New Hair and Time Off

Hello from the Mrs.

It's been a long time since I've contributed to much of this, but as I am on the "summer break" for my studies at the moment, let me use this free time to catch up.

First of all, I have a new haircut. For most people this wouldn't be a big deal, for me, I've been sporting the "plain, long, brown" look for too long. Irine (my gorgeous Zimbabwean hairdresser) finally earned my trust and I let her have her way with me.

Fresh out of the salon: feeling a wee bit Carol Brady, but bearable.

From the side:

Day 2: still not too bad! More "Karen" from Will & Grace, less Brady.

From the side, so you can really get the layered effect.

Next up: time off!

We are heading down to the east coast of South Africa, on the border of Mozambique this friday, for our spring holiday. Staying in a nice lodge close to the beach where other people will feed us and clean up after us and bring us bellinis with little umbrellas in them. Finally! Some time alone, time to be spoiled, time to relax, and time to forget all about WORK. We'll be on the beach from Saturday to Friday, then off to Joburg for the big AUS vs SA rugby match, and then back in Gabs by Sunday. I am really, really looking forward to it.

Birds

As mentioned previously, we have recently become members of the local birdclub. For their website please click here. J2's family was so kind to pay our first years membership, which was a necassary push for us, we had been meaning to become members for a long time...

So far we have managed to join them on one of their trips, unfortunanely we brought our binocultars, instead of our camera, so no pictures. We did however receive this compilation of local birds from J. recently.

J1

photos (J1)

As promised in the previous blog, some photos of the horse safari:

Me on the horse called "Magic"
Jill and her horse "Amstel"
Hyenas
After the horse safari we had dinner in the restaurant, with Mopane worms on the menu!

This weekend we walked from Gabs to Gabane, something we have done on a few previous occasions. Gabane is approx 12 km from Gabs, and is a village which hosts quite a few bars. One of them does steaks and papa every Saturday and Sunday night, and there is nothing nicer then a cold beer and a big steak, after a long walk.

Mountain rest in Gabane.

J1

Spring (J1)

It is officially spring in Botswana since Friday. We can notice as well, temperatures during the day are getting up to 27 degrees C, and it does not get as cold anymore at nighttime. We have not had a fire in the fireplace for over a week. I guess this is a good thing, as our gardener tells me there is not more dead wood on our plot.....

What have we been up to in the last weeks? I think I will just summarize:

- I finished another part of my course last weekend, waiting for the results of my final assignment. Jill is also still waiting for her results, she finished her semester a few weeks ago.
- Loads of kennel related stuff
- Work, too much work.
- Visitors, but this was already explained in the previous post
- A horse safari in Mokolodi.
- A stargazing night.

There is probably more, I just can not think of it right now.

One last think, we have become members of the local birdlife club (thanks to the family H, who were so kind to sponsor our membership for the first year), and we went out on a birding trip with them a few weeks ago. It was really nice, we both enjoyed it and really want to get to know some more birds around us.

I will post some pictures during the week.

J1