Happy Saint Patrick's and Good Craic with Friends

Susan took this to commemorate the occasion!

 Yes this is my two hundredth blog post! I'm not sure what to say on such a momentous occasion so best not to say anything! I can't believe that I have written so many times and just be thankful that I didn't start a daily blog. I have just had a quick look at the statistics and 1,281 people read my blog last month and since I started in July 2011, 32,687 people have looked at Fiona in Borneo which all seems amazing as the majority are people I don't know. Most of the people reading the blog at the moment are either from United Kingdom or Malaysia but last year the majority were from the United States and there are very few faithful followers left in France now.

Susan and John with the invisible Mount Kinabalu behind

So enough of boring statistics and on to the news of the week. On Friday evening my school friend, Susan Woods and her partner John arrived in Sabah. We started out in Primary 1 together at the age of 5, continued on to secondary school  and  have kept in touch on and off for over 50 years but haven't seen each other since Mummy died about 6 years ago. Susan is an intrepid traveller who likes to escape the Northern Ireland winters by travelling around continents that specialise in sunshine and warmth during the dreaded months. Our lives have been quite different in many ways and there seem to be lots of gaps about each other's lives that we don't know so there has been lots of chat, craic (an Irish expression) and reminiscing about school days. John also went to the same school but was that much  older than us so I didn't remember him, although his baby brother Colin was in our class. I do think it is one of those amazing parts of the brain that we can remember so much from certain times of our lives. Susan remembers all sorts of things from Friends' School Lisburn days that again has opened up rooms of memories that have been locked away.

Another amazing sunset

 Since starting that post we have headed up the mountain to Ranau and Slagon Homestay and Susan is identifying places that she has seen and read about in my blog. As always it is lovely seeing people up here and we went for a lovely walk in the padi fields yesterday. I feel like crying when the children still recognise me.

Threshing the rice in Ranau

By complete coincidence Anna and Mike White plus parents are staying here tonight too. So since it is St Patrick's day we are going to celebrate our Irish heritage with a bottle of Jameson's and some guinness. Happy St Patrick's Day!!
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