Frustrations, School and Cuba!

Well Wednesday has come to an end, it has been another hot day but with a lovely breeze this morning.

Popped into a local shopping mall this morning to stock up on some essential supplies and post a post card (only written one so far, sorry!)  Managed to buy a gorgeous pair of ear rings to replace the only pair i brought with me which i managed to lose one of on the bike yesterday :-(  I deliberately brought my favourite African ones here knowing i could replace them if i lost them but so far no luck.  Hoping to find another exact pair before i leave though -not really goign touristy shopping to be able to get any.

Anyway headed off late morning with Kegan as my chauffeur to Pinelands to Cannons Creek school where we have a relationship with St Nics.  We managed to successfully get there without getting lost thanks to his Sat Nav and managed a good old chat and a bit of a laugh on the way to.  On arrival i had to switch to 'Mrs Dobson' mode.  the school is lovely , very new, very well off and has lovely children.  Last year they had just moved to their new building so there were no curtains up at the huge windows making it like a greenhouse, and no computers installed but what a change this year.  One class even had a plasma screen tv on the wall so i was able to get the St Nics Website up and show them some pictures, not that there were many on there!  I even managed to get my facebook page up and show them snow pictures (I would be disciplined most severely if i did that in England).  There are no problems with taking pictures of the children and wandering freely round the school and it is a very relaxed and well behaved school producing a good standard of work. During the course of the day i spoke to the infants who all sang me their national anthem in reply to me singing them ours!  I also visited years 4-7 who constitute the Junior section of the school. they had interesting questions about how fast our internet speed is.............?????????????? no idea!!!!  I just said faster than yours!  also the standard question - do you have lions?  everything from rugby to the olympics,  Wales to how tall is big Ben?  To be honest i couldnt answer them all. They were fascinated to hear about the snow and most wanted to come to England. One little boy actually spent 4 years of his life living in Beaconsfield and goign to school in Amersham so that was a co-incidence. Another is coming to legoland this summer so i have told his teacher to get in touch with me and maybe we can arrange a visit for him to come to St nics!

Anyway my friend Sue who is a teacher there brought me home at the end of the day and i just had time for a quick cooling dip in the pool with kegan and his daughter jaime and Lineo before showering (have i mentioned the outdoor shower yet???????:-) ) and getting into something a little more comfortable to go out to dinner.  I wanted to take the Haakonsens out like i did last year to say thank you for their hospitality and Amelie (Dillons wife) had recommnded a place called Cape to Cuba where she used to work. I managed to book a table much to Ray's chagrin as he had been trying to book a table all daya nd couldnt get through!!!!  We went on the train to avoid the road works so that was a new experience for me! We went first class which basically means you have a seat to sit on. It was only 1 station but return was less than £1 so it is a bit cheaper than England!  think it costs more than that to get to Slough and back!Wesat on the terrace overlooking the harbour at Kalk Bay and it was a beautiful evening. I have taken numerous pictures of the sun going down behind the mountains, it was lovely.  I will try and put some pictures on here but I am using Ray's mobile internet connection so dont want to use it too much (more of that in a mo!).

Dinner was lovely, all Cuban style but with a South AFrican twist - we had a selection of tapas to start with including Smoorsnoek cigars (sorry about spelling!!!) which were pieces of snoek (mackeralstyle fish) wrapped in a filo style pastry - gorgeous!  mussels, cuban bread and jalepeno peppers deep friend in batter.  I then had a gorgeous chicken tortilla with chick pea salad and then we shared a desert of chocolate bowl which you could obviously eat with ice cream in it, chocolate mousse and strawberry something with 2 shots of Amarula in chocolate cups!  I thought Amarula would be more like Bailey's which i am not fond of but no, it was delicious, mght have to stock up at Duty Free on my return flight!  

We had over half an hour to wait for the train back home, in which time we could have walked but i was able to look up at the stars and find the Southern Cross and look out to the dark ocean and hear the waves crashing on the beach which was a peaceful end to the eveing.

The frustration of the day has been the inability to send e mails and be in contact. I emailed my school (St nics) when i got home this afternoon and managed to actually send it 6 hours later!   My outlook emails is not sending anything at all andthe internet is at best sporadic. As i said before Ray has very kindly lent me his mobile internet every night but he only has acertain amount of usage each month and i would hate him to want to use it in 2 weeks time to find he hs no data space left!  

Thanks to those who have messaged me,  i have tried to message back where i can as i am quite lonely out here but i am trying also to keep my costs down. Sometimes  i just have to go for it and will worry about the culminations of 35ps when i return.  If i don't reply, it is not because I don't appreciate it or i am being rude, just trying to be abstemious as i will not be paid again until the end of March!

Tomorrow Ray and Sue are taking me to Robben Island, somewhere i really want to go but i have heard mixed reports about. I think everyone needs to visit it once in their lives so we have a reasonably early start to get a boat out there and see where Nelson Mandela was held in prison for so many years.  Then an early ngiht tomorrow before a 3 am departure on Friday morning.

Not going to have another chance for a motorbike ride this side of lesotho but it will give me something to look forward to on my return.............

Will report on Robben Island tomorrow, meanwhile, happy Thursday everyone. I am going to hit the sack and prepare myself for an enjoyable day.

Love
Jenny x