South Africa - part 1

My trip ‘home’ to South Africa almost seems like a million years ago. It has been go go go since I’ve gotten back. We have a new schedule to stick to at home. Himself is now working every night, save Fridays at the pub and since he starts at 3 it means that I now have to do the sport runs at night.

What it boils down to is getting home after swimming/football at roughly 8:30 at night at which time I have to make dinner and put the kids to bed. Then I got to the gym and make it home to shower and before I know it I’m asleep. Don’t ask me when I’m cleaning the house cause I would have to tell you I’m not …

Anyway, you want to hear about South Africa not about my dirty house.

So, it was Friday evening and Himself & I were sitting in the clubhouse, having a drink waiting for Tiger’s football training to start. School closed for mid-term and I also had a week leave booked.  I had been toying with the idea of popping over to London for ages now but I was sitting there complaining about how much it would cost. Going doesn’t cost much; it is finding a place to stay and public transport which really cost more than I like to spend. (I don’t spend money easily on myself). I worked out that it would cost me roughly EUR 500.

‘You  know, you could probably fly to SA for that price’, says Himself. Really? ‘Yeah, I saw some really cheap tickets this morning’. Mmh, ‘home’ to SA or a couple of days in London. Well, as much as I want to meet Sarah (who now lives on London) the idea of going home for the first time in nearly 5 years was just too tempting.

On Sunday morning I dropped the kids off at my folks who were taking them camping till Wednesday evening and by 6 I was on the train on my way to Paris.

I landed in Johannesburg on Monday morning and was very glad to see my brother-in-law waiting for me at arrivals since I wasn’t sure that he had gotten my message asking him to pick me up due to some phone issues I was having and them being busy with a birthday party for his wife all of Sunday.

First view of Johannesburg just before dropping down below the clouds

Coming in to land .... so much for sunshine :)

The down side, it was pouring!!!! Here I thought I was getting away from the incessant rain in Belgium only to be greeting by rain, rain and more rain. The most rain in 60 years!

Photo courtesy of: Anwar Nagel - Road to the Airport from Pretoria to Johannesburg

Photo courtesy of: Anwar Nagel

Photo courtesy of: Anwar Nagel

I spent the week visiting family and friends. Drinking loads of coffee and eating way too much cause everyone just wants to feed me all the things I can’t eat here.

And I went shopping. It was quite a novelty to go shopping in a proper mall again. Luckily my mother-in-law was more than willing and on my last day one of my brothers-in-law and my sister-in-law 'bunked' work and med school to tag along.

I met kids who either were too little to remember meeting me before (two nephews) or weren’t even born yet the last time I was home. (more about all of them in a later post).

It was fantastic! Only two things could have been better, the weather, cause sadly it never stopped raining for very long,  and it could have been for longer cause I didn’t get to spend nearly enough time with anyone.

And, I experienced load shedding, but I’ll tell you all about it in my next post.