Yup... It's Another Update

Hi Everyone

Murray & I have just returned from another adventure to the shops. We shopped off at the Bank of America so we could apply for cheques & my debit card. Yesterday Murray wanted to pay for Shaun's car by doing an Internet transfer. We found it strange (or should I say different) that they don't do this. They wanted a cheque or 'check' as it's spelt here. Fortunately he had been issued with some temporary cheques which they were happy to accept. Our credit cards also arrived 2 days ago which is a great relief. We have not wanted to use our SA credit cards unless absolutely necessary so we have been working mainly with cash. I'm not used to carrying so much cash as I tended to use my credit card as much as possible in SA. On more than one occassions they've rung up my goods & I've suddenly wondered whether I had enough cash. Our credit & debit cards get posted to us - again different.

We did some more checking of cell phones this morning as things work so differently & we haven't had much help over the phone. Firstly we have to make sure the phone covers all the bands used here, in SA & ideally in the UK. We also have to make sure that the phones we choose a not 'locked' so that you can only use them on that network. We have to use T Mobile because they will give us contracts without a credit history. The phones must also be quad band. On top of this Shaun & Kelly have all sorts of other things that they think their phones should do. I'm the easy one. We have found out that T Mobile will only unlock quad band Nokia & Motorola phones after 30 days. Hopefully some dscisions can now be made.

We also went to several shops to try & buy a transformer so that I can use my SA sewing machine & overlocker. We were unsuccessful but we did get the name & address of a shop that definitely sells them. This will have to wait for another day. We had a fun experience going to 2 supermarkets that we hadn't been to before - 'Whole Foods' which sells a lot of organic food & generally food for the more health conscious person & 'Central Market' which is similiar but more like a market. The variety of fresh fruit & vegs was amazing & not too badly priced. The butchery sections were wonderful but a bit pricy. These 2 shops had been recommeded as people thought we might find some of the items there that we couldn't find in the normal supermarkets. They didn't really help in that regard but it was interesting.

Last Sunday we went back to Stonebriar Community Church in the pouring rain. The service was very different to the previous week. Their worship band was toned down & generally the service was more formal - we sang mainly hymns. They had the church's 60 voice choir singing - absolutely wonderful. Chuck Swindoll gave an a challenging but encouraging Father's Day sermon.We haven't decided yet whether we'll go back there tomorrow or try another church on the short list. Please pray that God will guide us to the right church.
Being part of a church, getting involved & getting to know peolpe will make such a difference to our settling in process.

Some of you may have heard that Kelly is back in Johannesburg for almost 3 weeks. She is staying with her best friend Kaylee & her family. I know that this goes against all the advice we've been given about not going back for at least 2 years but sometimes mother's aren't as strong as that. She has been really miserable & tearful at times. She is such a socialable character & misses her friends tremendously. She worked really hard for her SAT exams which kept her busy but now that's over she is so bored. She has very few of her possessions here (still coming in container), she can't work, she hasn't had any opportunities to make friends yet (youth activities at churches close for the summer) & she still has almost 2 months to get though before university starts. So we used some of Murray's air miles & sent her home - wise or unwise, time will tell.

Murray & I are going out again tomorrow afternoon to look at houses - some we're going back to look at for a second time & others we haven't seen before. We really need to settle on something. We fell in love with one house which we could literally walk into & not have to do a thing. It had everything we needed and a fair bit of grass in the back garden for the dogs BUT we then discovered that the road that it backs onto is going to become a 4 lane road next year & possibly 6 lanes at some point in the future. Lots of the houses have wall paper or very brightly painted walls. Even though we realise that we will have to do some painting etc, we don't want to have to do anything major because again everything is different, even terminolgy. We were told that one of the houses we're interested in is having some work done on it, such as hand scraped wooden floors put down, granite kitchen surfaces put in & some skip trowell work done. Do you have any idea what skip trowell work is? I thought it was something done in the garden but it is paintwork.

Cody & Jasmine seem quite happy & settled at their very fancy kennels. While Kelly was writing her SAT exam for 4 hours, Shaun & I went out to the kennels to take some more medicine for Cody. It's miles away & Shaun made me drive to get some experience on freeways. I was a nervous wreck by the time we got there - there were freeways joining in all over & ones splitting off. If you weren't in the right lane who knows where you'd end up. You can have 5 freeways going across above you. Anyway we could've seen the dogs if we wanted to but the general recommendation is that you shouldn't as its too unsettling for them. I really miss them.

Driving on the right hand side of the road is almost second nature now. The 2 hire cars we have are automatic so it makes things easier but Shaun wanted a manual car so he's now learning to change gears with his right hand. The dealer who sold us the car was surprised that Shaun knew how to use gears.

Well I must end off. Thanks again to eveyone for the news. Our Internet wasn't working for over a week due to faulty cables, the modem etc but we're up & running again.

Bye for now
Heahther