Holiday of a lifetime!

For the past 12 years, Ljilja, Sina (our friend from Finland) and I have been going on holiday together. We even managed to find ways to go on holiday during 2020 and covid rules changing every day. We have had a lot of fun adventures, but also just able to relax and enjoy movies and games and looooong discussions about our lives. We also usually celebrate all 3 of our birthdays on Ljilja's birthday in July as I am in June, and Sina in August... 

This year, with both Sina and I were turning 50, we wanted to go somewhere extra special. Sina has also travelled to over 90 countries, and originally she wanted to go somewhere new, but that is quite hard for her! She wanted to go to do an island holiday - and her first suggestion was Fiji! We looked at ticket prices and it was a hard NO from us. After that she thought about Seychelles, but again it looked expensive. She had already been to the Maldives for work, but as that actually looked like the best option price-wise, she was happy with the island holiday there as she had not done the "vacation" side of things there - just visiting projects for work. 

So, in the end we managed to get her "down" to go to the Maldives. We found some reasonable airline tickets ourselves via Doha (with a stopover on the way back) and Ljilja did a phenomenal job of contacting local travel agencies to see if we could get a deal on accommodation. We had decided on a resort near the capital called Kurumba. 

We would just get breakfast included and then go out for dinner, making it cheaper (and healthier!) than a full board/all inclusive option. We got a good deal through an agency in Bosnia, and were about to pay the deposit when Ljilja received another offer for the same exact booking from an agency in Serbia which was even cheaper!! Love it! (we found it it was cheaper in July as it is the "rainy season", but other than a 1 or 2 times of rain during the day, it really didn't bother us at all as it mostly fell at night). 

We stayed in two adjoining rooms upstairs in a condo with four rooms. We didn't have anyone downstairs for most of the time which was nice. It included a fun "outdoor/indoor" bathroom - so you could shower outside... or in the rain - which was a fun experience! 

Being on the top floor meant we had a lovely view from the windows/balcony:

And most of the creepy crawlies kept out of our rooms (which was helpful to those with a fear of creepy crawlies of which there were a few!) We did get to see lots of bats in the evenings and our friendly heron, which we nicknamed Harry the Heron, was always around: 

We had loungers (with our room numbers on!) on the beach which were sort of secluded as they were surrounded by trees, so we felt like we had our own private island getaway. Such a blessing! This is the view from the balcony towards "our" beach and our loungers are in between the trees! 

And this is the view along the beach! 

We mostly spent time at the beach, but did do a couple of snorkelling trips, which were amazing!! It was also lovely just to snorkle around our beach too! And we could also take out the kayaks for some good exercise: 

One of the reasons we chose this resort was that they had different themed restaurants, and one of them was THAI! Which happens to be the favourite food of all of us. We have usually managed to find a Thai restaurant in the places we go to on holiday - there is no real Thai food in Bosnia and it is expensive in Finland! We did go there 4 times during our stay and got to the know the staff, including the chef (from Thailand) and so when it was time to go, they even gave us a special send-off and insisted on taking pictures with us - so sweet! 

The whole time we were there we were all saying everyday, "Thank-you Lord that we get to experience this beautiful place!" There was one moment when I was in the sea at sunset and just looking at the bats flying around and seeing the sunset from the water and I was just praising the Lord for being able to experience this beauty. I am so glad that Sina wanted to go somewhere like that for her 50th, because it really was the crowning experience of my 50th jubilee celebrations! 

Tunisian Vacation

This is the 12th year that Sina, Ljilja and I have gone on our summer vacation together. After not being able to go far during Covid for 2 years, Ljilja and Sina really wanted to go to a "new" country. And as we were so busy with teams in the spring, we didn't really have the time to figure out all the details, so when we discovered a fantastic all-inclusive deal for Tunisia out of Sarajevo, we jumped at it. Tunisia is Sina's 86th new country (and Ljilja and my 46th!). We know we are still not out of the Covid woods yet, but other than wearing masks on the plane, it felt like we were.

We flew to Monastir and got taken to our hotel in Sousse. We mostly spent time there, but we did take a couple of tours - one to Sidi Bou Said, Carthage and Tunis and the other to Sousse. 

This is Sidi Bou Said - so beautiful: 

And Ljilja and Sina enjoying the view: 

They are known for their blue doors: 

It was very hot, so we mostly tried to find shade and something to drink! 

And unfortunately despite all our attempts to stay cool Sina managed to get sunstroke 😞 and so we missed the last stop of the tour (the Tunis old town/medina) keeping her cool, but it was still worth it for what we did get to see. (luckily she got over it pretty quickly, but it was definitely the lowlight of our holiday 😢 ) We got cleverer and went to the Sousse old town/medina in the latter part of the day so it was a bit cooler: 

We enjoyed that tour a little bit more: 

We were taken very good care of by the staff at the hotel. Here we are with "our" waiter, Monta. We couldn't get photos with all of the staff who treated us well, but you get the idea! 

But a good example was for Ljilja's birthday - they organised flowers and provided a cake! 

We got the chance to go to the "fancy" restaurant for a special dinner (we could go once during our stay so we chose her birthday) and they made our table even more special!! 

And all the waiters came in and sang to Ljilja with yet another cake! 

Here are Sina and I ready for watching one of their evening shows, and you can see the pool in the background: 

The shows were fun, dancing and also light and fire: 

And one night there was a "Fakir" show, and Sina was invited to take part... she was on stage the whole time with 5 other ladies and then each were used for different parts of the act as he showed his ability to withstand painful activities. Here is Sina standing on his head while he is facedown on broken glass! It  was pretty cool having her up there. He was pretty amazing... 

We didn't go to the shows every night, but also watched some movies and played games in our room, or headed to the nearest town of Port El Kantoui to get out of the resort for a bit. 

During the day we were either in the sea or the pool, and they had daily aquaerobics, here in the pool: 

But I actually prefered doing it in the sea: I spent a lot of time in the sea which was a great help to my shoulder, in fact it came along so much in the time in Tunisia, that I am so glad that we went there! 

One of the things that Sousse is known for is the beautiful sunrise which was at 5am in the morning... I hadn't woken up early enough the whole time we were there, and then the last morning, I woke up 1 minute before it was due!! Thank-you God! This is the view from our balcony:

And zooming in a bit later... so lovely! 

The whole holiday was a blessing from God, and we were so amazed to get such a good deal. We did book it early to get the early bird special, but even so... But it was only once we got there that we realised that these resorts haven't been working much the last two years and of course their usual customer base are the Russians. And they wouldn't be coming this year because of the war. So, it made sense that their prices would be very attractive (especially early on) to at least get some customers!

So, the whole time I was just amazed at all the blessings and then the last day's sunrise was like a little nod from God... blessing upon blessing! 

Montenegro Seminar

One of the organisations that we have been working with since 2008, is the Finnish organisation, Fida. We have a Child Sponsorship project through them where children are sponsored mostly from Finland to help them with school supplies, etc for their schooling. Previously, they had more funding from the Finnish Government and so held seminars every year for their partners in the Balkans. Since 2015, they have had a different way of funding their projects, and so these seminars didn't happen. 

Now, they have done a reorganisation, and so to help with some of those changes, they decided to have a seminar where we can learn altogether about the way things will be working from now on. It affects us, as there will be changes to the way that we will be doing the reporting in the future. It was great to be able to see some of the people we used to see each year again, and learn more about the new way of doing the reporting for our Child Sponsorship projects. 

The seminar was organised by our good friend, Sina, and as we were from three places in Bosnia Herzegovina, Kosovo and Albania, and Montenegro seemed to be a good place where we could all meet: 

Children's Week Workshop

The first week in October is called "Children's Week" and helps children remember their rights. The theme this year was "Together we can achieve anything" and we had a lot of fun with it! 

We usually do a workshop at the children's home, but because of Covid restrictions we are not allowed to take a lot of people in, so instead we organised it our place. Half of the children come from the Home and half come from our sponsorship project. 

When I was thinking about working together, I thought about the aspect of the puzzle - where you need each piece to make the whole puzzle come together. It is so important to have each unique piece making a contribution to the whole - and once we are altogether we are a beautiful picture.

So, we ended up doing activities based on puzzles and putting stuff together - so for instance we made a healthy peanut butter/honey/oat ball for our snack - each ingredient on its own is great, but together they make something even better... I loved the fact that even the snack was part of the message 🙂

I had so much fun working with our "new" (she arrived in January, so no longer quite so new) teammate, Käte, on bringing it all together. And we couldn't have done it without our wonderful volunteers.

The framed pictures say "Together we can achieve anything" and each puzzle piece was coloured in by a child, so we did it all together.  One went to the Home and one we will keep 🙂 Each child also decorated their own puzzle pieces to take home! A good reminder that together we can achieve anything, but also that they are all unique and special and make an important contribution to the whole,  just like the puzzle pieces!! 

Montenegro vacation

This year, our 11th year of taking vacations together, Sina, Ljilja and I decided to enjoy our neighbouring country, Montenegro. We started up in the beautiful northeast of the country, in the Durmitor mountains. We took a lovely hike around the "Black lake", which was beautiful, despite being caught in the rain: 

We also went to see the Tara canyon, which was equally lovely: 

We then headed to the southwest, nearer to the coast: and stayed near to Skadar Lake. One day we took a drive along the scenic route to the sea, and it reminded me a lot of Cape Town: 

We took a little boat trip on the lake, which was very special: 

Then we headed to the coast, just in time to celebrate someone's birthday: 

Sina and I managed to organise a cake and candles and surprise her, yay! 

We were staying near the city of Bar, so one night we enjoyed "Stari Bar" or "Old town Bar": 

This is me with my arty pic through the Arch of the aquaduct! 

One of the down sides of this whole lovely vacation was the fact that I was nursing an extremely sore shoulder and my pain medicine would run out in the middle of the night, so I would wake up take some more and then have to wait until it kicked in... 

But that actually turned into an advantage as I managed to see the moon over the sea in various different ways every night. We had a wonderful view over the sea which really helped! Here she is waxing on a cloudless night: 

And here she is full on a cloudy night, so beautiful: 

So even despite the sore shoulder putting a pall on the vacation, I did manage to see the advantage of it! We had a wonderful time as always otherwise. I read 11 books, we watched 10 movies together and played over 8 different types of games... All in all a relaxing holiday :) 

Korcula, Croatia 2019

 After the crazy busy schedule I have been keeping, it was time to take a week off and try and rest up before the rest of the craziness continues for the rest of the year. This year, Sina, Ljilja and I decided that it was the turn of the island of Korcula. This is why:

Above was our "local" beach - about 10 minutes walk. Below is another beach which we drove to one day: so beautiful:

 We also managed to go check out the town of Korcula for the day when it was a bit "cooler":

But, as unfortunately, Sina was actually sick for most of the time, we had to make do with this STUNNING view from our apartment balcony. To be honest, I quite enjoyed our quieter pace, and so, although I am sorry that Sina wasn't well, it all worked out... 

And of course I had to get a picture of the "beware of wild pigs" sign... we didn't see any though :( 

After a lovely week away, it was time to go back to reality and get ready for the Finns to arrive!! 

Italy/Slovenia trip

As I have some friends who rent out their house on the beach in Italy for a reasonable rate, Ljilja, Sina and I decided to go this year to Italy for our vacation. We worked out this is the 9th holiday we have taken together (7 years in a row in the summer and 2 times to South Africa!) For our jubilee 10th one, they are trying to get me to go to Morocco - we will see!

We started off in Tuscany. It was so beautiful there... just like in the paintings :)

 We saw some of the cities there too - here Sina and I are in Siena.

We then went to Francavilla al Mare, near Pescara, on the east coast of Italy. We soon discovered that this is where Italians go on holiday and we did not see many other foreign tourists. And we loved it for that reason! Here is some of the typical "fast food" pizza which was delicious!

The beach was long and sandy and there really weren't that many people... and I spent a lot of time in the water!!! The other two enjoyed the beach - Ljilja catching her tan, and Sina reading her book :)

We took one day to go to Rome... and the Vatican:

 And we managed to pack in quite a lot of things... the Spanish steps:

 Trevi Fountain:

Piazza Venecia:

The Pantheon:

And the Colosseum:

But the highlight of the day was when we tried to get into St Peter's Basilica and they wouldn't let Sina in as her shorts were too short (you have to cover your upper thighs and your shoulders). Ljilja tried to show them other people with short shorts and he wasn't having any of it "there are other entrances, you can try them, but you are not coming through here"... until Ljilja had a brainwave: Sina had two tops on, as the top one was a bit see-through, but pulling the vest underneath down made a lovely skirt and we got two thumbs-up from the previously grumpy guard: Here we are celebrating our victory: Luckily Sina could carry it off!!

We left the beach and headed to San Marino...

Where we enjoyed the lovely little country (the 3rd smallest in the world, after the Vatican and Monaco) and especially the fact that they have a series lifts up from the carparks at the bottom of the hill all the way up to the old town at the top (where you are on your own... but saving 20 flights of stairs made me very happy!)

We then went to Slovenia on the way back and enjoyed some walking in the mountains and some thermal baths  (yes we know how to do a holiday right!). Here is the lovely Bohinj lake:

We also stopped in Ljubljana to see some YWAMers there, but of course I forgot to get a picture of that... oh well.

All in all, as you can see, it was a fantastic and varied holiday. We did drive a LOT, but it was worth it! And here's to our next holiday/adventure wherever it may be...