Olympic Gold & Happy Kids

I was planning to write about our compound Olympics which were held last weekend, but my neighbor also keeps a blog and she beat me to it...she also is an amazing photographer so please don't expect my future photos to be as amazing as hers!  Here is the link to see our compound Olympics..The event Dawn forgot to write about was the adult scooter race (which was Kelly's idea)  We have a good slope to our driveway and scooters are tricky on bricks, so our neighbor Matt took an epic wipeout which was captured on video, we plan to still laugh about it years from now when we meet up with their family, they are headed to Poland for a few years, but who knows where they will be down the road!

http://dawngreensides.blogspot.com/2015/06/jupiter-compound-olympics.html

Our buddies the Bodenhofers arrived safe & sound last night and we all had big grins at the airport!  We met them with a stuffed Dora the Explorer hanging on a stick & a big sign saying Dora Welcomes You to Africa. It is a family joke from a few years ago when Eric went on a rant making fun of poor Dora...

We took them to a cool restaurant called Carnivore where you try all different types of game meat.  Jake tried Zebra, Warthog, and a few other meats.  The best was at one point the guys were carving meat all around Eric and he was saying there was flying meat everywhere! (They slice it off long skewers right onto your plate)

Charlie, Jake & Katie trying zebra...

Our kids have not stopped smiling and laughing!  Charlie is in absolute heaven to have a big buddy here, he couldn't wait for him to wake up this morning!  We have a long list of places to take them, we can't wait!

Celebrating Youth Day with a Soccer Tournament for the Youth

From Wikipedia....
Youth Day on 16 June is a public holiday in South Africa and commemorates a protest which resulted in a wave of protests across the country known as the Soweto uprising of 1976. It came in response to multiple issues with the Bantu Education Act and the government edict in 1974 that Afrikaans be used as medium of instruction for certain subjects in black schools. The iconic picture of Hector Pieterson, a black schoolchild shot by the police, brought home to many people within and outside of South Africa the brutality of the Apartheid government.

Our friends church celebrates it with a soccer tournament for the youth of surrounding churches and we were lucky enough to join them for the day.  It was true soccer, kids playing in whatever clothes & shoes they were wearing for the day, one kid had only one shoe on?  Another you could see the soles of his shoes flapping when he ran.  They had great spirit and big smiles and didn't do too much arguing with at least one ref-Greg!

 Here is Greg doing the coin toss to start the game- a Five Rand Coin of course!

The entire group assembled to start the day!

Kelly and Katie are to the far left, they both played well, especially since they are rusty in soccer.  Sadly girls soccer is really not a sport here.  When we looked for options for them to play the only place we found was at the University of Pretoria where they would have had college age teammates.  

The big talk at the tournament was the quick departure of President Bashir of Sudan who left the African Union Meeting before they could hold him for his charges with the International Criminal Court.  He flew out of Waterkloof Air Force Base (which we can see from our street, Charlie and I like to walk down and watch the planes take off). The best comment I heard regarding the matter was "What would South Africa be like today if the world had not kept the pressure on to end apartheid?"  This has been quite a story which keeps South Africa in the news along with the FIFA case.  One person called into the local radio station and talked about how much fun it was to be in South Africa during the soccer World Cup and they said actually they think if anything South Africa should have paid more!

The girls are working hard on their exams and school work to get to mid term break when our friends the Bodenhofer's arrive from the States, much excitement here!

A Visit to Dullstroom

We got a chance to visit this fishing area called Dullstroom, our friends went out for the entire weekend and took Kelly along, then we met up with them for a night.  We stayed in cottages in the hills, when we first got there the owner drove us all to the top of his property in his cool Land Rover (we all packed in) then we got to hike down.

We think one of these old Land Rover Defenders would be so fun to drive around up in New Hampshire!

 It had a cute little town with shops, here is Charlie's favorite!  Greg and our friend Doug liked the whisky tasting shop!

 Katie got a "shot" of chocolate-in an edible chocolate glass!

We hiked to an old fort from the Anglo-Boer War, it was really just two round piles of rocks.

Our little cabin, very sweet!

 Greg and Charlie ran down to watch the train go past, Charlie loved smashing Rand coins (not pennies)!  It really felt like fall up here, leaves falling off trees, cool mornings & evenings.  We had a great dinner and fire at our friends cottage, then walked back down to our cottage, beautiful stars too!

The drive was about two hours, mostly highway, there are some scary areas in the middle where they have signs that tell you not to stop, they are highjacking hotspots, we followed their advice and kept motoring.

We also like seeing this sign...it says Wakefield, it might be hard to read

We hope to get to make another trip back to Dullstroom!