Rounding up!

So here we are back in the UK to beautiful autumn weather! It has been good to have the blog and nearly 1000 photographs to remind us of the adventure and to reassure us that it wasn't a dream! You can see a selection of them here:http://www.panoramio.com/user/793436

To round up our adventure then...
On Thursday, we went with Anselme to Nairobi to do a few errands - despatching Elizabeth's samples and trying to pick up bits and pieces to bring back. We found it really hard to find things that would mean as much here as they looked in Kenya!

Anselme had investigated the timetable of a lecturer at Tangaza theological college in Nairobi - Fr Rinaldo Ronzani. He is writing a series of books about the sacraments/ pastoral liturgy so his work was of great interest to Kathryn who is working on Christian Initiation for an essay an hopes to explore it more deeply over coming months (years!) and is involved in pastoral liturgy at home. There was only time for a short conversation but it was nonetheless valuable - and he was kind enough to give her a book from the series.

Into Nairobi for the errands and resistance to going into the Catholic bookshop next to the Basilica crumbled. Space and weight were fortunately constraining factors!

We had a quiet afternoon - mainly concerned with getting everything back into the rucksacks to carry home! We didn't have that much more than we brought - but then had the bags full when we arrived... With a lot of huffing and puffing we got everything in before heading for prayer and supper and a video: "Animals are beautiful people" about animal behaviour in Southern Africa.

Friday dawned and the realisation that the end of our visit was in sight... Another quick trip to Nairobi to pick up flowers for the Sisters who had been so very hospitable and kind - interesting to note that it is probably easier to buy Kenyan flowers in the UK than in Kenya! We went for lunch to the Formation House before heading for the airport with Anselme.

The rest is just journey home - the flight to Dubai - the long night when we must have been the only two people to be unable to sleep there because we were too cold! Happily, the Emirates airline offers a meal to people with long stop-overs so at 6am we availed ourselves of croissants and rolls - though could have had noodles and stew had we been able to face it at that time of day!

Keith was at the airport to meet us and the journey to Eastleigh was uneventful... though tiredness kicked in pretty quickly after the washing and evening meal had been sorted out! Still, a bit of a rest and Bilbo will be ready to look forward to his next big journey - to the Holy Land on 20 October! Watch this space!