I woke up this morning to a very foggy, very still, but very fresh day. For a while it's been feeling quite autumnal here. I think it's because it's October and I've never experienced a changing season in the southern hemisphere, but today it feels like a spring day. The little winter bite is out of the air, and the breeze is warm. As we drove into work to drop off Eliot, we could just start to see the mountain and rays of sun breaking through the fog, so I can tell it's all going to burn off and be a beautiful day.
I have to say, I really love South Africa. I can't say I love it more than China, but I think it's a different kind of love completely. China is like the dark tormented lover that, although you care for, you know you can never be with. And South Africa is like that fun loving person that you just adore completely. South Africa is just so easy (comparatively) and I don't find myself getting as emotional about things here. I don't mean emotional as in breaking down and crying every day (although sometimes that did happen), I mean it as having bipolar emotions, whereas some days I was so in love with China, and couldn't imagine a better place to be in, and other days I would have what I called "I hate China days" where I felt very angry and frustrated with Chinese culture. In China, I'd find myself pondering things a lot more, and doing a lot of self reflections.
China was very isolating, and I had A LOT of time to myself. This was hard for me at first (to be surrounded by so many people, but to feel like I was completely alone), but now in South Africa I find I myself searching for that isolation. Not to the extreme that it was in China, but just making sure to take time for myself each day to read, or blog, or take photos, or just do something creative and relaxing, by myself. This blog has become a good outlet for me to not only keep a diary of what I'm doing at this point in my life, but also to expel energy that I didn't realize I had before. I can thank China for these somewhat self realizations.
But apart from all that, we are keeping busy, and really enjoying our time here. Mike and Jenny (Eliot's folks) just left yesterday. We had a really nice visit with them, and got to go and see some cool new things. They even made our luggage problem disappear! Since they fly 1st class they are allowed 3 (yes 3!) 50lb bags EACH. So they each had one, and then offered to take some of our things back with them to England, which they can then bring out to us in FL in the New Year. We are very thankful to them for that, it's taken a lot of 'soon to be stress' off
Next week Eliot and I are flying up to Kruger National Park for a long weekend. We've been wanting to go since we learned we were even coming to SA, and it seems like the perfect time to go in this bit of a lull between visitors. Kruger is a very large national park with a ton of animals. It's against park rules to even get out of your car while in the park for fear that you might get nabbed by a lion! We're also armed with malaria pills for those little pests that carry horrible things around with them. We're staying in the park for 3 nights at different (fenced in) camps throughout. Stay tuned for photos of The Big 5!
Have a great weekend!
xxx
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