A restful day

It kept raining during the night but this morning was at least dry albeit a bit dull. We went to church with everyone else and this week the service went on for 2.5 hours. It really could have been shorter, the preacher preached for an hour, then we had communion and they ran out of wine (which was actually cranberry like juice) and we had cheese crackers, so she kept talking and singing while the rest of the people were served with the wine.....it seemed never ending.

When we came out the skies had cleared do we made an instant decision to pick up what we needed from the supermarket, gave a quick lunch then go for a swim, which we did. We got to the pool which was closed last week and went into the reception area of the hotel, only to be told we could not swim because we were not members ( you can always get guest passes at the pool). There was no one else there at all and we were willing to pay money to swim. I told her our friends were meeting us there who were members and she said we could wait for them and go in with them as their guests. I rang Anita who confirmed she was definitely coming and would hurry. Meanwhile I asked if we could sit somewhere in the sun and wait. She said we could wait in the lounge. Not really wanting to miss the sun which had been in short supply I asked if we could sit by the pool. She called the security guard who grunted which apparently meant yes so we went and sat by the pool while we waited for the others, Nell and I in the sun and Fred in the shade. 

Anita and the 5 children arrived and we jumped in the pool, well when I say jumped, I mean walked....it was freezing. The pool is 6 ' deep all over so once you are in you are in but actually once we were under water it was actually ok.. We stayed in  quite a while and played with the children, we had the pool completely to ourselves. On leaving I asked the security guard if she wanted me to pay and she said no, so they lost out this afternoon.....very odd!

We got home and had a warm shower to warm up then all settled down to read.  Nell and I soon fell asleep an on waking decided to experiment with cookie dough for the children as we want to help them make biscuits thus week. We had no rolling pin but found a plastic tumbler worked quite as well So between us with a bit of improvisation we made about 30 cookies.....giraffes, elephants, stars, circles and teddy bears all working really well. We made more mix to use tomorrow, we decided that getting the kids to make it would be too difficult but rolling it out and making shapes will work well....

It was such a lovely evening we went for a walk down to the lake. We went the backwards way to they way I know but we managed to find a path through swampy ground, down past the 5 sewage lakes (the smell being more chemical than sewage) down to the river which is the border between South Africa and Lesotho. The sun was setting, there was the beginnings of a rainbow and it was very beautiful. There were a lot of children out playing in the muddy areas between the houses and we aroused a fair amount of interest but I was glad we managed to get back home before we lost the sun completely...not the sort of place you want to be after dark!

African sunsets are just beautiful and tonight's, being a cloudy day was amazing. The sky is so big over here and the whole area turns a beautiful shade of pink.

We all chopped veggies for a stir fry which Nell cooked and we finished the evening with some rounds of UNO till we could keep our eyes open no longer.

Monday tomorrow, the start of week number 2. We have plans but we will wait and see what the day brings. The alarm is set and I am sure sleep will soon come. Africa makes me sleep, the frogs make good background noise.

Till tomorrow, God bless

Jenny x