Power Failures continue...

On Thursday we drove to Oudtshoorn for Martins "Night Rating". Oudtshoorn is only an hour away from George, but the weather is extremely different. It is much hotter und there are less clouds. When we were just a few kilometres away from the town Martins instructor called him to let him know that there is a power failure, which means they had to wait for the runway lights, thus the power to turn on again before they could take off. So we sat there, Martin did some preparations and I read magazines. Just after eight the power was back on and they left. Suddenly at half past nine everything switched off again. I got such a fright. How were they supposed to find the runway and land when it is pitch dark. They phone rang and it was another instructor who asked me whether they were back yet. A few minutes later there were about 15 people from the flight school there with me. We called them, but neither of them took their cell phone. We tried to reach them on the radio, but they didn't answer... These were long minutes with hallucinations of a green and a red light flying towards us. Suddenly we heard them on the radio. Thank god they were fine! Soon after that we saw them flying over the airstrip where we had lined up five cars to lighten up the airstrip. I was so relieved when I finally hugged Martin! Inside they had to fill in papers and while they were busy with that the lights were suddenly back. Can you believe it!

If you would like to find out more about these power failures, which Eskom (the South African electricity supplier) calls "load shedding" please visit: www.eskom.co.za/live/index.php

Power Failure

This is a topic which came up a lot during the past period. Yesterday after I came back from work, Martin surprised me with the idea to go to the cinema. So off we went wanting to get to the 17:30 show. The lady at the desk informed us that there is going to be a power failure from 6 till 8 o'clock. That's how it works in South Africa; if too much power is used it is just switched of for a whole region! We went to have woodfired pizza, because this place was practically the only one that wasen't struck by this incident. It was lovely and we sat there for a long time chatting, before we went back to the cinema. Precicely at 8 o'clock the power was on again and we sat in our confortable chairs watching the beginning of National Treasure! A great movie staring Nicolas Cage. Very interesting if you like unsolved mysteries...


Here is just a picture of some of the kids from the playschool I took during the last week... They made me laugh a few times and surpried me with their inventiveness.

Back to work

I started work at the playschool on Wednesday last week. This is actually a week before the actual school starts, wo it was optional for the kids to come and I was the only adult there. I had about 12 kids during these past 5 schooldays and enjoyed the time with them, eventhough they can get quite naughty and for some of them it was difficult at first to be away from their mum after such a long break. We played, did puzzles, had lunch... as usual.

From George to Mosselbay and back rides an old Choo-Choo-Train. Once we heared it coming and stopped at a bridge, but couldn't take a nice picture, because it was so fast. We then raced to the next place where we hoped to catch a glipse of it and as we were waiting for it the train came from the other direction.

As you know Martin and I are big fans of Pizza and Pasta and when we came back we had to go to our favourite restaurant in Mosselbay called Panarottis. They have such mouthwatering Pizzas and the staff is extremely friendly.

Pictures of our trip...

All these photographs were either taken by Martin or me. The animals you are going to have a look at live absolutely freely, without a fence and they depend on themselves, thus are not being fed by humans.
The airplane we did our trip with is a Cessna 152.
Enjoy!
A Happy New Year to all of you!

CHRISTMAS

These are two pictures from our Christmas here in South Africa. The first one is our white Christmas tree and the starter of your Christmas menu on the 24th of December. On the morning of the 24th we put together our Christmas tree, cleaned our apartment, I prepared some things for our special menu, we decorated the table. The evening was so nice. We listened to Chrismas music, unwrapped presents, ate little pizzas, olives, parmesan, "pastetli", delicious pasta with nice sauces... We had such a nice time that we completely forgot about the time and the first time we looked at the watch it was already 1:30!

The next morning I prepared a pasta salad and a desert because we were invited to Nita and Kubus for a Buure-Christmas. (The Buure are the Afrikaans-speaking South Africans.) On the second picture you can see the buffet that they usually have for Christmas. The special thing was that everyone had prepared a salad or a dish. We were 9 people together with their kids and friends of theirs. We cracked Christmas crackers, and had a nice time sharing Christmas day with them in their tradition.