

Off to class they go!

Here is each class with their teachers:

Pre-Primary 2a (4 years old)

Pre-Primary 2b

Pre-Primary 3 (equivalent to kindergarten)

Standard 1

Standard 2

Standard 3

Standard 4

Standard 5

Standard 6

Standard 7

I'm also thankful for my church community.  Our pastor makes an effort to do special events with different groups.  In January he organized a trip for the young folks to go to a nearby national park.  It was a fun outing and good chance for us to bond and get to know each other better.

The young folks with Pastor :)

An up-close look at a water buck 

So many giraffe at this park!

 

They guys left us for a few minutes and came back to find
us on top of the bus.  We couldn't resist!

Selfies are universal :)

I hosted my first girls' night with friends from all around the world - Germany, England, US, and TZ. One of the many joys of living internationally! The theme of the night was trying new things, and fortunately they were all very adventurous.  You can see our beet crust pizza in the picture.  Yummy!

Pizza was followed by a variety of interesting fruits that I found at the market.  One of them was said to be a pomelo, but it made our lips and tongues plump up and tingle.  Needless to say, we won't be trying that fruit again!

Another fun event that took place at the beginning of February was an inaugural trails festival.  I am so glad my friend knew about it because it was right up my alley!  It was a weekend of camping on the western slopes of the mountain with various mountain biking and trail running events taking place throughout Saturday and Sunday.  The organizers had chosen the weekend a long time ago expecting it to be the dry season because it normally would be.  But this has been a crazy rainy year, so the trails were quite a bit muddier than they had hoped.  People still went for it and had a great, muddy time.  I opted for the opportunity to run 21k on the slopes of the mountain; that is not something most people get to do very often.
On Saturday we just hung out and enjoyed the views, food, and live music.  The rain cleared up for the afternoon, which gave us some spectacular views.

Food and drink vendors setup their tents and provided great
nourishment for us throughout the weekend

Overlooking the event "village"

The nearby lodge provided a salad bar that was completely
farm fresh and delicious.  I was so happy!

And our friend from church was there
who makes the best fresh smoothies! 
What more could you want at an event like this?

At night they lit the big bonfire

Plus a small campfire for just sitting around and chatting

In the middle of the night, the rain hit again.  I woke up to some drops falling on my sleeping bag.  We learned quickly that our tent wasn't quite water proof.  It wasn't terrible, so we survived.  I hoped it would stop by morning, but it didn't.  So Sunday morning, I geared up in a rain suit (fortunately I have friend that are more prepared than me and a gracious to loan me things) and loaded up with 30 other crazy runners to head up the mountain to our start line.

We entered into the national park

and then started from one of the picnic points
along the hiking route

Starting line!

Up, up we go!

Nearing Cathedral Point
Yes, I ran the whole thing in a rain suit

I couldn't help but share the funny comparison in the next two pictures.  Keep in mind that we are running the same event at the same time in the same conditions.  Talk about polar opposites!

The trail often looked like this, or even sometimes more like a river:

But the views were still spectacular

The finish!

I wasn't excited about the conditions in the beginning, but I ended up having the best time!  Somehow the cold, wind, and rain made it just that more of an adventure and a run I'll never forget.

Back at school, our U11 soccer teams were invited to a soccer tournament at the local international school last weekend.  It was an exciting event for them because it's not often that the younger teams get to compete with other schools.

Girls team warm-up

I had some younger students on the sidelines with me to cheer
on our teams!

Girls getting a pep talk from the coach before their
quarter-final match

In case you haven't seen 9 and 10 year old kids play soccer in a while, here's a little reminder of what it's like:

And they're easily distracted by monkeys jumping in trees...

Finally, just this past week at school there were a couple of precious moments that I had to capture.

One of our young students greeted me at the office as I was coming to work one morning and unlocking doors.  He proceeded to come into the office and take his position in the head teacher's chair like that's where he belonged.  Gotta love these kids!

Future Head Teacher

Then one day I was in my office taking care of some work, when suddenly King Gilgamesh was at my door. What a surprise!

This is actually one of my fabulous teachers.  His students were studying the Epic of Gilgamesh in their World History class, so he took the initiative to make it memorable.  The kids now call him King Gilgamesh.  I'm pretty sure some of the young ones might still think that he really is a king.  See why I say I have great teachers?

You can see, the year is off to a great start.  Now to see what the rest of the year will hold!