Dollies and Donuts

Having a snack outside the Classroom

As mentionend before we are quite busy. There are more things to organise than one would think. Obviously both of us are worrying about the work situation back home, but a little by little it seems to come around. But the biggest news is the little kitten that we bought, a Norwegian Forest Cat. He's almost 3 weeks old and called Cozy Powell. Have a look at the breeder's home page, it's the One Hit Wonder litter, born in the beginning of May. He's so sweet and we can fetch him in the end of July.

http://kornsvede.se/?p=1971

On Friday, Elle had to bring her doll to school. The theme of the day was "Dollies and Donuts". The aim with the day was to bond with the girls in the other Grade 0 class. They had High Tea together. We sent the camera with Elle and she took some pictures of the school grounds. Since Elle doesn't own a proper doll, she brought her favourite toy animal, "Choppie the Zebra". On Monday she brought him for show and tell. He has quite some stories to tell, he's been all over the place. She told the class about that one time when she dropped him in turtoise poo in Mauritius. Well, little girls always find poo very funny so show and tell was a hit.

Gr 0 building.

Sunday was my birthday, the 36th.We were invited to Lynn and Warren for breakfast. The Freels, Buchans and Zetterlinds were also there. Lynn had made a lovely breakfast. We all contributed, we brought a typical Swedish strawberry cake and chocolate balls. It was a lovely day and we all stayed for lunch. Clear skies the whole day and in the sun it was so nice. Eventhough I'm getting closer to 40, it doesn't feel too bad, I'm very happy in my life, thanks to family and friends. :)

Breakfast in the sun in Matthysen's garden.

The girls had their own table.

Opening presents.

Elle and Ashley are having a late lunch!

the Last Quiet Weekend

8,5 weeks left. The count down is a fact, with excitement, fear and sadness. In ten weeks time we will be sitting in our apartment in Stockholm feeling like our ex-pat years in SA never happened. At least we will have summer, this morning it was really cold when I took Elle to school. At the same time, we miss our family and friends in Sweden terribly and I'm excited about starting to work again. We have decided to get a kitten for Elle, renovate our kitchen and buy a new car. I'm also thrilled about the thought of strollingaround the city, I've really, really missed the city, there's definitely something special about Stockholm.

This weekend we busied ourselves with a little bit of cleaning up and sorting out our cupboards and closets. It's amazing how much stuff you manage to get in two years time. We didn't have any engagements this Saturday nor Sunday which was great. Elle was a bit bored, we needed to entertain her as well. The last weekends have been filled birthday parties or dinners with friends. The coming 5 weekends we will be busy entertaining friends, it's going to be a lot of saying goodbye. Shame, leaving such dear friends...

We move out in the end of June and will spend the last 2 weeks in a guest house. To our friends we just want to hint that we gladly will accept dinner invitations! :)

We took some pictures at the last b-day party Elle went to. Here are her best friends from school!

Elle, Mikal and Gemma. Mpho is missing

from the gang from DSG.

Fish River Canyon

Coffee break

This what the roads looked like sometimes

After many k's on more bad gravel roads, we arrived to Fish River Canyon, only to discover another flat tyre. Fred was not happy so I left him alone, got us checked in to our little cottages. The small cottages were built into the rocks and made the stones and rocks a part of the furniture. We felt like stepping in to the Bat Cave and we gave our cottage that name.

The Lodge

The Bat Cave

We didn't have time to enjoy any activities but instead enjoyed a great dinner, I think it was the best during the whole trip. Since we were in the middle of the Namibian waste land it was pitch black after sunset and we equipped everyone with torches or headlights. The main reason for this was to avoid all the nasty crickets when we strolled back to our cave.

Elle really enjoyed the climbable decor

After a good night's sleep and a hearty breakfast in the Bat Cave we left for the canyon. The Fish River canyon is the second largest in the world, after the Grand Canyon. There isn't really much to do there so we didn't stay long and the next destination was Upington South Africa. This was the last stop. On Sunday we were back in Centurion, tired, with loads of laundry but very happy to be home.

The Fish River Canyon

Sossusvlei - The Desert

A desert and a babe!

So the dirt roads begin...

Disgusting Cricket

The roads from here on were all gravel roads. It was quite tricky driving, the rain had washed away parts of the road and made them bumpy. We passed incredibly beautiful scenery, mountains, grass plains and something like small canyons. On the roads at some places we saw disgusting big insects, crickets apparently, big as a fist with spider like legs.

We made a lunch stop in Solitaire. In the midddle of nowhere with a coffee shop, a bakery and petrol station. The fresh apple strudel was heaven. Fred and Stefan took lovely pictures.

The lodge was called "A Little Sossuss Lodge". It was a nice lodge owned by an Afrikaans family from Bloemfontein. The little cottage was sweet and had a Camel Thorne tree just outside. I collected some of its seeds.

The next day we set out to Sossusvlei desert and the Dead Forest. The wind was harsch and we were a little bit afraid it wouldn't be a good day for taking pictures. When we arrived to the first parking (for normal vehicles) the sand storm was a fact. We had our breakfast in the car, otherwise we would have had it seasoned with sand. We still wanted to proceed on the 4 by 4 tracks even though these cars are not well suited beeing a 4 wheel drive after all. They did well but we were scared, if we got stuck who would help us? The rangers at the lodge told us to keep to tracks at the left and always stay in the tracks - and never stop! That's what we did. I cramped on to the belt and held my breath. Fred and Stefan did a good job and we made it both ways. Stefan manage to take a picture of our car just before coming out of the 4 by 4 tracks. I hope he will publish it on their blog.

We walked approx a kilometre in the dunes to get to the Dead Forest. The wind wasn't bad there at all and it was so worth it to come. Elle and Ivar ran around not at all bothered by the sand whipping their faces. The wind was cold but when you got away from it the sun was merciless. It was hot, after all. We've never seen colours like this, the blue blue sky, the red sand and the naked old trees... marvellous! We also made a short stop at Dune 45, some members of the group climbed up but the Wincents stayed behind!

That same late afternoon we went on a sundowner drive. We went up a hill close to the lodge for drinks and a stunning sunset.

Table Mountain Namibia

Destination Swakopmund

On the road again and this time we were heading south west to Swakopmund. We passed small towns in lush thick bush, soon to be replaced by sand. Swakop lies on the coast surrounded by desert. It's beautiful but not very welcoming. The town has 20 000 permanent inhabitants, during high season probably the double. This time of year there were only German tourists. All personal in the shops spoke German, all the signs were in German and all the restaurants served German food.

We rented a big house with a cottage and stayed for two nights. The first night we went to Kückis, a very simple pub/bar restaurant. We had a nice meal and I enjoyed a big serving of sauerkraut. When we came back to the house we had a flat tyre. Fred had a small fit and was expecting the worse, it was going to take the whole day to fix so no sight seeing for us. Well, the next day we quickly found a tyre fixing place and they fixed it within an hour. Miriam and I used that time warming up for good shopping. We found some things to bring back.

In the middle of town there were a few pedestrian streets with an oldish central european look. It looked cosy and after some more shopping we eventually sat down in a coffee shop and had lunch.

In the afternoon we let the children enjoy the park, they had a lot of energy to let go of. We had some drinks by the sea shore. Later that night we had dinner at the Light House Restaurant.

It's now a reataurant.

Since we stayed only two nights, there weren't really any time for camel riding, quadbikes or sandboarding which are activities Swakop is famous for. We'll have to do it another time.

We've heard so much about this town but were a little bit disappointed. It's cute but also very touristy. Our family has fallen in love with the african bush, this was more Africa trying to look like Europe. Though it was very pleasant strolling around town and look at various Namibian crafts and art.

Lots of arts and craft shops.

Sunset in Swakop