During this school year, Simon, Max, and Lisa have been taking piano and guitar lessons. This week was the year end Recital Concert at Rosslyn.
Simon has been taking guitar lessons from Mr. Sanna. This was Simon's first year playing guitar and his instructor is impressed with how quickly he has learned the instrument. Simon has a real love of the classical style. Mr. Sanna is an exceptional guitarist so attending lessons was like a mini concert every week, as Simon played and Mr. Sanna accompanied. Simon's recital piece was plucking the melody for Jesus Loves Me. He had a beautiful sound and perfect beat. In the large auditorium it was a very impressive sound.
Max and Lisa played a duet for their Recital piece: Rondo in A Major by Schubert. Lisa has not taken lessons for decades. It was fun to relearn how to play and begin again to enjoy the stress relief that music can bring. However, to perform in front of people for the first time in 36 years was nether fun nor a stress reliever! In fact, Lisa has no recollection of the event -- Max says she played well.
Max and Simon have continued to work hard on the Rosslyn Swim Team. We have been very proud of their commitment. Their effort was especially evident in the last meet of the season; Both boys set records for Personal Best. We love watching them race, but mostly encourage them to beat their own time.
Max has worked at improving his butterfly stroke this year. This week he competed in the 50m Fly and was chosen to do the Fly as one of the legs of the Medley Relay.
Simon has steadily and improved his overall conditioning and competed against some much larger boys.
One of the boys' relay team members was unable to compete at the last moment so they found a replacement! Jon is a teacher at school and helps coach the swim team. He also competes in the "Open" category. He filled in on Max and Simon's team so that they would not have to "scratch" the Free Relay. Fun times!
Today is my birthday and my birthday wish was to see flamingos....... not 45 pink plastic ones on the lawn, but rather thousands of real ones on Lake Nakuru. Lake Nakuru is a soda lake about 2 hours north of Nairobi. Its alkaline environment means that it grows blue green algae in abundance -- the favourite food of pink Lesser Flamingos. The lake has had a population of up to 2.5 million flamingos. The numbers vary depending on the climate. During times of drought the lake dries up and the flamingos move to a more wet environment. During times of heavy rain the water becomes diluted and no longer has blue-green algae so the flamingos move in search of food.
Lake Nakuru National Park also boasts over 400 species of birds. Simon is our bird boy and we all took part in spotting the most interesting ones and looking them up in his book.
Besides flamingos, we saw Pelicans, Hamerkop, Egret, Kingfishers, Ring-necked Doves, Blacksmith Plovers, Crowned Plovers, Rollers, Hoopoe, Glossy Starlings, and Widowbirds.
The Park also has the usual selection of animals -- rhinocerous, giraffe, water buffalo, zebra, monkeys, baboon, gazelle, impala. And one thing that we did not expect to see was a tree-climbing lion. This is a very rare species of lion that likes to climb trees and rest in the shade. Climbing trees is not a usual feat of lions and a safari guide told us there are only 8 or 9 of these animals in the Park. We were very exited!!
During this school year, Simon, Max, and Lisa have been taking piano and guitar lessons. This week was the year end Recital Concert at Rosslyn.
