Send Money!

Since we've arrived the dollar has slowly been losing value against the Rand. It has now dipped below 7, meaning what was expensive (just about everything) is now more expensive. We are looking forward to a eating a lot of pasta and beans and rice.

There are a few things here that I've discovered so far that are a better value than the states -like joining a gym. So we did. I am counting on that by simply signing up I am getting in shape. After all the pasta, rice and beans, I'll need it.

(Just kidding about sending money - we are going to get the kids afterschool jobs to supplement.)

The Great Taco Story Continues

Good News -all Ortega products 75% off at Woolies. Bad news - this is because they are discontinuing them. They apparently weren't selling well - didn't they know we'd moved to town and are taco addicts? I snatched up as much as I could. Quince is going to have to up her spice tolerance as they only had Chipotle and Spice seasoning packets left. Sadly, Woolies does not sell the shells so we will have to continue to fork over the equivalent of $5.00/box at Pic N Pay for an inferior brand that are small and don't cook up well.

Lest you think we are the ugly Americans trying to recreate little America right here in South Africa (and you'd have plenty of reasons to think so given the recent posts about SodaStream and Wii), we are trying to find a South African meal to replace Friday night tacos. We had hoped to do something with boerevors - the famous South African sausage - but the kids haven't developed a taste for it yet. The search continues.

My Kinda Weather

We arrived 16 August. 16 August until 27 September - every day, sunny and gorgeous. Mid 70's to low 80's. No rain, no clouds. If this weren't the normal pattern, I'd be a little freaked out by thoughts of drought and scarce water. But since it is expected, I've been enjoying every day. I think my much improved mood confirms that I must suffer from a touch of whatever that lack of sunlight mood-crashing disorder is.

Despite the lack of rain, flowers are bursting out all over. Roses, and bougainvillea, and birds of paradise and bottle brushes and a zillion I don't know the names of. We have a jasmine-like bush right outside our kitchen window in a little courtyard that made our kitchen smell fantastic. When the breeze kicked up we'd get the little blossoms all over our kitchen.

Yesterday and today have broken the pattern and been overcast and chilly - everyone told us we'd have another "cold snap" before summer really comes on. The rains should come soon and that will really green things up and dampen down the dust.

All is right in the world, part 2

 As you are all aware, we have a bad seltzer water drinking problem in this household.  We hoped that our move to South Africa was going to be the change that would finally break this nasty habit, but as you can see below, no such luck.  There are many costs to seltzer drinking: monetary, environmental, and psychic.

We tried to stop, but in the short time we have been here, we quickly developed a 4 litre a day habit.

About 4 or so years ago, Matt and Jess introduced us to the Soda Club maker, preventing us from going broke, ruining the environment, and improving our self-esteem.  If only we could find soda club here in South Africa.  Low and behold, I was walking down the aisles of the Hyper PicNPay, which is a grocery store with a footprint the size of a small midwestern city, when I came across the SodaStream starter kit.  We picked up 2 extra 60L CO2 cylinders so we won't run out unexpectedly.    

With SodaStream we now can feel good about drinking seltzer.  All is well in the world...

First Visitor

Peter enjoying a beautiful Sunday morning in Jo'burg with a stack of homemade pancakes and real maple syrup.

Sorry campers, but Peter has won the award for first visitor to our house.  In case you were hoping to win this award, don't fret, there are many more awards to compete for: first family member to visit, longest visit, shortest visit, farthest traveled, most luggage lost in transit, first non-work trip, last visitor, most recent visitor, etc.  As you can see, with so many categories, everyone can be a winner!  Book now!

Father Daughter Dance

The Princess and the Frog holding court at the dance.

Quince and I went to a St. Teresa's Mercy School Father Daughter dance a couple of Friday nights ago.   The dance was for all students in the school from the young grades up to high school, but the majority of the girls were pre-teens.  We had a dinner choice of hot dogs and pizza, soft drinks, beer and wine.  There was a raffle and the DJs gave prizes to the girls and dads (best dancers).  Surprisingly, I didn't win any prizes despite my energetic efforts on the dance floor.  

Quince and Jesus

Quince came home and stated that she was not nearly as good an artist as the other girls in her class. I said I found that very hard to believe because she is in fact so creative. But she insisted that the other girls were better at coloring. With a little more probing I discovered that what she meant was that they could bang out a color by number Jesus in no time flat without going outside the lines. My father is rolling over in his grave!!

All is Right in the World...

We brought our Nintendo Wii to South Africa.  The Wii itself is pretty light and compact, but it has a large amount of paraphernalia associated with it.  We have the Wii-fit board which weighs about 20 pounds and is about 30 by 18 inches big.  I brought the board to Johannesburg back in April on an earlier trip and it was waiting here when we arrived.

Upon our arrival, one of the first things that Alexander wanted to do was to get the Wii up and running.   Minutes after we arrived, we were furiously plugging things into this plug and that plug. Finally, the moment of truth arrived when I plugged the Wii power adaptor into the 220 volt power strip and WHAM! we lost power in all of the outlets in half of the house.  Obviously, not a good sign.   At this point I checked the fine print on the Wii power pack and found that it was 110 volt only! 

Alexander leans into a skate-boarding turn
playing Wii Fit.  Watch-out Tony Hawk!

I remembered that we had packed a small Radio Shack transformer that we had received as a wedding present 17 years earlier and had never used: it was still in its original packaging.  After resetting the circuit breakers I tried this out and it gave off a buzzing sound and a horrible smell--obviously we had exceeded its shelf life.  Our next step was to get a real transformer which I found down at the local hardware store.  It weighs about 25 pounds, but gives a solid assurance that it won't go up in a poof of smoke.  When I plugged the Wii into our new transformer, disappointment all around.

Maharesh Mahesh yogi Quince Bodhisattva shows her intense
concentration as she practices Wii Yoga in an attempt to levitate

They sell Wii in South Africa, but they many multiples the cost of one in the US.  We went to several different stores selling them and asked if we could purchase a replacement power pack, but no go.  I ended up going on to Amazon and locating a replacement power pack for the US model for $10 and had it shipped to Peter, our first US visitor.  Alexander kept track of Peter's arrival as if Santa Claus were coming to town.

Peter arrived this past Sunday and Caroline brought the new power pack back this Wednesday night.  Alexander immediately wanted to try it out and see if it worked.  I reminded him that we might have fried the entire unit when we tried to run it on twice its normal voltage.  Luckily, the Wii gods smiled upon us as the system is working great.  A big shout-out and props to Peter for being our mule!

I have since looked at all of our transformer power packs and only one other (my beard trimmer) is not 110-240 volt.  Even the tiny iPhone power packs are 110-240 volt.  I would have thought that with Wii being a global franchise, they would make these things to work anywhere, like our iPhones or ASUS laptop. What I have learned from this is that Wii's aren't like laptops.  Nintendo disks sold here won't work on our North American Wii either.  Nintendo has segmented its market to make piracy a little harder and also to have more control over pricing.  

The Blue Lion

Here is our little Peugot, aka the Blue Lion. It is small, zippy, fun to drive and gets great gas mileage - which is important because gas is expensive!! Both Bill and I have become relatively proficient at driving on the left side of road, from the passengar side of the car. The gear shift is on the left but that has been surprisingly easy to master. What took concentration was looking right, left, right before proceeding at an intersection, looking over our left shoulder to back up, and glancing up left, not right, to look in the rear view mirror.

So far the only trouble we've had was two nails in the left right tire. We went to get gas and asked the attendants to check oil, water and tires. The tire was very low on air and they discovered not one but two nails. But without even jacking the car up, they removed the nails and plugged the tires, and we were off - for less than $20. (the guy right next to us had a nail in his tire too - were we prey to some sort of a scam - we'll never know. . .)

My South African View - Quince's post

South Africa Is Great. We Went To The Zoo .We Saw Snakes And These Cute Squirrels And Bongos We got A Great View We got a photo . Also We Went to jo ' Burg day it was fun . We Have a great house it has great furniture and we have a flat screen TV.
I have a school on Friday it was spring Day it is a Thing  we     Celebrate we also Celebrate Something called children's  day       we have  not bin here for it . buy the way I  hope you lake my photo

Amazing Giraffes

Joburg Day Music Festival

Soon after our arrival, our new friend, Carmel, told us about Jo'burg Day - an outdoor day-long concert - and encouraged us to buy tickets. Not knowing what to expect, but up for anything, we bought our tickets (think TicketMaster - which also has outlets at grocery stores - how convenient).

After sitting in bumper to bumper traffic with all the other concert goers (an hour to go 5km), we arrived and parked in a big field, and met Carmel. Carmel led us through masses of people all with umbrellas, blankets and coolers to her family's spot, where they graciously set our a blanket for us, squeezing us in between the neighbors' blankets

We had joined 18,000 others to hear South Africa's hottest pop bands. From our vantage point, we could only see the bands on a huge screen, but when Locnville (think Jonas brothers) came on stage, Carmel's 13 year old daughter had to see them in person. So she and all the other kids in other group made their way right to the stage edge. Children are incredibly friendly and welcoming here, so she happily took Alexander along with her.

Bill getting some Castle Lager.
When in Joburg, do as Joburgers Do

After about 25 minutes, Carmel's son comes back and says he has lost Alexander. "Well, go find him, my boy," says Carmel, "and next time don't say you lost someone's son right in front of the parents." Carmel was not a bit worried, but we know Alexander has not even been in the country two weeks yet, and here he is lost amongs 18,000 others, all looking the same with umbrellas and coolers, and no clear organization. I knew it wouldn't take much to traumatize my dear boy, so we go in search.

Wouldn't you know when I go back to blanket to be there in case he returns by himself, there he is sitting, no worse for the wear. Thank God that boy inherited his father's sense of direction, because had it been me, I'd still be there wondering around the field. The only thing that seemed to be traumatized were his poor ears - deafened by the volume.

Bill's Birthday Cake

So Bill's birthday was last Monday. Quince and I had the whole day together (Alexander's first day of school) so I thought it would be fun to spend part of the day baking a cake. I emailed my mother to get the recipe for basic yellow layer cake and a simple icing - the cake I grew up with for birthdays. She dug out her cookbooks and recipes and finally found them,and quickly emailed them off to me.

But Bill requested a chocolate cake. So, onto Epicurious - and of course they are mostly complicated because who looks on epicurious for a basic chocolate cake recipe? But I managed to find one that didn't seem too complicated.

So, I made a grocery shopping list and off Quince and I went. Well, under the best of circumstances a shopping trip is more of a production here, partly because grocery stores are often part of a shopping centers, and many shopping centers have pay parking lots. So you get a ticket when you enter, and then after you are all done shopping you pay at a pay station and then use your ticket to get out of the parking lot. All paid parking lots then have parking lot security guys walking around keeping an eye on the cars. For the non-pay parking lots, there are also unofficial parking security guys around, whom you tip when you leave.

But mostly why it is more of a production to shop is that I don't know where anything is in the grocery stores here - and I don't know even if they have what I am looking for. What is great is that the stores have millions of employees around stocking shelves so it isn't hard to find someone to ask. However, that doesn't always work because 7 times out of 10 they can't understand my accent, so they send me off to an aisle across the store, or simply say they are out of stock.

Well, even knowing that I did not budget my time correctly at all. Quince and I spent hours - or what seemed like hours - in the store going up and down aisles and back again. I never did find Bakers chocolate, so I bought chocolate baking discs - a small bag of chocolates the size of a flattened chocolate chip. I found icing sugar - which I hoped was the same as confectioners sugar. No birthday candles. And I had to forego the "crunchy" part of the recipe since I couldn't find any heath bar or equivalant. I found a version of cake pans that looked like they might do the trick.

Home we went with bags loaded down. First task was to print out the recipe. But our printer decides not to work. Okay, so I just take the computer into the kitchen. Pre-heat the oven to 350 degress - except our oven is in celcius. Easy to look up - except we don't have wireless in our kitchen, so take the computer back to the dining room and look up the conversion (in case you need it 350Deg F = 177deg C).

Mix the dry ingredients - oops -turns out that we needed baking soda not baking powder. Back to the dining room with computer to lok up how to substitute using baking powder. Yes, you can, but was advised that it wasn't a very good subsitiuion. The person writing the conversion recommended going back to the store rather than use baking powder, but for the reasons above I was not about to do.

Time to melt the chocolate - little chocolate discs in grams, recipe in ounces So, you guessed it - back to the dining room for another conversion from ounces to grams. Okay, using a barely readable measuring cup I measure out 1/2 cup of water to melt with the chocolate, and have Quince stir. I am no professional, but it looks pretty watery to me. So, I dig up a better measuring cup and pour the watery chocolate into it - oh, I had added one and a half cups of water!! I had used up all the little discs, so what's to be done but turn up the heat and boil it down. At this point I am not very optimistic about this cake, but nothing to do but forge ahead.

Okay, what kind of recipe asks you to butter the pan, then put wax paper on the bottom, and then butter again? I don't know, but I am not taking any chances, so I dutifully follow these insane instructions. Do the final mixing, and realize that there isn't time to actually bake the cake before picking up Alexander from school. I turn off my pre-heated 177deg oven, and load Q into the car.

While at the school, another mom there who is American compliments me for being so brave to bake here so soon after my arrival. She says she hasn't baked yet because we are at high altitude and who knows what that does to baking times. This cake is doomed!!

But not to be deterred, I get home, reheat the oven, pour the batter into the two pans and slide them into the oven. I close the oven door - and it won't close. Turns out two cake pans won't fit on one shelf in our oven - and our oven only has one shelf. It is about 5:15pm - each layer is going to take 35 minutes to cook (or more given that we are at an altitude higher than Denver) and then has to cool before we icing it. But I am this far in, and so I cook them one at a time. Testing them as best I can with a thick skewer. The first one was a bit underdone, but I needed to get the second one in - so I cooked the next one a bit longer till I smelled burning - that was my sign to take it out. I peeled off the damn burnt wax paper and a 1/4 inch layer of cake.

Meanwhile Alexander is instructed to look up to see how many grams one pound of sugar is - it is 450grams in case you're interested. The bag of icing sugar is 500 grams. I can see no reason to save 50grams of icing sugar so I tell Alexander to pour the whole thing in. I can't be bothered to do the math to adjust all the other ingredients - I have given up any illusions of having an edible cake by this point.

So we have a nice dinner - that Bill had to help cook because I was so far behind in the cake process. I put the sad cake together, slather on the still cooling extra sweet icing, turn out the lights and bring out the candeless cake to the table. Bill good naturedly blows out the table candles, cuts and serves the cake.


The upshot - it was good enough for us all to have a piece and finish it - but no one asked for seconds. Hopefully by the time of Alexander's b-day in January I will have figured out a thing or two.

First Days of School for Quince and Alexander- Caroline's post

So much happening here and I keep getting very behind in my updates. But while it is fresh, I wanted to let you know that Quince and Alexander have had their first days of school.

First – Alexander. We have been to umpteen stores and back again to many of them to try to get everything required for his school. His uniform has about 1000 items – shirts, shorts, jersey (sweater), blazer, track suit, school hat, black speedo, school towel, school socks, black shoes, black sandals, lunch bag, tog bag (sports bag - Alexander called it a toggle bag), book satchel. And then there are all the clothes and equipment required for his sports. The cricket and hockey equipment cost more than many domestic workers might earn in a month. We had to buy him a cricket bat, ball, huge leg pads, a cup (which they call a box – and that required us to buy jockey underwear since the boy usually wears boxers – I’m not sure he would want me to share that all around), helmet, gloves with an inch of outer padding, white shorts, white shirt, white socks, cricket shoes. That is a lot of stuff – so, you also buy a big cricket bag on wheels so they can lug all that stuff around. (picture a golf bag on wheels)

Hockey – hockey stick, hockey ball, shin guards, special school hockey socks, black shorts, special school hockey shirt, gum guard (mouth guard). Thank goodness he can wear the same shoes for both, though he was lobbying hard for yet another pair of shoes. And then a lock for his locker.

Now we got all that stuff – but then of course, we bought a combination lock and the school requires a lock with a key (and then one must buy a school lanyard to put the key on). So back to the hardware store for that. We got the required mouth guard, but it was too big – so a return to the store to get a smaller one. The white socks said size 4-7 on the packaging, but wouldn’t you know when we opened them up they were 8-14 – back to the store. We bought the last pair of school hockey socks from the school swap shop- and those were used since they’d run out of new. Back to the uniform supply store only to learn they too are out of those socks. Poor boy will have to wear the same used pair day after day.

And for goodness sakes, who knew that a cricket bat had to be “knocked in”. One can do it oneself if you buy a mallet and over time spend about 8 hours knocking the wood to compress it. We are opting to take it back to the store and have a machine do it.

I know this must be boring to read, but it gives you a sense of how we are spending our days (and why I am not sending more regular updates.)


Quince fortunately was much easier – just a regular school uniform, with requisite satchel, lunch bag, and tog (which she calls her toga bag). Of course all hair accessories must be blue, black or white. And believe it or not, underwear must be blue or white. But when Quince saw Alexander come home after a day of shopping with me loaded down with sports equipment she was eager to know if she also needed to get a hockey stick. Alas, no. But we can sign her up for extra-curriculars like karate and ballet – so she too will need some gear.

So, Alexander’s first day was yesterday. First day for him, but really the first day of the 4th term – he will do 4th term of 5th grade and then begin 6th grade in January. He was understandably apprehensive but surprisingly also quite eager to begin school. I took him a bit early so we could get some questions answered, and buy a few remaining items at the Swop Shop (I’m not sure why they spell it swop instead of swap). The Deputy Headmistress asked another boy to buddy with him. I left him with a group of boys outside his classroom – Mr. van der Westhuizen’s room - try pronouncing that. He said a quick goodbye, no fuss, no muss – I guess the embarrassment of having one’s mom hanging around clearly outweighs the apprehension at being left a new school with a bunch of boys.

He had a great first and second day and he seemed to jump right in. They played hangman in Africaans class and he had some brilliant idea, which I didn't fully understand, to help his team play the system and win. He started Zulu yesterday, and said it is hard. They already have some big maths (yes, it does have an "s" on the end) and English test next week, similar he says to the MCAS. In his materials and technology class they will be building something out of legos which he is looking forward too.

His school runs from 7:40am-4:30pm - homework and sport are built into that, so that when he gets home, his homework is all done - yay!!

He likes hockey, and thinks he did pretty well at cricket. We will go to a school hockey match this Saturday - all boys get on a team, a, b, or c - but I'm not clear if Alexander will already be playing this Saturday. That would be hilarious if they put him on the field after only a couple days of practice.

He comes home with stories of what the other boys are telling him and how they joke and play around. The stories sound different to me than what he would tell me from Mission Hill, but I asked him if they are any different from 5th grade boys at home and he said no. In any case, he seems to be making friends quite easily. I am really proud of him!

Okay - Quince. Quince has been so so so eager to start school. The girls and teacher were so incredibly sweet and kind to her when we went on the tour that she couldn't wait to go back. She had a cubby and desk and little pocket thing that hangs on the back of her chair to hold her school books (blank notebooks all of which we had to cover with contact paper over the break.)

The schoolwork is quite traditional - write a word three times to learn how to spell it, workbook gamey kinds of things for math. Homework every night - lord help us. Quince got some spelling homework over the break and she was in tears getting through it, and in fact didn't finish it all before her first day of school, which made her feel very guilty (her words).

Yesterday, it took her about 1 1/2 hours to get through what should have been 1/2 hour of homework had she focused and not complained and yelled and cried. Poor girl - she would have done so well at the Waldorf school here but it is just too far from where we live.

Both morning I've dropped her off the girls have been eager to play with her. When I went to pick her up yesterday she was sitting on the bench with 5 other girls.
She and Bill will go to the father daughter dance this Friday night - we'll report on that!

First Days of School

Monday was the first day of school for Alexander at Pridwin Preparatory School and Tuesday (today) was Quince's first day at St. Teresa's Mercy School.  As you might be aware from earlier posts both are private schools with uniforms, which is a very new thing to us, but I can see it having its advantages. 

Here are some photos of the kids as they left on their first days in their uniforms and with all of their paraphernalia.

Alexander in his summer uniform with his lunch box, backpack, sports bag,
and cricket bag with his cricket bat sticking out.  

Quince packs a little bit lighter with only her
lunch box, backpack, and small duffel bag.

School is going well.  Alexander played field hockey on Monday and Cricket on Tuesday.  Quince will be able start swimming soon, but her after school program doesn't start for another couple of weeks.  

The school day starts much earlier than Mission Hill's 9:25 am.  Alexander and I arrived at Pridwin at 7:40 am this morning and I was into work a little after 8:00 am.   We are slowly adjusting by going to bed earlier and earlier.  

Two of the Big Five

We went to Pilanesberg Game Reserve which is a 250 kilometer (3 hour) drive from our house.  We stayed at the Manyane Resort in a chalet within the confines of the reserve.  The resort was nice and about 1/2 the price of other resorts in the area.  I don't know what we were missing (tennis, jet skis?), but Manyane had everything we needed.  The resort had chalets of different sizes and a campground, which was very inexpensive.  When we arrived, the grounds were populated by baboons and ververt monkeys, which got the kids excited after the long drive.  I can only just imagine the excitement of tent camping around the baboons.

The MacLeod/Hopkins in our Never Too Late Basketball shirts hanging out at the watering hole.

After checking in, we had two hours to go game viewing before the reserve closed for the night.  On this first trip we saw wildebeest, giraffe, hippos, zebras, and impala.  The hippos were definitely the highlight of the afternoon as we saw three of them in a waterhole surfacing and then hiding in the water.

Not one of the big five.

That evening over dinner we decided that we would wake-up early and get into the park around 6:30 am, when the reserve opened.  We took a route that skirted the boundary of the park and for the first 30 minutes we saw nothing but some ordinary looking birds and maybe some zebras.  We were all getting restless when we came across two rhinoceros grazing in the bush veldt.  This got everyone's heart going and we continued on that morning seeing more zebras, impalas, giraffe, wildebeests, a common mongoose, a troop of baboons, warthogs, and a solitary little steenbok.

Neither is this one.

After eating breakfast and checking out, we went on another drive through the reserve.  Alexander and Quince had both expressed being done with game viewing, so we suggested that we just drive through the park on our way out.   We didn't see many new animals on the way through the park, but we did run into three or four elephants right by the side of the road.  We were able to get quite close to them.  We happened to go by the same area about 20 minutes later and we did eventually locate the elephants deeper in the scrub, but thought how lucky were were to see them when we did.

I realize that I don't have any photos of the big five because I did video instead.  Once I edit the video to an appropriate length, I'll post it.  It will be short because there is only so much excitement in watching animals graze.