Easter Sunday

It's twenty past six on Easter Sunday evening and I've just finished clearing up after tea so I thought it seemed like time to share with the rest of the world what Easter's been like for me at BCS.

It' been very relaxed compared to last year. No MEng project and no BBC rehearsals here.

Good Friday was fun. I went to Thies in the morning with some others to do a little shopping. It was great to get off the compound. I found some biscuits which are a bit like custard creams. I'm eating some hazlenut flavoured ones right now, although they're not up to much; not even half as good as Aldi ones.

After lunch I did a little work on my current programming project before going to Bandia reserve for the afternoon. Bandia reserve is a nature reserve just down the road at which we ate for our end of term staff meal. Jacqui's family are here and Christine had some friends visiting so there was a large party of us wanting to go down and see what's there. We saw Rhinos, Giraffes, Gazelles, Impala, Warthogs and more; it was great.

That evening Bob and Dee invited a few of us round for a Senegalese meal at their house. They had invited the girl who cleans their house to come and cook a traditional meal for us and we all ate at a bowl on the floor.

During the day Bob and the kids had made little figurines to play out the passion in miniature. It was like a Christmas nativity scene but for Easter. They set it up outside their house on some of the large rocks and we got to see the taking down and burying of Jesus body.

Today we started with a sunrise service at 6:30 which was lovely followed by a wonderful breakfast together in one of the dorm lounges. I made fried potatoes and others brought eggs, sausages, crepes, waffles, fruit salad, bread, chocolate and more. It was lovely; a great was to celebrate Jesus' resurrection.

After breakfast I came home and fell asleep for two hours on the couch which was also wonderful. When I awoke I spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon reading John's gospel; something I'd been meaning to do for a while but not made much progress on. It was really great, especially today, to read through one of the gospel accounts in one sitting. It gives a real flavour of the intensity of Jesus ministry and the tension surrounding it; the constant threat of those who would have rid of him and the effort of a loving and gracious God to reveal himself to a stubborn, proud people unwilling to listen and unable to understand. John in particular gives real insight into the uniqueness of Jesus relationship with his 12 main disciples.

I finished reading just in time to go and join some others for volleyball in the gym which was a good laugh as usual.

My friends leave for the Gambia tomorrow without me. Hopefully I'll get some good rest here and use my time well. I need to sit down and work out what I want to get done and try and work out when to do what whilst leaving time for a break.

I'm looking forward to some Attaya tonight (Senegalese tea, very strong and very (very) sweet), I'll have to bring some home with me in the summer to make it for others.