The Weekend
We are just finishing up our first weekend here in South Africa. For some reason, the weekends here are a bit tougher for me and I think for all of us. I seem to remember that it was the same when we were here in 2008. I think part of it is that Amos isn’t here to keep the kids occupied for a part of the day, which really makes a huge difference, and the other part is that when Sunday comes, we no longer have the support of our church, but instead are just visitors at another church where we don’t know anyone.
Saturday wasn’t a bad day, I could just tell that I woke up a bit out of sorts and it was hard to keep the kids interested in anything. It was chillier than it had been the other days, so no one really wanted to sit out in the sun or play outside. Saturday was special because it was our sweet girl’s 5th birthday. She loved opening her cards and was so happy to find temporary tattoos, princess stickers, gum and more! Jori wanted mac and cheese for lunch, so we pulled out one of the packets of easy mac that we brought along. She was thrilled. I was actually invited to a baby shower for the Harding’s daughter in law Saturday afternoon. I am glad I went. The shower was much the same as other baby showers I have been to, only I really didn’t know anyone and there were lots of extra kids present as babies and toddlers were being passed back and forth from the playroom to the room we were sitting in. I ended up staying for close to 2 hours. It was good to do something a bit different, and I came home feeling much better about things.
Darin and the kids had been busy while I was gone. They had built up the little fire pit and cleaned off the grate, so that night we cooked over the fire. We had potatoes, cheese Roman’s (hot dogs), and marshmallows. The kids and Darin thought the Roman’s were great, I did not. I filled up on potatoes and marshmallows. We also saw three zebras out at the watering hole. They were so beautiful. We had to walk out to the fence pretty quietly to see them as they were quite skittish.
After the kids were bathed and in bed, Darin and I started watching “The gods must be crazy”, which is a very strange, but funny movie. We are also borrowing the sequel, so I am sure we will watch that later this week. One thing I did not really think to bring along was movies for Darin and I, so we are a bit hard up for entertainment!
On Sunday we headed out to our first church service. We decided to visit Hatfield Church, which is about a 45 minute drive from where we are staying right now. It seems like most of the English speaking churches are on not on “our” side of Pretoria, which is not so convenient. Darin and I really enjoyed the church service. The singing was similar to our church at home and the pastor was excellent, but the church was HUGE. Seriously, they had several different parking areas and buildings and we were getting quite turned around as we tried to find where the kids programs were at. Being in a totally unfamiliar situation always makes me feel a bit uncomfortable, so I was ready to just leave, but we got the kids settled (we had them just stay together as Jori was not too keen on being left without her brother) and then we made our way into the service. There were lots of extra things happening: the pastor’s birthday(with a group in the congregation breaking out in singing Happy Birthday during the announcement time), a Father’s Day talk followed by little gift bags being passed out to all the dads(with treats that were to be enjoyed during the sermon – Fritos, Kit Kat bar, peanuts, jerky!), new member Sunday(about 200 people joined), and it just seemed like it went on and on and then finally the sermon began. It really was good, but I have not been sleeping the best (teeth grinding and a fear of getting up to use the bathroom in the dark are not helping!) so I could feel myself starting to doze off. We picked up the kids, made our way back to our parking lot and off we went. We decided to stop at Menlyn Mall, which is quite a bit larger than Kolonnade, and had lunch. We ate at Spur, and as soon as our food came I remembered that I really don’t like Spur. Thankfully the kids enjoyed their meals and they also enjoyed the supervised play area. I think that is one of the best things about dining out in South Africa. Most restaurants are very kid friendly! We had plans to go to a few stores, but ended up just going to one because our children were getting restless. It had been a long morning, so you can’t really blame them.
We stopped at Harding’s to go online and we also “borrowed” Fetsi for a bit. He was so excited to come play over at our house and Tyson and Jori were thrilled to have him. We’ll have to make a point to have him over for a bit on the weekends. He is back at school until next Friday, so I know the kids will miss him.
Tomorrow we are going to try once more to get a bank account set up. We are also going to drive past a house near the petrol station that might be available to rent. Darin wants to stop at a couple car dealerships to get some information on a few vehicles that we have questions about and we are also hoping to make a stop at McDonalds to get Jori a belated birthday treat.
Hope you all had a blessed weekend as well!
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