Mary Poppins fans rejoice!

The girls put on their uniforms and decided they were dressed like Mary Poppins!  They departed early and had a good but challenging first day.  They are the cool American kids but they feel pretty clueless about lockers, lunch, where to sign up for clubs, etc.  We talk it all out after school but I'm sure happy for them the first day is over!  They had to have their hair up and back when they are in uniform (in case you don't recognize Katie!). 

Charlie and I should feel guilty, while the girls were struggling and Greg was working and driving the girls to and from school, we had a fabulous day at the Irene dairy farm, sort of like the Richardsons of South Africa (- the ice cream) my new friend Amy took is their and we had a great lunch and visits with the baby cows, loved seeing the herd walk right by us when it was time for them to be milked! 

We can't wait to go back and bring the girls for the tire swing they have there!

Giant zoo-with its own cablecar it's so big!

We hit the national zoo, right in downtown Pretoria, a depressed area but inside the gates it is amazing!!!

The ride costs 4 rand a ticket-40 cents!

We eat lunch next to the elephants and a very happy Katie!  She says this is the best part of Africa so far!

Cable car is amazing and takes us way high up to an amazing view of the city and to the great cats.

Kelly takes lots of lion photos for her friend Mason to convince her to come visit.

Lioness was hungry and knocking on the door for her food

We saw hippos, warthogs and porcupine which Charlie and I had just read about in his Africa abc book from the Story's!

Another scary sign, I have Kelly hold up four fingers because at times when she is on the loose we need to take cover as well!

Another amazing part was the 3 story bird cage probably as big as a football field we think our friend James would be in heaven!  

Dad & Charlie like the flamingos, we then find penguins, lemurs, snakes!

We are beat but can't wait for another visit to see the rest!

Not shopping at Farmland anymore!!

One of our favorite grocery stores at home was a little local place called Farmland.  A quick go-to meal was always their pre-made chicken parmesan.  I cooked dinner for the first time the past two nights.  The first night I made tacos and was happy to find everything except hard shell tacos and the only tortilla chips were made in Greece- not exactly Tostitos but still good!

Last night the kids and I walked to the grocery store at the corner and bought some stuff for dinner.  They had great fresh bread, fruits and vegetables and the also had pre-made breaded chicken.  We got back to our place and I warmed the chicken in the pan (we only have two burners-stove is across the hall in a big community kitchen) and put it on the fresh bread for the kids.  Katie had a few bites, Kelly had a bite and said, "Mom, this doesn't taste right".  To my horror I fed them raw chicken!!!  I guess they just bread the chicken and expect you to pan fry it at home.  So after a quick thorough cooking the chicken was edible and I'm happy to report that none of the kids are battling salmonella!  We had a good laugh about it at breakfast and Greg reminded the kids to be good to Mom (or else)!

It is a holiday here today, election day and I guess it can take hours to vote.  Good news for us is Greg (our driver) is home so we are heading to the zoo where the guidebook tells us it has a cable car and golf carts to drive around!

Getting ready for school!

We head to Saint Mary's for placement tests, tours, and uniforms! We walk past Katie taking her test and drinking cocoa!  Pretty nice huh?

Here are the girls in front of the big lawn that blooms with Jacarandas in the spring!

Charlie loves the playground and looks forward to school visits.

Girls are most excited about their tuck shop credit cards, they learned from Lorrie who went to school in SA that was her favorite memory, it is basically a snack shack on campus. They promise to buy Charlie lots of treats at the shop!

Greg and I are cracking up hearing all the uniform rules the girls will have, reminds us of our CG days! The best is the girls have to wear winter uniforms-sweaters, long sleeves, but we were sweating today!!!  The SA ladies kept telling us how cold it was and that their fingers were blue!  It was in the seventies today!!

A Fun Weekend with our New Sponsor Family

Charlie at one a zillion playgrounds!

We start our weekend at a market that we follow our social sponsors, a wonderful state department family that has taken on the challenge of showing us around.  They already took Greg to a bunch of places before we arrived, now they are showing us amazing places.  We start our day at a Farmers Market, lots of food and incredible handmade crafts.  The girls are happy that they have their own SA Rand to spend.  They buy presents from friends at home and some cool decorations for their new room.  They are thrilled to have a new friend, our sponsor family has a 13 year old daughter who they immediately loved hanging out with!
Every mall/restaurant we go to has a playground for Charlie, so he is in heaven!

We venture to the new(only) ice skating rink in Pretoria.  Charlie's rental skates still have the tissue paper stuffed inside!  It is in a mall and it is packed on Sat afternoon for public skate.  Crazy outfits on most kids because its warm outside!  The thing we notice most is there are no Dad/Mom skaters that actually know how to skate, the few that are out there are true beginners!  We are not in Boston anymore!  We grab some pamphlets for the hockey and figure skating programs so the kids can get back in their comfort zone.

The mall has this cool thing called PonyCycles and you pay 30 Rand ($3) to rent them for 15 minutes and the kids can tear around the mall.  Pretty funny to watch, Katie was bummed that all the bigger ones were checked out at the time, she is excited to try it on a future visit.

On Sunday after a world record morning mass (lots of singing for Greg) we head to an old Dutch plantation to hike and have lunch outside among the animals.  We see tons of Zebra, springboks, Guinea fowl and even try our first bird hide.  When I say we see zebra, they are wandering around next to where you are eating.   My only regret was forgetting my camera so we just have one picture from Greg's phone. We had a very long lunch (service is on Africa time, so there is no hurry to anything). We actually take bets on how long it will take the waiter to bring our ice creams for dessert...Doug was the winner at close to 16 minutes!!  So you can imagine how long the main course took! The nice thing is we just sat at a beautiful table under the shade of a big tree, watched animals, chatted and watched Charlie run back and forth from the playground which had a trampoline.  The girls also teach there new buddy, Annalise, how to do many different varieties of rainbow looms.  (which they have heard of in Africa too!)

Girls are heading to bed early as they have their placement test for the new school in the morning!

Wow!

We drive to our new house, which isn't ready yet, but it looks AMAZING!  This is our front door, we also meet our new neighbors who are a state dept family from New Mexico, they have 3 girls, the youngest is 4 and Charlie's first buddy.  They play spies and he is happy to have a friend, they also have a nice dog, so we can borrow her when we miss our pups! Charlie is thinking about where to put our basketball hoop that we shipped in the middle of the night, he says if we had a pool we could put it in there!

Playground in the middle of the mall and Charlie goes South African kid style and takes off his shoes, most of the kids we see around go barefoot-everywhere!

Greg has the day off so we drive by the girls school- very impressive grounds, and then we go check out the American Embassy, its funny the floor plan of the building looks like an Embassy Suites Hotel-I stayed at many of those in my consulting days.

After lunch at the mall and playground time for Charlie we head to the Rietvlei Nature Reserve which is about 15 minutes away...absolutely incredible!  Here is the sign on the way in...I wanted to have Kelly in the background since a 13 year old sometimes can be dangerous too! (not sure she liked my joke)

We see all kinds of antelope first, then there are a bunch of cars stopped and we see our first RHINO!! Incredible!

We round a corner to some zebra..right up by the road, so quiet you can hear them munching grass!
Charlie names him ZiZi!

We also stop at the picnic area where you are allowed to get out of your car and we hear a strange noise, Kelly says its a hippo and she is right...in the pond we see at least two but we think there are more.  The noises of the birds sound like a recorded CD that you hear at Brookstone- really beautiful.  Katie climbs the big tree, we hope she doesn't fall off over the electric fence and into the water or else she would be on the other side of the scary sign.  (see below)

This is the pond where the hippos live...

We drove out at sunset and found an amazing place that overlooked the whole area with a beautiful deck to enjoy the sunset.  They have a fabulous selection of South African foods on the menu, we plan to go back when we are feeling adventurous.  

Arrival!

Happy kids as we touch down in Africa, everyone can't wait to see Dad!  Here is Katie's smile on arrival.

Charlie says as we are getting off the plane, can we be in South Africa for today and see Dad then tomorrow can we go home and play with the Learys? So sweet! 

Charlie gives Dad the best hug ever and we also get to meet Tanya who is our social sponsor, she brings presents for all of us, Charlie gets a stuffed hippo that he names hobo and hobo sleeps with him at night!

We head to our nice guest house where Dad has made welcome signs and has balloons and flowers!

We get some nice hot showers and rest a bit.  Happy to be here and be together again!