Mishi Mishi

So much has happened since my last post it's difficult to know where to begin! I suuppose I have to start by saying how much I enjoyed having some of my family come out to visit at the start of December. We closed the hotel for 2 weeks and so I managed to have a little break from everything when they were here, almost! I also managed to get around to doing some of the day trips which I had been sending the guests on for months but had never been on myself. I can now safely say that all of our trips are well worth doing!
My favourite day that we spent together has to be the day we went island hopping! we were picked up from the beach here and first went to Prison Island, about 30mins by boat. We all swam and had some fruit on the beach before going to see the tortoises there. After a lunch of enormous pizzas we then got back on the boat and headed towards Bawe island, where some of us jumped out to do some snorkelling, which was absolutely fantastic. At one point I thought we weren't going to get my uncle John back on the boat, and he lost his sunglasses in the struggle to get him back aboard. I only mention this so I can then say that I managed to rescue them by diving doen and finding them amongst the coral! We then continued to a huge sand bank near to Stone Town where me and Babuu went for a run and others walked along, looking at the starfish and beautiful shells on the beach before returning on the boat accompanied by a wonderful sunset.
It made me so happy for them to come and especially for my Nan to see where I am living and the life that me Kristen and I are trying to build for ourselves, I would love for her to be able to return one day.
So you can imagine it was quite emotional for me when they left however I had little time to dwell as we had guests arriving literally minutes after they had left. That was the beginning of the madness! We were pretty much full for 3 weeks after they had left, and we had a really nice family of 22 stay for 2 nights, which was quite a squeeze! We had a great New Year's Eve here, with 14 guests as well as another 12 from outside who came for a bbq and show of drumming and dancing before some of us sat round a small fire on the beach into the early hours, I wasn't feeling so sprightly on New Year's morning for breakfast but it was definitely worth it! The picture is of the Ndowaro (Swordfish) that we had for the new years bbq, caught by one of the local fishermen, it was amazing and tasted as good as it looked as well!
So we are almost into February now and with us closing the hotel at the end of March for 2 months we are into the home straight of our first year. We will be working hard to ensure that we are a lot more prepared when we open in June than we were last year, and hopefully we won't have another power cut then as well.
But I have to admit that my thoughts are starting to turn to England. Kristen had to return to England at the beginning of November and I will not see here until I return in April and I have missed her terribly, it has been so hard at times being so far apart from each other, especially when I was working 17 hours a day and just feeling exhauusted! It will be an amzing couple of months as we will be getting married! April 24th will see me take another step towards proper adulthood! So in the 2 months I am back I will have a stag do, get married, have a honeymoon and celebrate my dad's 60th birthday and my 27th, I will need to come back to work for a rest after all that! In the meantime I have started running on the beach again after a 6 week break, I have 14 weeks to get in shape for our wedding pictures!!