The rest of the holiday

So I will try to catch you all up on what has been going on for the past two weeks (and supplement the guest blog post that I hope you all enjoyed ☺). I apologize if this comes out as a list of “we did this, then this, then this” I will do my best to avoid that but it might be tricky to fit it all in!
The last few days in Cape Town continued to be incredible. We lucked out and had beautiful weather on our last day, which was when we drove down the Cape of Good Hope. We got to see African penguins (too funny!) and miles and miles of gorgeous coastline. We hiked to the lighthouse at the tip of cape point, and it was absolutely spectacular. We ended the trip with one last ridiculous night out, full of far too much dancing and after about an hour of sleep, we got back on the bus for another long but uneventful trip back to Windhoek.
I met my parents in Windhoek (yay!!!) and after a night in there we headed to a cat reserve. We did cheetah and leopard tracking, which was absolutely amazing (and which my dad already mentioned… kind of) and we had these spectacular rooms with windows that looked out across a plain full of animals.
After two days we went up to Etosha, Namibia’s biggest national park, and saw tons of animals, as you might have gathered. I will let the guest blog do the talking there.
My parents got to come see my house in Uis and we spent a couple days hanging out (they wanted to fix everything in my house) and hiking to see the cave paintings nearby. It was fun to get to show them my school and my town, as well as see a side of Namibia that they might not have gotten to if we had just kept hopping from gorgeous lodge to gorgeous lodge. We also spent a couple of days in Swakopmund, which was fun since I have obviously told them lots and lots about it! On the way out of Swakop, we did a boat tour which was pretty entertaining. My mom and I had a full-grown male seal sit on our laps and we got to see dolphins playing in the water. Then we headed south and visited a national park where we got to see the red dunes that you will see lots of pictures of if you find any book about Namibia. We ran into some of my friends in both Swakop and Soussesvlei and my parents got a kick out of meeting them.
We headed back up to Windhoek where I bade goodbye to my parents and said hello to my entire group who had re-convened for mid-service. This whole past weekend I have been having sessions with the group and getting ready to go back to teaching. We also got to have some fun-- we had a big braai with live music and lots of friends on Saturday night, which was definitely the highlight of the weekend.
I got back to Uis last night, sad after many goodbyes and wishing I was more ready to start teaching. Today I get to just get ready for classes and settle back in to my routine, which is a bit different now that I have a new roommate (I promise to tell you more about her as I learn more, for now her name is either Megan or Maggie, she is from Swakopmund, likes singing and seems incredibly nice). I hope everyone enjoyed the month of May as much as I did!