Home Page: Willmore Adventures in South Africa
Our visas, rather frustratingly, were delayed both at the South African Embassy and with the courier company. But despite this, we ended up having a very special five week stay at my mum's, seeing family and friends, before taking off on our African Adventure.
The flights via Dubai were seamless and we arrived on Thursday 18th October to a beautiful sunny day in Africa. Laurence and his mum, Lynn, met us at the airport and we headed to our new home in a suburb of Johannesburg called Lonehill. We live in a cluster of 10 houses surrounded by high walls and a gate. (The cluster is called Bishopstone.) It sounds a bit alien to the British psyche to live like this but what I have discovered is that it has created a safe environment where all the children can walk in and out of each others houses as they please. Little 5 year old Brighton pops in most days to play transformers with Joel. I imagine the UK in the 1950's used to be a bit like this. I really like it.
Within 24 hours of landing, the girls were in school! School begins at 7.40 am so it's a 6 o'clock start for us now. Mornings are not my forte but I'm actually enjoying being up so early. And who needs an alarm clock when the dawn chorus begins at 3 am! Elowen was very anxious before starting, but the second she met her new teacher and her new class mates she was very happy and has in fact won the 'Star of the Week Award' for settling in so well. Amelie is our cheese to Elowen's chalk. She was so excited to start, really helping Elowen with her nerves, but was understandably overwhelmed by all the new people when we actually got there. She is really loving school though but says she is going to have to learn African to understand what everyone is saying, (they're all speaking English, hee hee). The school song is in English, Afrikaans and Isizulu and the girls are learning Afrikaans and Isizulu in class.
Little Joel has visited a preschool and will start on Monday (29th). The preschool have chickens and ducks roaming around, and instead of rocking horses they have rocking giraffe and zebra!
Laurence is enjoying working from home and not having the commute to London. He is also loving having his family around him and we have already had his siblings here for a braai and seen all 4 of his parents. They now have a turn at being more hands on with grand parenting (good luck!).
I'm really enjoying seeing Laurence in his home country. It's funny how culturally we are very similar yet our experiences growing up have been quite different. Here are a few things that I have experienced with him this past week...
1. A loud boom will follow when the lights go out in a storm. (The only time the lights go out unexpectedly in the UK for me is when I've knocked the fuse box when putting the clothes horse in the cupboard under the stairs!)
2. When a house has no guttering the rain comes down in waterfalls from the roof.
3. A lizard drops it's tail if it feels threatened. We had one in our kitchen and on trying to get it out it's tail fell off and the tail continued to wriggle. It's methodology worked as I was left staring at the tail! (It grows a new one).
So, a week in, and we already feel quite settled. We have experienced school, preschool, church, family, and even seen friends Jo, Daniel and Matthew from Southampton. Knowing that we have such loving friends and family in the UK brings great comfort in these early days in Africa. Lots of love to you all.
Jess x
Next post: Settling in...
