This one’s for you, Mom!

Of all the interesting and exciting adventures that I have been having, every other email from my mother asks for the details of my existence here in South Africa, so here goes. I make no promises for riveting stories or amazing insights… merely a description of my daily life on the opposite side of the world from home. I love you, Mom!

I live in a house. It’s a little one story abode with five bedrooms, a bath, and a kitchen. If I were feeling generous, I would include the bathroom out the back, but I’m not. It’s just a toilet with a light bulb and the “shower” is a faucet out of the wall with a tree stump to stand on. I’ve been here two and a half weeks and I have yet to go to the bathroom out there. My plan is to make it another eight weeks! We each have our own bedrooms, which are virtually identical. Sanford’s is just a titch larger, but that’s because Amanda will be here for two weeks. (I say, with all love for Amanda, she brought more luggage for two weeks than any of us did for ten, so Sanford was probably smart getting the larger room!) We have comfortable beds, although we had no sheets initially, and the shower—one of the best I’ve had in the world, bar none. We have very hot water, I’ve actually scalded myself, and terrific water pressure. I am in shower heaven! The kitchen has all of the necessary appliances for us to cook our own food, which has been terrific. We are eating well… and generally pretty healthy. We also have a cat, Boots, who loves Ryan to death and is keeping me from being totally lost without my kitties.

Our house is in an area of Cape Town known as Observatory. In 1820, the Royal Observatory was built in this area of Cape Town, hence the name. We are very close to the University of Cape Town and consequently, the area has always been known as a “gray,” in which all races have commonly mixed. Obs is generally a pretty safe part of town, and our street is nice in particular. There are, however, four layers of locks between the street and our bedrooms: a locked, exterior gate/wall, a gate on the front door, the front door, and our bedroom doors all lock. I’ll post another time regarding our experiences with security… It’s been interesting.

We shop at a pretty common grocery store… It is arranged differently and, of course, all of the brands are different, but we can usually find, eventually, what we are looking for. We do our laundry at a laundromat up the street on Mondays. And there are a variety of other shops pretty close by. In addition, the Porter House office in Rodebosch is in the middle of a business district. I work at the Rosebank office, which is actually Jane and Norton’s house, but I can walk pretty quickly from one office to the other if I need anything.

I am posting pictures of our house, but I don’t have pictures of either office or the city, yet, but I will put them in this set of pictures, so check back again if you are curious.

Always,

Sarah