.. (almost 85 Fahrenheit) was the temperature of the pool last weekend! The last few weekends have been very warm and pleasant and we spent a lot of time in the pool. To give you an indidication, a pool is refreshing at 25-26 degrees celcius (77-79 Fahrenheit) an this is probably the warmest the pool has gotten since we moved to East London!
So for those of you living in cold climates, consider visiting South Africa at this time of the year!
South Africa is a very multicultural society. According to southafrica.info “Africans are in the majority at 37.2-million, constituting 79.4% of the total population. The white population is estimated at 4.4-million (9.3%), the coloured population at 4.1-million (8.8%) and the Indian/Asian population at 1.1-million (2.5%).” Unfortunately, on a day to day basis, you still see a lot of segregation with little real mixing of blacks, whites and coloured people. The different racial groups appear to live next to each other, but don´t really mix that much.
It is always delightful to see examples where kids of different cultural backgrounds actually hang out together. We therefore thought it was worthwile to take a picture of this engaged discussion between three boys of different colours at Gold Reef city:
How lame! About 4 weeks ago, I twisted my ankle at the gym from doing steps during the super circuit. This is not the first time this happens, but the swelling was definitely much worse than ever before and the nurse at work insisted I needed to go to emergencies. There they took X-Rays, which didn´t show anything, and concluded that it must be a badly sprained ankle with possibly torn ligaments. They gave me a removable “aircast”, some crutches, painkillers and anti-inflamatories. The specialist I saw the next day only could inform me that I would probably need to wear the cast for about 6 weeks and he may need to do surgery on the foot if the ligaments are actually torn. He couldn´t give me much more advise apart from the fact I needed to come back in 4 weeks (that will be next Monday!).
Six weeks seems forever, but the specialist may unfortunately be right. The first couple of weeks, I could hardly get around and I had to use a wheelchair during a visit to Johannesburg which we had planned weeks in advanced. Here is a picture taken at the Gold Reef City amuzement park that we visited:
The last couple of weeks have been much better, but the foot is still very sensitive and hurts at the slightest movement. I can now put pressure on it, but still need to wear the cast to support the ankle and avoid hurting the foot again!
Wearing a cast and having crutches has been an incrible frustrating experience – it is hard to do simple things like getting a glass of water and travelling or going to the beach has been out of the question. Today was around 30 degrees and sunny all day, so this has been particularly frustrating. Luckily I can go for swims in the pool! Guess we won´t be doing much travel this summer!
One of the birds you find quite commonly here in South Africa are mousebirds. They are distinguished by their brown colour and their long tails.
We live right next to a bush, with lots of birds. Today, a set of mousebirds were eating from a nearby bush, which offered a perfect picture opportunity. As always, click on the images to see larger versions!
We have really arrived in the summermonths here in the mean time. Today, temperatures went up to 32 degrees and the pool got up to 28 degrees. We went swimming in our pool twice as a way to cool down. In the late afternoon, temperatures dropped after a storm.
For the next few days, they predict similar weather, although it will be a bit cooler tomorrow.
For those of you who are in colder parts of the world, we cannot put any of our summerweather on the site, but we thought you might enjoy this recent sunrise picture, taken from our house:
Christmas and New Year in summer … what a concept!
We are still strugging getting used to summery weather and activities for this time of the year. In fact, we didn´t really get into Christmas mood until a few days ago. Either way, Best wishes for the festive season and all the best for 2006!
We spend our Christmas enjoying summer, going to the beach and Baking Christmas Cookies. Here are some of the pictures:
In yearly tradition, we baked “Russion Tea Cakes”, or Christmas Cookies. Here is a picture of the resulting cookies:
Christmas Cookies
If you would like to make those cookies for yourself, here is the recipe:
RUSSIAN TEA CAKES
1c butter (1/2lb 226g)
1/2 c powder sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp salt
2 1/4 C flour
3/4 C fine chopped nuts*
cream sugar and vanilla
add dry ingredients and mix.
Add nuts
Make 1″ balls. Bake at 350f/175c 8-10 minutes
Dust with powder sugar warm, then again cold.
* traditionally pecans. Also try pistachios, sunflower seeds, cashews, etc.
Here are also some pictures from our beach visits. On Gonube Beach, someone was Kite Surfing, where they use a kite to propel themselves. Looked really exciting and something we may want to do sometime during our stay in South Africa. The picture shows a normal surfer and a kite surfer in the same frame.
Whale trip album
In July we went to Knysna with as primary goal to go on a whale trip. The Whale season is between June and September as the Whales migrate during that period from Antarctica to South Africa and beyond to mate.
We went on a trip on the Indian Ocean where we were lucky enough to see Southern Right Whales, Humpback Whales as well as dolphins and Jackass Penguins. Seeing the whales is quite an experience: they are huge and come very close to the boat. Impressive!
Unfortnately, it is quite difficult to get good pictures from the whales as they tend to be underwater for long periods of time and even when they come up you only see a fraction of their huge body. We managed to get some lovely shots though, and by clicking here or on the image above you can have a look at some of our favorite pictures!
We will post the pictures of the rest of the trip, where we visited places such as Robberg, Tsitsikama and, of course, Knysna, in a separate album. Coming up soon!
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What a fabulous weekend … nice and warm (27-30 degrees Celcius/80-85 Fahrenheit), sunny and the pool is warm. It has taken us a while to get here, but it finally appears to be summer! We spent a while in the pool yesterday as it was so nice and may go to the beach later today. South Africa IS a nice place to live!
The odd thing is, when you go in the stores you hear Christmas Charols, see inflated Father Christmas´s and notice Christmas decorations all over the place. This seems so wrong for the time of the year, especially if you see sleighs, christmas trees with socks hanging from them and pictures of snow. I guess we will get used to it eventually!
Port Elizabeth Album
We made a trip to Port Elizabeth last weekend. Port Elizabeth is the closest city to East London and is always a pleasant change from being in East london. It takes about 3 hours to get there over some uncomfortable roads so we don´t make the trip too often. We decided to go for an extended weekend last weekend (3 nights), but unfortunately we both got sick on the second day from something we ate wrong, so the trip was not very successful.
Click here to see photos from our various trips to Port Elizabeth. Port Elizabeth has some good shopping, some pleasant beaches and just more people than East London.