Happy New Year (belated)!!

Let me begin with apologies for being almost a month...a MONTH....behind in my blog updates. Shocking behaviour. Secondly, I just received all my Christmas post today! The second Christmas was greatly appreciated. I really thank you for sending cards and presents, you have how nice the warm feeling inside is when you receive a big pile of mail. I kept myself very busy over the holidays and thus managed to mostly avoid homesickness. Natalie (ODI in Uganda and SOAS buddy) stayed with me over the holidays - it was great to have someone else in the house and someone as lovely as Natalie helped too!

So here are some edited highlights of my holidays...

Christmas
Now, I technically spent my Christmas day with the Ambassador. Sounds good doesn't it? Laurie (who works at the British Embassy) was my host and since the Ambassador and the Deputy Ambassador were out of the country, she was the default Ambassador for Christmas. She had 3 friends visiting from UK so with myself and Natalie, there were 6 of us girlies for Christmas day. We had a candlelight service at church on Christmas Eve and then a service on Christmas day. The whole process of preparing for the Christmas services was great for forming more of a community at church and I really enjoyed getting involved. So, we spent the day at Laurie's eating and chatting and eating and chatting...until Judy and her visitor joined us in the evening when we did more eating and chatting! It was a very relaxed day surrounded by great people and great food (including Frederick the turkey who had been running round the garden days earlier) - making the emotional phonecall home much easier. I did miss Christmas at home, but I didn't expect it to be the same so new traditions were made!

Boxing Day
Natalie and I headed to Akagera National Park in the east of Rwanda with Laurie and the girlies. Now, this was Epi's first trip out of Kigali. She was well prepared with fresh water in the radiator, topped up with oil and blown up tyres. Only issue was the fuel. Epi is so small and cute that she can only take half a tank of petrol at once, otherwise she chokes. This was plenty to get us to Akagera (2 hour drive) but ended up limiting the driving around the park. She coped very well with the terrain apart from one little mudbath for those pushing her out of the mud at one point. We stayed in the Akagera Game Lodge which is really nice - there is a pic of the view from the swimming pool in the album below. Animals we saw included hippos (inlcuding a HUGE yawn!!), baboons, blue monkeys, zebras, impala and giraffe. Aparently there are crocodiles too but the boat was slightly too small and scary for the boat ride to see them.

New Years
Bujumbura!! (that's Burundi's capital) This city is great. It is right on Lake Tanginyika and surrounded by mountains in Congo and Burundi on either side. The roads have serious, i mean serious, potholes. One of our taxis actually got stuck in one at one point. The market is bigger than Kigali and the restaurants are almost London standard - all very surprising considering it is only just coming out of civil war. We spent most of the time sleeping, swimming, sunbathing and eating. Although slightly bizarre to come back from New Years with a tan instead of frostbite.

Then, it was back to work. That part is not so easy to do. But I am determined to work hard and do my best in this job. It can still be pretty slow with things to do which brings the further temptation to sit back and do nothing...but i am determined not to get into that cycle. Bring on 2008!

Now for some New Years resolutions:

1. get to work on time in the morning - thats 7am, not 7:30 or 7:20.
2. phone friends & family more
3. read more intellectual things to make myself cleverer
4. get married (my colleague's helpful suggestion)

I wish you all a thoroughly blessed 2008, you are in my prayers xx