Happy Halloween!

For a country where Halloween is not really celebrated the Hughes kids are doing all right!  We had a big Halloween party at our house last Friday and we invited both of the girls classes from school.  Lots of girls came and our whole compound of families also joined the fun.  Our "sponsor family", that has teenage kids were a huge help with the Haunted House, they came the night before and helped us set it up, then the night of the party they all had assignments...Kelly and Katie were tourguides, Greg was the crazy guy in the shower in our maid's quarters, our neighbor Matt hid behind a dummy Kelly had made and moved the dummy's hand, Annalise (sponsor family) was a creepy fortune teller, another girl, Nicole, was in our scullery area hitting a cup along the security bars (like in jail) and finally Luca, who is a crazy, athletic 13 year old would scare people in the maids quarters, then jump up, crawl along the high wall and drop down and scare them again.  I guess he scared his own mother pretty good!  I sadly didn't get any great Haunted House pictures because I was too busy with hostess duties.

We did a costume contest to win buckets of candy.

 Here is everyone waiting to see who the winners are.

The girl dressed as Audrey Hepburn won for one group, our lovely judges were Miss Jenny and Miss Tanya.

Our neighbor girls in homemade costumes, their Dad was busy for a week! Lots of spray paint  and paper mache!  Middle one is a viking and one on the right (Opal- the girl Charlie told me he is going to marry) is Marvin the Martian from Bugs Bunny.

Katie (aka Katniss-note bow on shoulder) and some of her classmates.

 The toilet paper mummy game was as popular as ever, one neighbor didn't make it to the party so it was suggested we should take all the extra toilet paper down and decorate her house....

The best little mummy!  Kelly is in the background wrapping up Luka. (the crazy wall climber)

We had tons of treats and were dog sitting this amazing dog Jake, here he is sleeping under the treat table, for those of you that knew Murphy & Casey they would have been jumping up onto the table for treats!  Jake had a run in with barbed wire while chasing a cat...he had stitches so the kids called him FrankenWeenie.

We handed out bags of assorted American candies that we had shipped in and the best line of the night was one girl held up her bag of candy to show her Dad when he came to pick her up and she said, "See, American!"  (In our experience so far, South Africans think America is very cool)

Event 2= Trick or Treating at the US Embassy

The Embassy rolled out the red carpet for the kids yesterday and turned offices into Haunted Houses and had many dressed up people handing out candy.  The kids LOVED it!

These are offices and conference rooms converted!  There was a weird setting on my camera so everything was black and white.

I think the inside of the embassy really looks like an Embassy Suites hotel...I liked the witch climbing up the stairs yesterday and I'm not sure if you can see it in the photo but they put bloody handprints on the glass elevator-it looked freaky with people inside!

Final event is tonight, at the American School they are doing a Trunk or Treat event.  Since they call car trunks a "boot" here, the event is called Boo in the Boot. The kids are very excited about it!

Happy Halloween!

Our Little House on the Prarie at Golden Gate National Park

The girls had a mid-term break for a few days and we packed up and headed for Golden Gate National Park, it is in the Free State Province, about 4 hours from our house.   Our neighbors had told us about this cool farmhouse you can rent inside the park.  It was set way back off the main road, between some beautiful hills.  We saw tons of animals on the road to the farmhouse. 

That's the farmhouse in the back, no neighbors here!

We unpacked and enjoyed checking out the cool house, it had a wood burning stove and cool antique furniture throughout.  

Katie in the farmhouse kitchen.  

Charlie plays dominoes with his sisters and LOVES it!

There were amazing hikes inside the park, this one was to Echo Ravine.

We loved hanging out in the cozy farmhouse at night, playing scrabble and reading stories, we cooked in the big "braii" area outside.  

Charlie running back to the house.

No heat, other than the stove but we discovered electric blankets and they kept us toasty in the night, although it was warm during the day, at night it was chilly due to the altitude.

After a big breakfast we headed to a Basuto Cultural Village and had low expectations because the last one we went to in Lesotho didn't have much to see, we were pleasantly surprised by all we could see and do in this village!

After we had "permission" to enter the village, Greg got to drink a traditional beer beverage with the Chief.  He wasn't looking for a take home bottle so I don't think it was that tasty!

Then Greg got dressed in traditional clothing of the Chief and Charlie was so excited to hold the spear.

In the hut of the "First Wife" I was dressed in traditional garb, the kids were laughing and saying I never would have made it due to the hot clothing, I would have melted if I had to wear them for a day, much less every day.  A Chief had 3 wives, the first was chosen by the community, then the first wife chose the second wife, then the Chief got to choose his third wife.  (Greg was not a fan of this thinking, he feels one wife is enough to handle!)  We also visited the medicine man, who the girls said looked like the guy in the "Thrift Shop" video, I sadly forgot to snap a picture, but he really did look like the video!

I was too chicken to ask the medicine man the question I really wanted to... I'm reading this amazing book called Apes and Ivory written in the 1950's by a South African woman who was the wife of the British Admiral assigned to Cape Town.  She had a chapter on the people of Lesotho and as recent as the 1950's human sacrifice was still occurring if the medicine man told you that was what you needed to do to solve your problems.  I hope that tradition been phased out!

Here is Katie grinding toasted corn, we got to taste it and it was pretty good!

There was great scenery and overlooks in the park, this one is of the view of the Drakensberg Mountains where we plan to go on a future trip.  This is Greg teaching the kids to yell, "The South Will Rise Again".  (that should make Papa Hughes proud)

After the village we went to a charming village of today, called Clarens.  It was a beautiful little town with a town square and a park in the center of town.  Lots of little shops and restaurants, here is the view from our dinner place where Brad Pitt and Prince Harry stayed when they came to Clarens.

On our final morning we all got to go for an amazing horse ride, all of us went even little Charlie who didn't like going downhill and we did a lot of ups and downs.  The freakiest part was when we rode to the top of ridge and the horses walked along that for a bit, you had to have a ton of faith in your surefooted horse!

 Coming down the ridge...Katie was in the lead, then me, then Kelly, Charlie, Greg.

Cowboy Charlie about to descend the last bit and cross the little river. 

It was a great trip with beautiful scenery and good adventures!  The Hughes family gives Golden Gate Highlands very high marks!

Festivals- A Spring Fair & Medieval Day

We have had some busy weekends, the girls had a big Spring Festival at their school, they were excited on Friday to see everything going up on the field, if you bought wristbands for 150 Rand ($15.00 US) they could go on all the rides.  Here is the field all set up with the rides.

In typical SA fashion, they had crazy death defying things kids could go on, here is Charlie going up the GIANT slide, it was freaky to watch him climb up!  They also had bungee jumping, bubble machines blowing bubbles into moonbounces, blow up hamster balls you could go in on the water.

Another view of the slide so you can appreciate how huge it was...

Greg and I got to go to a neat event at the German Ambassadors house, it was the 25th Anniversary of the Unification of Germany after the Berlin Wall came down.  The ambassador did a nice speech, we went through a receiving line (our Coast Guard training paid off), then we got to have some German beer and food.  We met a very nice couple that has kids the same age as our kids and we exchanged info.  Soon after they invited us to a Medieval Day at their church.  It was to celebrate Reformation Day in Germany.  We all had fun dressing up.

The kids loved the crazy games, Charlie got to Joust against a tin can knight on a zip line.

 Katie tried the blow darts-crazy!

Kelly & Katie tried the crazy pillowfight, we were glad neither of them fell off, we saw other kids fall off and start crying...it was a big drop and only some old pillows to land on!!

Then Charlie loved the knight swordfighting exhibition, Katie & Charlie even got to take a turn in the ring.

Good times had by all, we look forward to having our new German friends come see what American Halloween is like, we are gearing up for a big Halloween party for Kelly & Katie's classmates from the South African school.  We shipped in a bunch of American candy and we are planning a haunted house!