Thoughts and pics after Day One

Saturday morning: We just slept nearly 12 hours!!!!!! I think we must have really needed it, since the weeks leading up to this adventure have been so jam-packed. The bed was lovely, the temperature in the room was perfect, it was totally quiet outside during the night, and we woke up refreshed to a fancy homemade breakfast and got to meet a Swedish family who will be here one more week (they have two girls from SA now) and a Dutch family who will be here all 3 weeks (also with two girls from SA).

The weather here is just lovely - typical April weather (in Virginia) / May weather (Skåne). Apparently the nights get very cold, but we will probably never have to be outside at night, and they have floor heating in our room.

We ate at a pizza place called Roman's Pizza yesterday afternoon and it was SO good. It reminded me of an American restaurant, and the pizzas were just like Personal Pan Pizzas, except that you got two for the price of one! Niklas had pasta that he thought was really good. We walked to two different shopping areas and looked around. All the people here are friendly. The white people who speak Afrikaans have this funny sound they make, "Aukkk" or something, I think it is a bit like "Well..." but I don't know.

IN ONE HOUR WE ARE LEAVING FOR A TWO-DAY SAFARI!!!!!!
So we won't write here again until Sunday evening.

Here are some photos with text, in no particular order:

We had a lot of luggage! Each of the 3 big suitcases weighed over 20 kg, the big duffel bag weighed 20 kg (that Niklas had on his back the whole time), plus we had a carry-on bag and a laptop bag.

This is what our section of the guest house looks like from the outside. We are staying in Room 7 on the second floor. There are 3 or 4 different sections.

This is what the street that we live on looks like. Notice that the trees are still green - apparently they aren't supposed to be at this time of year. Many of the other trees look very autumny.

All of the houses and public buildings are surrounded by high gates with either barbed wire or sharp prongs above and below the gate. You are aware of the high security wherever you go, from the gates to signs to the extra employees standing at the entrances to stores...We also passed by all kinds of embassies (Pretoria has the most in the world, after DC), so if I ever feel the need to step onto American soil again, the American embassy is about five minutes from here.


Niklas is very pleased with our room.

We went into a huge grocery store about a 15 minute walk from our guest house. It is much more like an American grocery store than a Swedish one. Some things were different, though...You take your fruit over to a weighing station where someone weighs it and tags it for check out.