More than a month since I blogged and really no excuses…. I keep a list of what I want to blog about and it just gets longer and longer and then the typing is more of a mission so I put it off and the list keeps increasing …. What a ridiculous state to get into over a blog which should be a pleasure and mostly is. I may as well go back to monthly e mails – will give it a bit longer as maybe just maybe one day I will learn my lesson and see the value of blogging more regular – ie less to type !!
There have been a few events these last weeks – we celebrated 18 years of marriage last week and went for a meal at the local ‘posh’ hotel – nice ambiance but the food was a little disappointing. Took the kids for Japanese food for Dad’s last night before he headed back to UK (he squeezed home just hours before the volcanic ash caused all the chaos) and we had teppanyaki, live cooking in front of us by a real life Japanese chef (he may have been Korean actually !)– Lobster, beef, chicken, pork, and vegetables – the teriyaki sauce was delicious too. Finally the kids have discovered that there is more to life than Italian restaurants (nothing wrong with Italian food but good to have a change!!)
Anna and I went to a wonderful concert last Thursday put on by the High School including jazz, contemporary classical, choral, a cappella – hope it has inspired Anna to resume her music next school year.
She has made her selections for IB and will take Biology, History, Geography and English at Higher level with Maths and French at Standard Level (the teachers of the latter 2 subjects have said if she keeps up her current commitment then she should make a ‘7’ (top marks) which is a good chunk toward the 35-40 points she may be asked for). Thankfully we do not start the UCAS application for more than 12 months but it does seem to be creeping ever nearer.
We do not have an Easter Holiday as such but Spring break did coincide this year but by coincidence not design. Kids finished school on Friday 26th March and were back in on Tuesday 6th April. Anna went off to Switzerland for a week of snow-boarding and broke her left wrist on the 2nd morning…. What can I say? It should be OK as it is a straightforward impacted fracture – cast comes off in about 3 weeks. We went off to the coast to Watamu where we did the usual reading, sunbathing, swimming etc. Steve and Luke were diving each morning. The weather was a bit strange – VERY windy the first 2 days which brought in lots of seaweed (it is seasonal but it seemed to appear very quickly). After that there was barely a breath of wind and it was almost too hot. On the beach it was fine with a slight breeze off the sea but the evenings were very hot and sticky. I got badly bitten on my lower legs by sand flies with the heat really making the bites itchy and at night I felt fairly miserable. We really needed the AC this time. The high point for me was meeting up with a bunch of friends (all from Nairobi and staying at various places in the resort) and taking a boat trip. We tried to find dolphins but the choppy conditions were not ideal and we were not lucky enough to see them. We did however head to the reef and had a fabulous drift snorkel. As this is within the marine reserve we had purchased national parks tickets in advance and yes the Kenya Wildlife Service came along on a little speedboat checking tickets – yes, in the middle of the Indian Ocean – incredible!!
My reading ‘desert’ seems to be temporarily over. I finally finished the Stieg Larsson Millennium series (Swedish crime novels) – fingers crossed the supposed 4th one will get published when the late author’s loved ones can sort out the finances. I also read ‘Say you’re one of them’- a book of African short stories. It was SO depressing with difficult challenging English that I had to make myself read so many pages a day otherwise I would not have finished it. I felt very fulfilled and self-righteous when I did complete it though!! The next book club book was chosen as an easy read … technology then came into play as I was able to buy it in e book format and download it to my new e reader (a Christmas gift that I had not had need to use until last week) I could have purchased and read the book without leaving the house!! ‘One Day’ by David Nicholls which I finished this morning! I also downloaded ‘Wolf Hall’ for a mere 5 quid (a bargain as the book costs 12.99 quid!! No sterling sign on this computer!!) The E reader is a fabulous invention for travellers, so looking forward to taking it away to UK this ‘summer’. (Finally booked and paid for trip to UK via Amsterdam – hope the ash story is history by then … arrive morning of Sunday 20th June 2010 and leave on a day flight Thursday 29th July 2010)
We have seen a few movies recently – The Blind Side, Shutter Island and Up in the Air – all enjoyable and recommendable.
There are two things that have not changed this last month … it has continued to rain – mainly at night with warm sunny days so not too bad. On Wednesday night we had a terrific storm which caused the power to go down at around 21.00hrs – it finally was restored around 19.00hrs the next day – thank goodness for the back-up generator meaning we barely notice the outages. It just made me think of all those hours without power in Zimbabwe – wish I had kept a diary but at the time it got so annoying that you did not need to be reminded about it – sorry Zims reading this! We have continued with our exercise classes in the clubhouse at the compound and have recently increased to 3 times per week!! Fridays are now kick-boxing and step – phew! – Great fun but exhausting. In addition to classes it is still warm enough to swim – water around 25degrees.
A couple of travelling anecdotes before I sign off….
1. Saturday 10th April was one of those days where everyone had to be in different places almost at once. Anna had a 09.00hrs function at school so the driver took her. Steve and Luke had a Boy Scout event and went off together, with Dad and I, going shopping, then meeting up with the boy scouters. Luke was then going to go straight to Baseball at school to be dropped by Steve then the driver had been instructed to go to school for 1pm and bring both kids home. Complicated arrangements when all written together but not difficult…. The Boy Scout event finished early so we all came home… and this is where I went wrong. I called the driver (1st mistake….should have spoken to him face to face) – I told him that Luke was actually at home and needed taking to school for 12 – he could wait and bring both kids back together at 1pm – ‘OK Madam’. I was sat at the computer and went to get a drink around 11.45hrs – car had gone but Luke was still around. Really annoying as said car has a very screechy fan belt which I had NOT heard. I call the driver ‘Where are you? And why have you not taken Luke to school? TURN ROUND AND COME BACK!!’ I bellowed down the phone. He had not understood what I had said on the phone – my accent? Or his inability to listen – who knows? (The 2nd mistake I had made was changing the arrangements – this should be outlawed in Africa as generally something will go wrong.) He did manage to bring both kids back from school which was a redeeming feature to the whole episode!!
2. The Volcanic Ash – loads of UN people stranded here or overseas OR here at home because travel has been postponed or cancelled. Steve was flying to Rome on Ethiopian Airways yesterday via Adis Ababa… we had been unable to determine if Rome was open as seemed to be on the borderline of the ash. We called the airline – yes they are still operating in and out of Rome so the trip was on. Steve left here before 15.30hrs to catch connecting flight from NBO to Adis at 18.00hrs. I got an sms to say they had boarded …. 1 hour later – sms to say there was a problem with an engine so they were sat on the plane … 1 hour later ‘disembarking’ … 1 hour later ‘they are offloading luggage’ and finally after another 30 minutes or so ‘I’m coming home!!! Flight cancelled’. He got here around midnight… they wanted to put him on the flight they were hoping to run this morning but Steve had refused and said he wanted to be put on the 18.00hrs today followed by the Rome flight at 01.00hrs out of Adis on 20/4. This morning he gets an e mail to say that the meeting he was going to Rome for is postponed – a bit late as he should have already been there!!
He has gone into the office and starts to reschedule his travel arrangements and guess what – the flight to Rome did not leave Adis yesterday so he could possibly have been stuck there with no visa – I’m thinking Tom Hanks in ‘Terminal’!! He is now looking towards leaving here on Wednesday if the other meetings go ahead but with all the travel chaos this is looking unlikely.
Last but by no means least … tonight Anna is in the final of the High School speech competition. Every High School student writes and delivers a speech which begins at class level, then semi-finals in front of the Head of English, culminating in the finals held in the auditorium in front of students, parents and teachers. Three students are selected from each grade from which there will be a grade level winner and then an overall winner is also chosen. Last year she came a close second so fingers crossed for this year – the title is ‘How many zeroes is that?’ – It is an amusing dialogue about her take on hyper-inflation in Zimbabwe.
