Heather is on her way to Shanghai and should be there within the next couple of hours. Two 7-hour flights to get there.

Heather may now be going to World Championships! Still keeping fingers crossed. It will be real when actually in the pool in Shanghai warming up.

Looks like Heather will be representing Mauritius at the Indian Ocean Island Games in Seychelles in August 2011.

Plans to go to Mauritius to compete at the winter championships in May 2011

Le Caudan waterfront

The Caudan waterfront was built by dragging dirt next to the harbor. This is a nice tourist attraction and they keep it very clean.

They often have entertainment in the circle with restaurants surrounding it on one side and the harbor on the other side.

There are some office buildings

There is a restaurant called Shooters (NOT Hooters) and a Pizza Hut in that corner. There are several Pizza Huts and lots of Kentucky Fried Chickens on the island.

View from the waterfront

Another view of the harbor

The litter box. For those of you who are not familiar with british english, it means garbage can. Here's another one translation: toilet = restroom.

The apartment on Dr. Sun Yat Sen St

A view of the living room

View of one side of the kitchen

Another view of the living room

The dining room/bedroom/office

The bedroom

This is a view from the apartment balcony. There is an elementary school across the street from us. Garbage trucks come by every morning and every evening to pick up the garbage. You can see Citadel (hill) in the background. Caroline's elementary school and secondary school are not far from there.

View of the street from the balcony of the apartment. Vendors come every morning with freshly harvested vegetables in their trucks and sell them on the side of the street. Apparently they were supposed to stop doing this the monday we left Mauritius but there were a few who still showed up.

Back home!!!

We made it back home after 3 flights of 6.5 hours, 7.5 hours, and 9 hours. We had a little over 2 hours at the Dubai airport and Heathrow in between flights; so a total of 27+ hours from the time we left Mauritius to the time we got to the Minneapolis airport. We were getting worried about missing our flight in London since we waited at the counter (system problem) for our boarding passes to get printed. Heather got sick once from Dubai to London; thought it was motion sickness. Then she got sick 5 more times from London to Minneapolis. We kept running out of bags. The lady across the aisle from us had a hard time eating her meals because she could see Heather getting sick and she could smell it too.
We were one of the first ones to get through passport control and I told Heather we would be the first ones to get our luggage since they were likely the last ones on (luggage guy had come looking for me on the plane asking for my luggage tags to make sure he had the right ones to get on the flight in London). We waited almost an hour before I decided the luggage was just not going to be there and I had to put a claim for our luggage. If you've ever been to the Heathrow airport you would probably know why the luggage did not make it at the last minute.
Sydney, Kayli, and Paul were waiting for us when we came out. To Heather's surprise, her friend Sarah was there too to welcome her home. We had to stop at Costco on the way home because Heather was craving a blueberry muffin for a loooong time.
We promiss to add pictures to the blog as we have time. We took about 4,000 pictures!!!! So, keep checking the blog for more stories and pictures.