Beach trips

I got to take the boys to the beach a couple of times, with some other Mums and kids too. There's a beach about 45 mins from the ship, and it was so lovely to get off the ship and let the kids play outside in the sand and water. They're both gradually getting more used to the sea, although being rainy season it is a little rougher than usual.

Sadly, this beach (Cece beach) was washed away a week ago by a swamp that overflowed on a particularly rainy day, and is now the mouth of a river.... :-( The poor people who owned the beach had their new building destroyed, and their chairs and umbrellas washed away as well as a load of other stuff. Very sad.

Preschool summer program

These are pictures of the preschool Summer Program, which was run 4 mornings a week for a month. Daniel was one of about nine kids involved, and of course he had a blast. :-)

They did lots of fun stuff, including "on-ship field trips" - there are photos of the bakery, the bridge and the crew clinic.

The classroom pictured here is the preschool classroom - Daniel started preschool last week and loves it. His preschool teacher is not pictured here, but her name is 'Miss Elizabeth' and she's from the US. She's doing a great job with a very 'busy' class. There are 9 children from 8 countries, aged between 3 and nearly 5. Daniel and the other 2 younger ones, attend 9:00 - 12:00, Monday - Friday. The older kids start at 8:00.

One of Monrovia's many markets...

This weekend we went to a working farm about 30 miles from Monrovia, and got to see lots of animals.

Our neighbours

Daniel loving his new bike

Reading in our cabin

We Are Blogging

OK, so here we are - the Yangas family's very first blog posting. :-)
I figured this would be a good way to keep friends and family up to date with our news - especially photos - without clogging up everyone's inboxes.

It's been almost 4 weeks now since we made the M/V Africa Mercy our home, and we're settling in really well. The transition has been made all the smoother by the friendliness of the crew and the size of our cabin.... not to mention the fact that there is a cafe on board that serves REAL Starbucks coffee......

The boys are doing really well - Zaden of course doesn't really mind where we are as long as he can eat, and Daniel is fine now that he's feeling comfortable with the other kids on board. (And there are lots of them.)

I've been loving the whole job-share thing - Kevin and I are sharing a job in the Chaplaincy Department, working as a parent the other days. It's been great to have time to get to know some of the crew - we've been trying to spend some time in different departments on the ship, in order to connect with people, get a feel for what their job is like, make ourselves known, and help out at the same time.