We successfully survived our first Christmas away from our families. It was made much easier by the company of good friends. We spent December 23-26th in Maseru. On Christmas Eve our friend Lee had a party for expats and some Peace Corps staff. We had wonderful food and a really good time. Christmas Day we hung around the house and relaxed. It was really nice to have a break after a long month of traveling back and forth between Maseru and Ha Sekake. It was also nice to have hot showers everyday. So many things we used to take for granted!

On the 28th Wes and I left for Cape Town. Cape Town is truly an amazing place. I was blown away by how much there is to do and how beautiful the city is. You can view the pictures from the trip here. (We are getting them up as fast as Wes edits them. Right now only the first day of our vacation is there, but more will be coming soon)

Steve Huff posted some of Wes’ pictures as one of his “Daily Inspiration” posts. Be sure to check it out here and to look at the rest of his site. There are some incredible articles and pictures from great photographers.

Tomorrow the schools are opening up again and we are getting back in the swing of things for our last six months in Lesotho. It feels strange to have so little time left. We are excited to have five people in the community who will now be working with us on our projects. This will allow us to accomplish much more and will increase the sustainability of our work. We have already seen an increase in the number of high school students who are involved in the youth programming at SMARTD. I am looking forward to all of the things we will be able to achieve together.