Monday update

Today is Memorial Day & thus a public holiday. It's a day to remember all those, especially military personal, that have died protecting the country. We have had a fairly leisurely day, sleeping in a little & then going to the shops again. It really is quite fun going to the supermarkets as long as you don't convert all the prices to rands. That can be a little scary. We're re battling to find cold drink for Shaun & Kelly. There are no cordials or Oros equivalents - nothing that you can buy & then add water to. All cold drinks are sold ready to drink. This makes them really pricey. Kelly usually drinks a lot of water but I must admit the water here tastes strange but I guess we'll get used to it. We did find some good old Kool Aid & Tang. Saw Ceres fruit juice for about R18 a litre. We needed some presstik - it's called poster putty! Due to different names, packaging & generally just not knowing the shops, shopping is fairly time consuming - fortunately it's still a novelty.

I spent most of the afternoon ironing - not exactly my favourite job. I enquired about where I could have some ironing done & received a very strange look. Haven't quite worked out why. Probably if you tumble dry things you don't need to iron them. Had our favourite stuffed crust pizza delivered from Pizza Hut tonight - really good. From tomorrow I start cooking meals. The kitchen is equipped with a fairly basic selection of utensils & dishes so this might be a challenge. Another challenge is washing dishes. There is a double sink but no draining board/area. Presumably everything goes in the dishwasher. I can't remember if the houses are the same.

Yesterday we attended the Hunter's Glen Baptist church. According to the website it was meant to have an attendance of 14000. They were probably only about 200 to 300 people there so the church was fairly empty. This could have been because it was the Memorial Day weekend & people went away. It was a beautiful church with the most amazing stain glass windows. I don't think we'll be going back there. It was extremely conservative. We sang mainly hymns, some of which I don't think I've sung since I was a child at Bulwer Road. The congregation consisted of old people & young couples with small children - no people our age or youth. They managed to fit 2 baptism, communion, worship & the sermon into 1 hour. There was a fair bit of patriotism in the service but that's probably understandable seeing it was memorial weekend. On the way home we were discussing the service & Shaun who is usually not critical by nature summed it up when he said, " It was just plain wishy washy!"

Our air freighted goods apparently only arrived in Dallas yesterday. They will still take 48 hours to get though customs, 24 hours to be delivered & probably nothing would happen today as its a public holiday, so we only expect them at the end of the week. It is still raining quite a bit but even though its overcast most of the time, it's still quite light after 8:00pm.

Cheers for now.
Heather