Life on the Africa Mercy

I thought it would be good to tell all of you a little more about life on the ship. If you want to feel like you are part of my experience here I have a few suggestions for you to try. 1. Replace all the bedroom doors in your house with curtains 2. Go to bed when you are really tired, have someone tear open the curtain 3 hours after you fall asleep and have them say, "oh, sorry, were you sleeping?" 3. Place a vacuum with the motor running in every room in your house, leave the motor running 24 hours a day 4. Invite 50 people over to your house, serve them breakfast at 0630-0730, lunch at 1200-1:00, and dinner at 5:00-6:30pm every day. Tell them they starve if they do not show up at these times. 5. Practice fire drills with your neighbors once a week. Make sure the fire drill is during the heat of the day in the afternoon. Gather everyone together in a central location, make sure everyone stays outside until everyone is accounted for. 6. Live out of 2 suit cases for 8 months Taking all that into consideration, I would not trade being here. I love it! The ship is fantastic. The air conditioner has only gone out twice since I have been here. The food it very good actually. We eat rice, rice, rice, pork chops, rice, beef, rice, chicken, rice, lamb (I don't eat the lamb), rice, tacos, rice, fruit, rice, vegetables, rice, fish ( I don't eat the fish), and more rice. I eat peanut butter almost every day, but that is because I like it. I did panic for a few weeks because we ran out of peanut butter when the supplies did not arrive from Texas and Holland, but we have a great stock of peanut butter once again. There is a wonderful ship shop and snack bar on board. It is open limited hours, but I have diet Coke and Pepsi whenever I want it. I don't know if I dare disclose the fact that we also have the only Starbucks in Africa on board the ship. For the coffee drinkers having a Starbucks here is amazing, but I don't drink coffee, so it is really no big deal to me. Rumor has it the owner of Starbucks has a link with Mercy Ships, so he donates the products to the ship and the missionaries on the ship pay a small, small price for the drinks. Any one up for a mission trip to join me in Africa, you don't have to give up your coffee. There is an internet cafe on the ship, thus I am able to write to all of you. And we have a few public areas where people can gather and play games, talk, or watch TV. There is an academy on board for the children. The grades taught are preschool through 12th grade. There are 50 children spanning the ages of infant to 17 years old that attend the school. The school follows the American and British school systems. The kids have all the normal classes, even gym class. They use they United Nations field, which borders our dock for their gym classes. Basically, I live in a small community, sort of like Rupert and Paul Idaho! My commute to work is great too, no traffic at all. I thought my 6 minute commute in New Hampshire was great! Well, I hope all of you are well. I will write more later, I have so much to tell you!