good bye kenya

I'm sitting in the Nairobi airport waiting for our flight to Addis Ababa. It has been quite an emotional morning saying goodbye to our new friends here in Kenya. we have seen and experienced so much... time has gone far to quickly!
The past two days we have been really spoilt. On Thursday we took a 4 hour bus trip to Amboseli National park for a safari. We arrived midday at the lodge we were staying out to this incredible buffet lunch. It is amazing how nice some familiar food was. I didn't realize that i was missing western food. The lodge was amazing... totally not missionary roughing it. It was a mix of colonial English fare with touches of Masai decoration. All of the rooms had a view to the park and you could see elephants on the horizon!!! That afternoon at 4 we went out for two hours and saw lots of elephants with wee babies, wart hogs, gazelle, giraffes, hippo and lots of bird life. We didn't see any lions or cheetahs, but were told in the early morning safari the chances were higher, as the heat of the day was keeping them in the shade. That evening we had a group of Masai preform a couple of dances and Nathan was invited with one of the guys in our group to jump with them! Apparently the higher you can jump the more woman you will attract! Masai have no problem with polygamy! Thankfully Nathan couldn't jump as high as them, so I was safe! The night sky out there was so clear, and after the busy, noisy and polluted Nairobi the air was so good.
A few months ago Nathan and I went to Auckland zoo and i was so struck by how amazing the animals were and moved by the complexity of our Creator... but to see them in the wild really was something else. A very special experience. We went out again the next morning at 6.30 for 2 hours. This time we were very fortunate to see a pride of lions. After watching them for about 15minutes they started to walk toward the vans and walked right in front of them... so we had a very good view. we also had a clear view of the shy lady - Mt Kilimanjaro. It was magic!
There is much more to say, but i am running out of time again. we are looking forward to having some time by ourselves in Ethiopia and seeing some of the work being done there.
sending love. Rosey