Whilst I took a break from revising I wanted to write this in Boyana .Wouldn’t accept password so went into my supergran addres.Never read blogs once on the net but couldn’t resist a look over them. Fascinating what you forget!!Nice to have permanent reminder - but in reading them I discovered that i Continue Reading »
tamara steversWell what do we know…?
Here I am again.. on my way ‘home’! 
…like a lifetime ago… yet so familiar …
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Here’s a belated entry from when we left Nairobi and headed to Mombasa…
We’ve now left Nairobi - took a 16hour overnight train on Friday to Mombasa, where we stayed with Julia’s cousin, Emma. On arriving there we had a 1/2hour stop at the house to have a shower (aka wash in a bucket of water) and were then hurried out for a walking tour of the town and coast, seeing Fort Jesus etc. Thinking we were then heading back to Emma’s house, we found ourselves at the pre-Birthday party get-together of the family of a 2 year old girl, who was the daughter of a friend of the family. Apparently Claire and I were the patrons of this party…unfortunately for them we were far too tired after our long journey and busy day to stick around for the party itself, and so after about 2 hours of sitting around, not really sure what we were supposed to be doing (we didn’t know at that point about the whole patron thing), we excused ourselves and went back to Emma’s to repack our bags ready for the 10 hour bus ride (leaving at 7am) to Dar es Salaam the next day.
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as i was talking to my mom this morning, i realized that i hadn’t updated this thing in a real long time, so here are some snippets:
a week and a half ago one of my students punched through one of the windows of the classroom next door to mine (long story) and ended up losing over 2 pints of blood. that’s a lot of blood. it was super scary and he has missed 6 days of school because of it.
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John Bridges
Auckland at Night
I can’t say that I slept particularly well what with the city traffic, Friday night revellers and jet lag, but I did stay in bed until 08h45. One look outside at the blue sky sparked me into action - and to define the day’s events.
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The discovery of kayak surfing
Actually, the S Africans call a kayak and paddle surf, so to them it was paddle surf surfing. Maybe just paddle surfing. This week has been just an awesome time. The highlight has probably been meeting some really great friends that I certainly plan on keeping in touch with, and hopefully might see again some day. Terran, Julie and Roger are among the nicest and most genuine people I’ve ever met, and without a doubt the coolest bible-thumpers around. Listening to them talk with such graciousness for everything they have, and just seeing how thankful they are for the people around them has really renewed my faith in the positives of organized religion (although Terran, a Pastor at Friends First church in Cape Town, assures me that the only thing ‘organized’ about his alternative Christian quasi-church is that the weekly service happens every week). Sue is just awesome, she’s so smart and outspoken, and I love talking to her because so much of what she says is something I sorta knew but never had the eloquence to put into words myself. I think she’s certainly found her calling as a writer. Steph is a riot, such a typical Londoner and proud of it too. There are no dull moments when Steph is around. Lots of other great people, too many to list, and
Sanje WoodsorrelI have wanted to go white water rafting for a long time, so I figured why not do it in New Zealand? It was so much freakin fun!! I totally loved it and can see why Tim did this for a living for so long. We rafted along the Rangitati river which runs right down the middle of the South Island. Rangitati means “river from the sky” and the name is immediately apparent once you see the water. It is the purest and clearest light blue I have ever seen in water before. The river is formed from the melting glaciers, which accounts (along with a large amount of minerals from the eroding rocks) for the color and the ICY coldness. We rafted through a couple Class 3 rapids to get warmed up before heading through two Class 5’s back to back. We got through the first one with no problems (we totally looked like pros) but the second one had some “carnage” as our guides called it. The raft in front of us got caught in the current and stopped, so we ran into them which caused our raft to turn 90 degrees on its side. The two people in the the front were thrown into the water and I got tossed into the back. I scrambled back to my post while the raft continued to charge between the rocks. We got one of the guys back in pretty quick, but the poor girl was tumbled in the rapids for a couple minutes before we could pull her back out again. She was slightly traumatized, but completely unharmed. To celebrate, we all jumped off a HUGE rock (maybe 50 feet?) into the FREEZING cold water before heading back to the lodge for yummy BBQ. They got some really great photos of our raft up on its side, but I didn’t feel like paying $40 for the CD, so you will just have to take me word for it
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As many tourist sights in Basel are located close to each other, the city is perfect for walking. A good start is following the road Tiergartenrain past the Zoologisher Garten, and into Arnold-Böcklin-Strasse. Continue to Schützenmattpark, a nice park where people walk their dogs, jog around the path, have picnic in the grass or relax on one of the benches, reading a good book.Â
Brad Frankel & Rich DarwinOk just a quickie…we’re back in Perth…arrived yesterday and had a much needed night out.
Started on a few bottles of wine, from the Southern region, then head out about 10ish….straight to ‘The Deen’, which is one of the must publicised venues. It wasnt that busy when we first arrived, but it was rammed within an hour…We left there about 2ish and popped over to a place called ‘Paramount’.
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