Christmas Catch-up

 HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!!

As part of my extremely flexible new year’s resolutions I’m vowing to be a little more succinct and concise with my writing and as such am doing a quick holiday catch-up in the much favoured  written form of the slacker - the list!

As a pre-cursor to my next blog update I’m gonna try and get something off on Tuesday as I’m off to Uganda for the East African Speech and Language Conference 2012 (fancy sounding I know!) from Wednesday through to Monday. It’ll have some info of a proper Christmas/New Year miracle, a project I’m trying to get going and my plans for my last month here (time flies!).

Soooo here’s my last 3 weeks or so bundled into one easy package:

Highlights

1. Safari - Saw everything could’ve asked for and more! Plus camping out was lovely.

2. Wasabi - Weird eclectic reestaurant in Moshi (near Kilimanjaro) did Japanese food!

3. Feeling of sand under foot / Being submerged in water

4. Stone Town - Lovely rustic seaside town where you can lose yourself in the back alleys shopping around. Like Mombasa but nicer for my money

5. Breeze - Not commonly seen in Kisumu!

6. Stars - With no pollution across most of the locations on holiday (Safari, Zanzibar beaches) the stars were simply beautiful

7. Seafood - Makes a lovely change from the one and only fish available in Kisumu.

8. Learning to relax - I find it pretty hard to switch off and managed it a fair bit during beach time in Zanzibar. Mission success.

Lowlights

1. Long journeys being sat on my arse (24 hours on 2 buses in 36 hours for example)

2. Crazy expensive compared to Kenya

3. Hotel shower -  pretty laughable how little pressure there was and we ended up sitting on the floor underneath the tap doing some form of new fangled shower yoga

4. Vomiting; Other people - on the ferries and on the buses. Top prize goes to the elderly lady who vomited every 30 minutes or so non-stop for an entire 11 hour bus journey into a carrier bag and refused to get off the bus at the break stop to change her bag.

5. Tsetse/spider bite -  Itchy hot swollen foot for days and $80 doctor’s bill

6. Missing my family for Christmas

7. An alternative Christmas - was lovely being in the sun on a beach having BBQ etc.. but wasn’t exactly “Christmassy” for me!

I know I’ve said it a lot but a million thanks for all those who have supported me, sent me some kind words or visited my blog to read up on what I’m up to here and in general what’s happening SLT-wise in Kenya. 

Huge hugs,

Jon x

jonathanmlfagan@gmail.com

Top 3 songs played on Itunes shuffle whilst writing this:

1. Walk on the wild side - Lou Reed

2. Dragging me down - Inspiral Carpets

2. Bliss - Muse