April 16 "Stellar Saturn and Cool Constellations"

The name of the game (unfortunately) for Easter Retreat was waking up early. Ugh. A game drive left at 6:30 am, so I dragged myself out of bed for it, thinking when else am I going to get to go? One of the pickup trucks that our group drove to Nsobe had been turned into a safari vehicle with seats in the truck bed (better than the matolas, of course!), so the Schuschunkterhintzes and most of the kids ended up going on the morning drive, while a bunch of adults went birding. I’ll take the game drive any day, even if it is with all kids! We probably scared away most of the game since the kids were all playing telephone, that game with whispering. My contribution was stinky skunks stunk up the toaster and they all thought that was hilarious. J We did see several types of antelope though: eland (they’re HUGE—I think the biggest antelope in the world), sable (a gorgeous dark brown with curved antlers), roan (lighter than sable and less majestic), hartebeest (their horns are shaped like a heart if you look from the front), waterbuck (I think that the one’s here have faces that look like koala bears), impala, puku, and kudu. Back at the campsite, several monkeys were running through (that’s common), and I saw a monkey paging through a Bible left on a picnic table. J He was scared off (since they steal everything before I got a picture though!).

After the game drive, we had breakfast and shower time before the adults did Bible study and the kids did Sunday school (on Saturday). T and I were in charge of Sunday School, which was fine by me. We did a Palm Sunday themed one (since it’s tomorrow). The kids were kept busy with the Bible reading, acting out the account, playing a board game with questions about Palm Sunday, singing “Our God is an Awesome God” with a verse I made up for Palm Sunday, and making glass vases with a tissue paper and glue concoction in which they collected palm branches from the campsite. It was a very busy, fun, productive, and educational hour and a half! Our kids were aged 5 to 14 and I think they all loved it! At least they said so!

After that, I decided to journal and read by the pool (it was too cold for swimming, yes I know that sounds mean coming from Africa, but the water was freezing!), but that plan was quickly thwarted as the kids all jumped in the pool and my books got all wet! I was entertained watching them play in the water though. A, the 8 year old girl, asked me about 100 questions about what I was reading so we chatted a bit, and J, the 13 year old boy told me I’m illegal in 51 (communist) countries because of my cross tattoo. Kids are great. J

Lots of small talk and getting to know all the new people occurred over the next few hours. Lunch was eaten and then it was time for the relay races. They put us all into four teams, and I am proud to say I was the captain for the Jiggly Jellybeans. J We won the egg carrying contest, and lost the “bunny” sack race by just a hare (ahahahah, I’m so funny), completely failed at the watermelon seed spitting contest, came in second with the “egg” toss, and did alright at constructing a pyramid but then lost because the person at the top had to crack and eat a whole hardboiled egg at the top. No one on our team liked eggs. So, we didn’t win overall, but had lots of fun! After those fun and games, several of us ended up playing volleyball. Many of you know of my amazing volleyball skills (NOT!) but I held my own. J Our team was mostly adults who were competitive, while the other team was all current or ex volleyball players, so I was happy that we held our own and had to play all 5 games to only lose the third one by a few. Definitely not usually that competitive with volleyball! But then again, I never play!

I relaxed after the fun and games by reading before the afternoon game drive. This one ended up being all adults, and my animal spotting skills which I had been proud of in the morning with the kids were put to shame with the avid adult spotters on this trip. Oh well. We did see a large variety of antelope again. Bigger herds and more often, but the same ones as the morning. PM gave the devotion when we got back, and dinner of chicken and rice was followed. They also served these tiny rolls that everyone was eating and kept disappearing at my table the night before, and tonight they placed the whole basket on our table. J Dessert was yummy brownies. I haven’t had many baked goods here; they’ve been soooo good this weekend. After dinner (and chatting about the earth’s orbit around the sun, of all things), PB had set up his telescope and was showing the constellations to all. The full moon was the following night, so it was super bright, and neat to see the craters on the moon, too. Plus, in the southern hemisphere, you see the rabbit in the moon instead of the man in the moon. I saw the Southern cross, Orion’s belt and sword, and Gemini. But mostly they were just pretty to look at overall. The “grooviest” part (stealing the term from JH) was that Saturn (my favorite planet, going back to my fourth grade science project!) was able to be seen tonight, and through the telescope, I could actually see the rings around it and two of its moons, too! Some more campfire chats and real s’mores (someone had brought the fixings from the States!) were had, but I was so pooped that I was in bed by 10 pm. Apparently camping tires me out!