Palm Sunday! Again, I went on the morning game drive. This time at 6 am….SB drove this time instead of DS, and we didn’t see many antelope today, so I was kind of bummed, but we ran into a herd of zebra before the end! Score! Yes, I saw them all over at South Luangwa, but it was neat to see them in another place. J SB did so well, that she took us on another short drive after the first one because we had some extra time.
Breakfast happened and then it was time for the Palm Sunday church service in the conference room. After they set it up, it looked a lot like a church actually. Unfortunately, T and I left our hymnals in America, so the singing at devotions and at church didn’t work so well…but it was nice worshipping with all these others in fellowship in Zambia.
After church, M, T and I went canoeing. Mr. D&D tried to hit us with a water balloon, but missed, so the three Schuschunckterhintzes spent awhile trying to obtain the water balloon by canoeing to it and getting it from the water and then getting Mr. D&D to come back down by the water and try hitting him with the balloon. Well, we missed, but it was still fun. J Next was a not so delicious lunch that T and I tried to walk off by going on another walk around the park. We were gone almost two hours! But, we ran into a few herds of sable, waterbuck, and bushbuck. There’s just something about seeing them so close to you while you’re walking instead of in a big vehicle. I also saw a monitor lizard run across the road. And, as there is a cattle ranch on the game ranch, too, there was a herd of cattle in the woods. It took T and I a second to figure out what they were, and I am not so proud to say that my first instinct upon seeing the white creatures was that they were unicorns…..oops. J I guess the unicorn starts with u from tutoring has been engrained in my head!
T and I decided 2 hours of physical activity wasn’t enough; right after we got back from our walk, we decided to play volleyball for an hour and a half! My team (same as yesterday) smoked the other team in 3 games. Then, we switched up teams a bit and played another game before I called it quits. The most memorable part of the game was a collision that took place between (surprise!) one of the JH’s and yours truly. From what I heard, it looked painful, and a few days later I’m a bit sore, but ok. I felt horrible when I found out that JH had a prosthetic hip! How horrible would that have been to mess that up upon first meeting him! But all is well, and I’m sure the Volleyball Collision of 2011 will be talked about for many Easter Retreats to come.
Next was devotion, given by the other JH, about how when we have God, we can never be shaken. It was adorable because he used little 5 year old J as part of his object lesson and literally shook him. J Dinner was delicious—fish and ribs, surprisingly! And this divine mousse. I was definitely on a sugar high after that! Several of us went on a night drive after that to see some nocturnal animals. We saw a bunch of antelope again, but the new animals we saw were a bush baby (like a tiny monkey with a furry tail), a duiker (mini antelope), and the elusive sitatunga! Nsobe game ranch gets its name from the sitatunga; nsobe is the local name for sitatunga. A sitatunga is a large antelope which hides completely underwater when it’s afraid. I guess they’re really rare to see! But no giraffe. L which everyone has been on the look out for all weekend. T and I went on a short night walk after the game drive, but turned around when we got freaked out by a herd of antelope all around us. Yes, they’re more scared of us than we are of them, but the chances that we are bigger than them was pretty slim. It was exhilarating to have them run around us, but kind of scary, too! But I like adventure. J We went back and joined the campfire for the evening before another early night. It was kind of crazy that I was the last one at the campfire and it was only 10:30, but that’s how things work in Africa!
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