This is Africa, Man. Well, Kind of..

Here are some random tid-bits about living in South Africa that have been floating around in my mind. Here goes:

• I keep wanting to write a post called, "Go Green: Move to South Africa" because we save all of our peanut butter jars and use them on our counter for storing crasins, oats, banana chips, nuts--pretty much anything that you'd store in your kitchen. Dan made me a spice rack out of a large cracker box, we don't own a car, and we hang all of our laundry to dry.
• There are no hurricanes, tornadoes, and thunderstorms here. I've literally heard thunder twice.
• South Africa is not "Real Africa," as people here talk about "going to Africa," and being missionaries "in Africa"
• People have a hard time spelling correctly: realise, favourite, colour, centre, recongise, aluminium (al-eww-min-EE-um), programme, pyjamas, aeroplane... ;)
• In the winter here I wear multiple layers of clothing at all times: socks, covered by big wool socks, covered by slippers.. Tank top, t-shirt, long sleeved t-shirt, sweatshirt, and maybe even a scarf
• In winter our whole family blow-dries their hair--including me, if you can believe that!
• Child safety is sadly a complete joke: no medicine bottles have child-safety tops meaning they can easily be unscrewed by a toddler; carseats don't have the top armpit-height buckle, not to mention the multitude of times I've seen kids unbuckled climbing all over the back seats of cars--or worse, I once saw a 6 or 7-year-old kid holding a sleeping infant in the front seat while being driven around town presumably by a parent. It makes me sick to my stomach.
• Everything takes forever here. Dan's computer was ordered in January and arrived in March. Seriously, was it on a boat from China that first stopped in California before coming to South Africa?????
• Food prices are both great and terrible. $0.50 for a 1-lb bag of cherry tomatoes, while you can pay $10 for a 1-lb bottle of Kikkoman soy sauce--imported from Australia; gas is somewhere around $5+/gallon so please don't ever complain about gas prices to me again; clothes can be very expensive, as is electricity
• Electricity is pay-as-you-go, meaning that you buy it before using it. This is actually pretty handy because I find that we are much more conscientious about electricity usage
• For all of my complaining about the weather, it sounds like this has been an extra cold and extra horrible winter. By Chicago's standards, it's been child's-play. 
• There's no NetFlix here--people still go to video rental stores which is such a pain. Internet is paid for by the MB or GB, meaning that you don't have unlimited internet for one flat-rate fee like you do in the States. And the speed is excruciatingly slow.

This post wasn't actually meant to be me complaining about South Africa. It's a gorgeous place, and nearly every time we go for a bike ride Dan and I tell each other that the landscape reminds us of a fairytale. 

Eggs from the grocery store are from real chickens--check out the feather that's still stuck to this one! ;)

Favooooourite!

Winter in the Western Cape. Not so bad with central heat. Pretty much torture without. (Thankfully it seems like we're coming out of the worst of it.)