So you say it's your birthday?

Well, I'm a little late on this one - the internet hasn't been working well this week. November 16th was Ruth's birthday; work's been really crazy lately so I thought the best thing we could do would be to force her to relax. When she woke up Tanya had cooked a wonderful breakfast of crepes with mountains of fresh fruit and whipped cream, and then we kidnapped her and took her to the Hadramout Hotel, where we spent the rest of the morning swimming and snorkelling. We then whiled away the afternoon sunbathing on the dock with fresh lime juice and a few good books. It was a gorgeous day for it; now that it's winter the temperature in Mukalla has dropped to a comfy thirty degrees.




And, I bought her a window. I'm aware that this may seem strange to you, so here's the scoop: Yemeni architecture can really be quite stunning, and one of the things they're fond of here is putting these stained glass creations over every window - well, at least in the north, and you can see an example peeking through the flowers in the picture below. Down here in the south we don't get it as much, but Ruth really likes them and she had mentioned that it would be neat to have one just to hang on the wall as artwork. Also I smuggled that blanket and another one like it back from Socotra without her knowing, so she was surprised.














All in all the day went very well and we're all feeling quite relaxed on the dawn of another week.