Spoiled Rotten

One challenge of moving to a new place is making friends . For some reason, I guess being a relatively friendly person myself, I didn't fully anticipate how hard it would be to transition aquaintances into friends. In fact, this has nothing to do with South Africans per se, who are by and large extraordinarily friendly, just that breaking into existing friendship circles is difficult. So I go to these school events, for example, and even with the wine that I spoke of in my earlier post, it sometimes felt a little lonely as I have no real go-to people yet that I can hang with. All the work was on my side to break into existing clusters of friends to chat - exhausting. I reached my limit of this and decided to do something about it. So, last night we hosted our first margarita and guacamole happy hour for a bunch of Pridwin parents. (Also served as a fantastic excuse to buy the next wave of items to make our house nice - like pots and plants --I thought maybe I left that obsession behind in the States but it turns out it is just as fun here and whole new kinds of plants to learn about. ) All well and good, you are saying, but get to the Spoiled Rotten part. This was a party for about 12-14 people for a couple of hours - not dinner - just margaritas, wine and apps. Bill and I have plenty of experience entertaining and certainly could have pulled this off with no help. But then I asked myself why not get help? Why not ask our housekeeper to stay later and help -and it works for her too because she can earn some nice extra money. So, Trica did her usual cleaning of our house - which is one reason I am already spoiled beyond repair, then spruced up our outdoor living area, then she was sous -chef to my appetizer making. And then while I showered (despite all this help I still only had 20 minutes to get myself presentable - what is wrong with me?), she covered and moved all our apps out to the patio. While we were entertaining, she zipped the kitchen back to order and post-party, she cleared everything away and in a jiff everything was done. Can you imagine - I did not put one left-over away (of course, I found out later that most sadly ended in the trash), wash one glass, wipe one counter. Luxury beyond luxury! But as if this weren't enough, I had asked our gardener to come during the evening of the party to let people in and out of our security gate and watch their cars so nothing would happen to them. (I really will get to that blog on security). He then suggested that rather than come his normal day to do the yard work, he do the gardening the day of the party instead so the yard would look its best. And remember those pots and plants I mentioned before - suffice it to say I was not the one who actually potted them. (Efron also was very happy to have the extra work/money too as he sends it back home to Malawi). I am doing my best to keep my head on straight and to be ever so grateful for this luxurious help, and never become too used to it. In fact, as you can imagine, as nice as it is, coming from my solidly middle-class background, it is a little hard to justify having all this help. But, as more than one person has pointed out to us, with unemployment being so astronomically high in this country (some reports put it at 40%!), who are we to not employ people when we can afford it.