we wait...

...and in the mean time Tommy is adjusting to being at home and I am adjusting to being at work. The English summer is really not summer- Tom says its like winter - probably more like Autumn. We're enjoying catching up with everyone but miss our Gateway 'family' and are jealous of everyone else being in or on the way to Africa!! Still the timing is not our decision and we will keep trusting....and hoping....and praying....that we will hear something definate soon.....

We're off to London this weekend to mark my 30th birthday later this month so planning on having some fun here while we can!

Sarah

We're back!

We made it back to England yesterday. Thanks Natalie for the lift to the airport! We had to say our last goodbyes to Sam and Natalie in Dallas airport and then board the plane as a family of four! Our family suddenly seems very small, after living in community! We have made it to Essex (Sarah's mum's house) so far and will probably go home tomorrow. Its great having time to recover and we're looking forward to seeing Amy (Sarah's sister) when she flies back from Romania tonight. Uncle Sam has been promptly replaced by 'Nanny, Nanny, Nanny', Joshua who only infrequently puts two words together said 'look, Nanny' earlier. The boys are adjusting to being back and have been telling Nanny and Grandad all about 'America' (as if the base was all of it!)

We only slept about 4 hours on the plane so are still trying to catch up before resuming normal life. We'll let you know what that looks like once we've worked it out!

Sarah. (who is now on the same time zone so happy to accept phone calls in addition to any other means of communication! ;-) )

preparing to go home

We leave tomorrow night so I have had a little think about out time here and have concluded that...

We will miss
-fab friends we have met here
-having Uncle Sam with us all the time
-swimming outside every day (this is what Tom said)
-not having to cook (some of the time anyway) and wash up
-meeting green lizards and other interesting creatures
-big fridges with ice dispensers!

We look forward to
-seeing our family and friends (wooohoooo)
-being able to walk everywhere
-catching up on sleep
-not having to walk round the dorm to get to the bathroom or kitchen
-Tom and Joshua actually sitting down at mealtimes and eating
-having time to process the last month
-playing Bob toys (this is what Tom said when i asked him!)
-recycling
-finding some earings after losing one firefighting and one life-saving!

Sarah

I got a Cicada

After hearing these things making a huge racket in the trees around and about I finally managed to get a picture of the Cicada.

The shell in the background is the shell they live in before breaking out of the back of it, shedding the skin and becoming the beautiful creature you can see in the foreground. This is just an annual example but others are famous for having a life cycle of either 11 years or 17 years apparently with a vast number appearing periodically. They make a particularly unique sound with a long lasting rattle that rises in pitch.

For the last week we have been in a different classroom for the BST and we got this picture of a nest literally right outside over the boardwalk:


Tommy

Floating on prayers...

We finally had our pool test this evening and I think we can both say that it was a very fun experience. The treading water was no problem at all - we both felt completely confident to do it and managed being in the water the whole time with no problems at all. We did all of the drills without lifejackets except when they were part of the drill and feel acutely aware of all the prayers that have been said on our behalf over the last two months.



We had to do a variety of different things:

• jump in with life jacket and then swim 20m
• tread water
• get into liferaft from poolside
• throw the sea anchor
• get into the liferaft from the water
• put on a gumby suit in less than 2 minutes (the big red sea survival wetsuits)
• jump in in the gumby suit
• form a string of people in the suits and manouver around while joined together
• get in to the liferaft in the gumby suits (hilarious!)
• turn over the liferaft after it had capsized (also good fun)

The good news is that we now have a five year Basic Safety Training certificate from the US Coast Guards meaning we could get a job anywhere in the world on a tug boat, a fishing boat, a container ship... (just a shame Sarah gets seasick!)

We followed up with an all you can eat Pizza meal at CiCi's where we pigged out a bit too much after all of the exertion. We have our last 3 hours tomorrow for debrief and people start leaving straight after.

We will miss all of the people on the course and hope to meet up with them again soon on the Africa Mercy.

Tommy and Sarah