To
all my friends, especially my South African ones, who may be wondering
how we are getting on, I thought I'd share a quick update...
Having a
car to finally get around is such a blessing and such a necessity,
although with it being much bigger than the wee Fiat 500, my parking is
still going to need a lot of practice...
Shopping still seems to be the highlight of our news - the loose fruit and veg
need to be weighed and priced in the veggie section and not at the
tills (which is something I keep forgetting to do), missing the self
checkout tills, and having to pay for your plastic bags (unless you
bring your own), but great having your groceries packed for you, and
petrol pumped into your car for you!
The great news is that we found
a British Emporium shop quite close to us - so had a great browse of
familiar brands and a stock up on things we haven't managed to find yet -
nothing major, but for example, convenience stuff like tomato paste in a
tube as opposed to a tin, and the instant Bisto granules, as opposed to
the powder, and also orange Jaffa cakes instead of the Raspberry &
Strawberry one's you can now get at Pick 'n Pay.
Another great find
is the amount of China Malls that have exploded here, so doubt we will
be missing the Poundland as much, which we are thrilled about!
Unfortunately there is not as much on-line shopping available here, so
pricing is difficult and even a lot of eBay shops in the UK & China,
won't post to South Africa. Luckily our post has been arriving, so if
anyone is wanting our address, please let me know. Sadly, not all my
friends are on Facebook, so I guess I will need to do some writing
myself.
Going out for dinner here has such a huge selection and is
also a whole lot cheaper - last week we went to John Dorys - They have a
special on where you can get 2 hake (fish) fillets with your choice of
chips, savoury rice or 2 hot veg (creamed spinach & real pumpkin)!!
We were in our element and it only cost R29 a plate (less than £2)!!
They serve it in a frying pan, which is quite quirky too. We have also
been enjoying our Wimpy burgers and Cassey has also found a love for
Calamari Rings (Octopus)! But I guess our favourite is a still the Spur
- I still love their supervised childplay area idea!! Even at some of
the Pizza restaurants here, the kids get some dough and instruments to
play with while they wait. On the down side, we are finding a lack of
Indian Curry places, so very grateful that Garry became so skilled in
that regard! Speaking of cooking, we are actually missing our gas hob
and finding it quite a challenge getting use to an electric one again!
Electricity here is worked on the more you use, the more expensive it
becomes, unlike Scotland which works the opposite!
I am so pleased
to report that Cassey & I have also found the perfect church - It's
called Cape Grace Congregational and it certainly ticks all the boxes,
so are loving it and quickly making friends.
The weather has been
exceptionally hot lately - we did have a so called 'cold spell', but
here, that just means grey sky instead of blue, as it was still very
warm. I have also found that without the wind, it can become quite
unbearably hot! But we are certainly not complaining We are just grateful for our swimming pools in the complex where we can cool off every afternoon!
The only Cape Town wildlife we've encountered so far has been mozzies
and Christmas beetles... and of course, some lovely looking birds!
Our TV watching in the evenings is not as bad as we had feared - we have
opted for a DSTV option, which we are finding quite sufficient for the 3
of us. Really enjoying watching programs like The Amazing Race and
reruns of the Oprah show.
Our wifi/broadband which is included in
our monthly levy, is a whole lot faster than what we were experiencing
in Ardrossan, so quite pleased about that.
Cassey's latest craze is
something called Geo-cache, which seems to be a world-wide secret
treasure hunt which you need to log at each place - there are quite a
few in Cape Town, so she has us out and about searching for some of
them. I must admit, it is quite exciting when you find one with the
clues that are given on-line!
Speaking of Cassey, we still need to
decide on what school to put her in, but hopefully by next week we will
have seen the other two so we can make a decision. The one we've visited
certainly ticks all the boxes though - they even teach with tablets as
all textbooks are digital.
We are still enjoying staying in our
apartment, although with it only having the one bedroom, it certainly
does have its challenges, especially when it comes to using the one
bathroom!
But all is good, and feeling a lot more settled with each new day of our adventure!!
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