All these things that I have done

I see, as is fairly typical, I stopped updating once I'd done my complaining :) In my defense, the wifi at the reserve was pretty slow so our photos didn't back up to the internet until we made it to Paris for the most part. We were talking in Dakar airport about how unusual it was that actually, if we'd had our phones stolen at that point, we would have lost really quite a lot of data - usually, it's very little.

I will do a proper entry when I get home with all the photos and details of our time at Fathala, but suffice it to say for the time being that it was a really wonderful holiday and I would wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone looking for somewhere peaceful and beautiful. Our luggage never turned up at the reserve, despite repeated contact by the reception desk with the airport but once we had a change of clothes, kindly run up in a very short time by an obliging Senegalese tailor, we actually managed fine. On our way back, we got to Dakar airport ahead of time and so decided to go via the left luggage area on the off chance and lo and behold! Our case, sat there waiting and probably had been for a week. It had lost it's tag, meaning that it hadn't been connected with our lost luggage report, description notwithstanding. Still, we found it, which was a relief as it had my favourite bras in and were able to sort out the details and take it with us on the next leg. It was also perfect timing because it meant that we could collect the other half of the malaria prescription from it just before we would have run out of tablets. It was a bit unnerving to collect it and then immediately check it in again, but it made it to Paris with us, where our two cases were one of the first ones out!

Paris was really lovely - we stayed in a beautiful apartment with some very friendly cats and also some lovely Canadians (<3, ailetoile and stevieg) and it was also very restful. Rather than do the museum thing, we alternated chilling in the apartment, with poke-walks and enjoying the ambience and architecture of Paris and actually, todays wander up to Notre Dame, followed by open top bus along the Champs Elysee made me think actually I'd quite like to go back again. Now, we just have to manage to get onto our plane home and off with luggage and then home to kittons!

Have just spent far too long fiddling with a new journal style on Dreamwidth. I'd forgotten how oddly absorbing tinkering with CSS could be. It turned out to be just the level of engagement I was up for this afternoon, given that I am full of cold and feeling lazy.

Tomorrow, I will have to snap out of my lethargy to get things done because we're actually only 6 days away from our exciting adventure holiday! We're going to be spending seven days in Senegal, staying on a wildlife reserve where you can walk with the lions(!) and then flying to Paris where we're sharing an apartment with elyssa and stevieg over Christmas! I felt so inspired by the experience of winter sun on our Caribbean trip that we just sort of decided to go for this. It'll be the first time I've ever visited Africa and I think you could reasonably describe me as hella excited :) I have no idea what the net connection is likely to be like, but I'll try to post the odd update while we're away.

So now I just have to get through the last few days of term. Fortunately, I won't have to do too much in terms of teaching as we wind down, but given how coldy I feel at the moment, I probably couldn't cope if I did have to so that's just as well! Roll on next Friday!