Day old blog

I wrote this yesterday, but the internet didn't work. so I saved it and am posting it today. news since the post below - I spent the day at the beach today, and I just realized how close christmas is. it's totally not a big thing here, so every once in a while I see a chtristmas tree and realize it's just around the corner. weird. here's the rest of the news:

Today is graduation. I came into town early to get some "shopping" done before 11 when everything starts. These past few weeks have been busy, as usual. We had a couple great guest speakers, some fun excursions, and I went on my first outreach to the bush, and just have one thing to say – do NOT eat a lot of mangoes in a short period of time. I became intimately acquainted with one of the village latrines, and that is not a fun experience. It’s really funny in the bush because there are kids who have never seen a white person before, and some are terrified! I made 3 kids cry by smiling at them. Haha! You go to bed with the entire village around the perimeter of your tents, staring, and when you wake up – oop! There’s the whole village STILL staring! Haha. Oh man. It’s also rainy season now, so we had a nice little afternoon torrential downpour that flooded all our tents, and made cozy waterbeds for us all that night.
Tuesday we leave for our 3 week out reach. I am on a team that is traveling all around the province of Cabo Delgado going from village to village. I was excited about it at first, but now after last weekend, I’m a little nervous. I didn’t have a pleasant first village experience, but I’m sure it’ll be great. We’re gone for a week, come back to Iris for Christmas which I’m excited about, and then head out again for another week. The other teams will be away in Nampula and Zambezia, but the ones staying in Pemba and our team will get to be here with the kids.
It’s strange seeing the end of this trip get closer. People who aren’t staying for the outreach have already started leaving, and the thought of leaving my housemates has us all a bit emotional when we stop and think about it.

Last night a group of us went out to eat, and then decided it was the perfect opportunity to jump in the ocean. Definitely one of the highlights of this trip, I think. No children, no floaty stuff because it was high tide, thousands of stars. Ahh. I love living in Africa. (I wonder how much snow we have at home….)

Still no elephant sightings, but I’ll let you know after outreach.