2010: year of the adventure

happy twenty-ten to everyone! i hope this holiday season has been well to you all. the past couple weeks have been pretty busy, doing work, moving again, and christmas, but i have managed to take some time off because brad visited on his way to burundi.

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a couple days before christmas, i had the joy of waking up to the smell of heavy smoke and not really know what was going on. i looked outside, and we were covered in a cloud of (probably very healthy) smoke and ash was raining down. there was a fire just outside of the neighborhood we were at in hout bay, probably started in the township and moved into the bushes on the side of the mountain. it was fun to watch for a while, but after a couple hours of constant helicopter blades beating down on you and the smoke lingering everywhere, it got pretty uninteresting and impossible to really think clearly. the fire was out by noon time though, and with the real lack of news attention, i am not worried about the damage it caused.



news in south africa is different. i am only able to get the radio news, but it is amateur enough to be like a college/high school radio station. it can be funny, confusing or just heavy-handed at the same time. callers can just call in and talk for five minutes without a point to make or having had anyone to ask them to talk anyway. during conversations, you can hear the clink of tea glasses and spoons. interviews or press conferences are almost played in their entirety, not like the chopped bits in the states or probably uk. other times, you hear things like this "there have been 619 road fatalities so far this month during our peak driving season" (on december 20th ) or "the death toll has risen to fifteen for this year's circumcision season" which stops me dead in my tracks. (these aren't babies being circumsized, but fifteen to seventeen year old boys having illegal operations to be able to 'be a man'.) i found online articles for both of these stories, here and here. it all just makes me feel like this country has a lot further to go, even if they are able to host a fifa world cup.

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on the night before christmas, instead of cookies being laid out by the chimney, we had minced pies and a carrot. while it was not up to my standards of chocolate chip cookies, they were good enough, but the secret is to have them with brandy butter. (really, you just add butter and brandy together. then use copiously.) our tree was made of a branch from a tree in our garden, and according to the girls, the presents were 'up to affinity!" i was able to get some things in the mail from the states, including some grandmother cookies (chocolate chip, of course) and a card that sang "don't make me hit you with my pocketbook" by jennifer hudson. both made me very very happy. thank you to all of you that posted me, its nice to feel connected to people other than through my keyboard.





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and then on the next day, a little odd holiday called 'boxing day' (like a christmas hang-over day), brad arrived. he was coming to visit me on his way over to burundi, where he will be volunteering for a year in a clinic in a rural area (his blog is here). it was great to see him and the greetings he brought from the states (ie. my new wallpaper). we were able to take a lot of time to take it easy, cook sushi, pizza with our own dough, pancakes, and custom teas, and explore some of the local treats around the cape peninsula. most of the following photos are from our trip up the side of table mountain, through the gardens at kirstenbosch. the trail was more like a constant staircase, with these little steps progressing endlessly up the side of the mountain. in some spots, the trail was ladders up the side of a rock scramble. in the sun it was 96 degrees, and in the shade it was 72. it was a beautiful day hiking, picnicking, and sketching.





click here to see the panorama full sized.







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once we reached the bottom of the mountain, brad and i had to wait in the gardens just outside of the restaurant that rachel, roddy and the girls were attending a wedding reception at. so we created a game to drink our wine that we brought for dinner. the wine wasn't even boxed wine, it was from a juice container. it was about R15, which is just around $2. we complemented the wine with what was left of a bottle of champagne left outside. having only a little piece of bread and hummus for our picnic supper, we waved sarita and lorien to come outside and then told them to go on a secret mission to steal us food. they took our mission very serious, and brought little pieces of bread, 'chips' and other leftovers. the first time sarita came out, she tripped and wiped out (i wish i could upload the video), just to bring us some bread and butter. i love these kids.






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brad's gone now, and it's back to work. the family and i will be leaving cape town this wednesday, finally hitting the road for real. after tuesday night, i will be sleeping in a tent for the majority of nights for the rest of this year. our first stop is somewhere on the garden route, just east along the coast from cape town. we now have a new toyota fortuna ( or 'the big tuna' as i like to call it) and our caravan (named 'vagabond sarah rosebud' by the girls) all ready to go. the girls have been in charge of making sure the caravan scares off the locals, as it name says, we are the conqueror commander! i am really excited to start traveling and really getting out to see south africa.





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i tend to take new year resolutions pretty seriously, even though i don't ever really seem to celebrate on new year's eve. in one hand the new year is a pretty pointless holiday, but in the other, they provide a great dividing line to show change and progress in your life. by making a resolution, you can take time to look at your life, find something that you have been meaning to do or change, and then just challenge yourself and do it. some of my past resolutions have been to give up drinking soda, not pay for anything from starbucks (highly recommend), and to journal.

this year has been a little harder to think of something to do, because so much is changing already and i have no idea what i will really be able to do. i am still working on them, because i like definite check marks, not loose goals, but here they are...

1. limit everything i have with me to my backpack and messenger bag (loosing my summer backpack as additional storage).
2. to do more yoga, sketch, and keep up reading. hopefully one of these every day.
3. cook and eat as 'raw' as possible.
4. write and keep in-touch with the people that matter to me.
   

these are very loose, but i'll get there. the last point about keeping in-touch brings up my internet connection, which will become more scattered and unknown as i travel. so if i disappear again, just know that i will post new blogs and reply to emails when i can.

also, i have a new link at the top of my blog, which if you click on an enter your email address, you can receive my blogs by email every time i publish one. the email/blog service is provided by 'our mother google', so you can trust her. no spam or signups.

cheers to a new year and new adventures for us all!

tbk