Visitors!!

Sarah here...

Just wanted to apologize and say sorry its been so long since we updated you all! Believe it or not, we've actually been really busy. I'll start off by saying Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! We definitely had a great Holiday season and hope you did too. As most of you know, some of our friends from home visited. Meg and Seth arrived on December 16th in Arusha, Tanzania where we were waiting to meet them. It was a little nerve wrecking to see two friends from home for the first time in 2 years standing in the middle of an African parking lot. After we hugged and had our initial "holy guacamole I can't believe you're here moment", we all returned to the hotel to eat. It felt like we had a billion things to talk about and stayed up pretty late the first night chatting. Surprisingly, we caught up pretty quickly. The next day we left for a 3 day safari in Tarangire Park, Ngoragora Crater, and Lake Manyara Park. It was so refreshing and WONDERFUL. The guides were great, the food was wonderful (nice change from Rwandan food), the hotels had HOT water and one even had Wi-Fi. We felt like we were living large for 3 days.

After the safari, we returned to Rwanda (via two different countries/airports) but surprisingly nothing went wrong! Their flight was a tiny bit late but it was no big deal since Jarod and I got to enjoy the airport Wi-Fi for a little bit longer. Then, we all headed to our friends house where we were staying. We all slept in a king size bed and shared a bathroom with no door. It was hilarious. Fortunately, there were no peep shows, we only ran out of hot water once, and the girls made the boys sleep in the middle! haha. It was great. In Kigali we visited the Genocide memorial (it was good for us to re-read everything after having lived here 2 years), craft stores, and ate some yummy yummy food.

We then headed North to Musanze where we hiked a volcano called Bisoke. It was a lot of fun. It was a pretty easy hike for Jarod and I because it was only about 3 hours and our hike out of here is about 1 1/2 hours-ish.  We really enjoyed it. The scenery at the top was beautiful! It was a crater lake. The temperature was 42 degree Fahrenheit. That was refreshing since we haven't seen temps like that in 2 years.

Then, we headed to our village. I realized how much I love our village because suddenly I felt this need to show it off very badly and I was just so proud of it. Unfortunately, due to timing they didn't get to see even half of it!! We visited our work and they of course saw our home but they didn't even get to see the town or an African Market. They didn't get to experience cooking outside and cooking everything from scratch. They did however, experience bucket baths, latrines :), and all lights being attached to your hand or head once the sun goes down. I wish so badly we could have spent more time here  but there's only so much you can squeeze into a 10 day visit.  On Christmas day we returned to Kigali to prepare for their departure the next day. Their initial flight was cancelled but they were quickly re-routed through another country and didn't end up missing a single connecting flight....so it was no biggie!! I was shocked at how perfectly the whole trip went since that usually isn't the case. Logistically speaking it was nearly perfect! We did have a few blips that were just hilarious. We had 3 flat tires on our 3 day safari. But he quickly changed them all and we were on our way. Then, on Christmas day there was a landslide that had the road blocked but we got right off the bus and walked past the slide where another bus was waiting to take us. As soon as we got going we had our 4th flat tire!!! I couldn't help but laugh because Jarod and I have not experienced a single flat tire in all of our time in Africa. I think Africa wanted to show a little of her naughty side but kept it pretty mild. We never missed a single thing nor were we late! yay. That's pretty magical for Africa.

All in all, it was a great trip. They got to see Africa and we got to see them.

oh yea...and they brought us 100 POUNDS of goodies. That's right people....ONE HUNDRED POUNDS. Thank you to all of our family and friends that contributed. It was amazing to get a little taste of home at Christmas time. We are loving all those goodies and eating them up. Zuba is also loving his goodies!

We have already posted the photos on our facebooks so check them out there....

I have 2 more blogs to post and will do so ASAP!

Sarah