Horseback riding

As soon as we had a car, we started looking into places for Arianna to ride.  We checked out two and they were both good, but she liked the place below because they do jumping (which she had started to do in Paraguay).  She's only riding once a week, but I think she's making good progress.  Just today her teacher asked her if she will want to ride in shows, and I think she will.  This is definitely one of the good things about living overseas for Arianna.  It's more expensive than riding was in Paraguay, but still much more reasonable than it is in the US. 

Here you can see Arianna riding a circuit that the teacher had set up for the class. 

.

US Dollars

 This is what we often get in change when we go to the store:  the rattiest looking US dollars you have ever seen.  Of course, they'd be out of circulation in the US, which is why they are the rattiest ones you've ever seen.  Below you see it in contrast to the new variety (which we are fortunate enough to receive from the bank at the US embassy:

Another interesting fact about the US currency here is that there is an abundance of two dollar bills.  Our girls had never seen one before they arrived!  They certainly have now since whenever I have one I like to give it to them for lunch (they are usually as ratty as the one dollar bills, though you can also get new $2 bills at the embassy).

Ok, so groceries are in US dollars, but there is no change.  Soooo, what happens when your total is not exactly in dollars (say, $88.24)?  Well, you can get a receipt for the change to be used later.  BUT, you can only use it in the exact store that you received it (not another of the same chain).  And, it is written in fading ink, so if you don't use it soon, it's useless in a few weeks.  The closest store has a store card, so at least there I can put the change on the card (and use it the next time).  But again, it's only good at that Spar - not at any of the other Spars in town.

Every once in a while you get a South African coin for change.  So I started to wonder if I could use a US coin to avoid the lack of change problem.  I tried to use a US coin on a small purchase (a drink that was $1.10) and was told "we don't accept that."  So, I just gave her the dollar and she didn't complain.  Usually if it's 5 cents or less over or under no one pays attention.  And one hardware store we go to will not charge the change even if it's more.   But the grocery stores usually do and I've gotten tired of carrying around all the little receipts that fade.  So the other thing you can do with your "change" is buy something.  Usually it's grocery bags for me.  Since they cost money, I have started using my cloth bags more (I know, I should be anyways).  But then we actually run low on plastic bags (our housekeeper uses them for garbage) and sometimes they're handy for carrying meat or leaving in the car for when my cloth ones disappear.

Moving Day

Since it's been almost a month since our shipment arrived, I thought I'd better get some pictures up.  As you can imagine, after living several months without your "stuff", it is very exciting when it finally arrives.  As usual, not much notice is given and I was out at a grocery store one morning when I got the call from John that they were ready to deliver our HHE (Household Effects - the "big" shipment).  They were to arrive around noon.

So, I went home and told our housekeeper that we would be working with the movers that afternoon.  Of course, around noon, I got another call saying it would be two.  So, we sat around waiting (I on the internet and Juliet finding smaller tasks since she had put the major cleaning on hold).  Sometime after 2 a guy finally shows up but he needs a rake to try to lift some wires so the truck can get in!!  Well, after some back and forth, it was decided that the truck was too big to get over the small entrance to our street (there's a little "bridge" over a gully).  So, the container would need to be unloaded onto a smaller truck:

Big Truck!

Smaller truck...

Opening the first crate

How they get the empty crate off the truck:

Driving the first load to the house

I think it took about 3 smaller truck loads to get all the stuff from the crates to the house.  The funny thing was that each girl arrived home on the bus (at different times since Arianna had an activity) and never saw the big truck.  Abigail was wondering where I was when she got home (I was out on the road observing the unloading).  A little while later she found out when the boxes began to be moved in. The whole process took a few hours.  And then the work of unpacking began.  But I worked on it for a week or two and everything in mostly in it's place.  We still need to have the pictures hung, but it's nice to have our stuff!!

It still took another two weeks to receive the "faster" air shipment (the dilemma I wrote about earlier), but that too finally arrived and it was all in good shape.  Some birds had some fun on my cello crate:

But at least the contents were in good shape!

A view of our front porch after we had already gotten rid of most of the boxes!  

We are waiting for our final shipment which we're told is in Harare.  It's our consumables.  Here's what they looked like before we packed them:

Fortunately, we have a lot of storage space in our kitchen!  

We will be glad when the unpacking is done for a while!  But now that our stuff is here, we are ready for you to come visit.  You might want to wait until the elections are over, but Zim is a beautiful place so come on over!

Monkeys - Zim's Squirrels

 Can you see the bottom end of this guy leaping into the tree?

Another acrobatic leap off of the swing!

When I first started seeing monkeys in the places we traveled I thought it was the coolest thing.  But it didn't take long to find out that the locals viewed them as somewhat of a pest (I remember finding this out about the green monkeys in Barbados).  One time upon arriving home to our house in WV and seeing the squirrels running around our "city" backyard, I realized that in many parts of the world, the monkeys are no more glamorous than squirrels.  And still, when I do see them out and about when I visit other parts of the world, I think they're pretty cool.  Maybe it's because they are so playful.  These guys were hanging around the playground at the upscale shops in a rustic setting that are on the outskirts of Harare.  The girls and I went out there the day that they had off from school and although we didn't buy anything we enjoyed seeing the monkeys and having afternoon "tea".  By the way, I haven't seen any squirrels here (but there are plenty of what I call geckos in our yard).

Family Fun Day

There are plenty of things for us to do here in Harare and one of these days we will have to try to plan a trip out of the city because we hear that there's a lot to do all around Zimbabwe.  In the meantime, here are a few photos of Family Fun Day at Harare International School which took place a couple of weeks ago.  We only went for a couple of hours at the end of the day since we had things to do in the morning, but there was a good turnout of people - even the older kids were there.  Besides the water slides below, there were games all day, a 5K run and food for sale.  I think next year we might try to make a day of it.  Lots of families took picnic food and spread out blankets on the lawn.

Arianna volunteered to help so she "manned" the water slide for quite a while.

Here's Abigail with her friend Nuna (on left) and Nuna's sister.  

Jacaranda trees

Before they drop all their petals, I want to post a couple of photos of these amazing trees.  Next year I'll try to get some of the downtown streets that are lined on either side with these.

We have a couple of them on our own property - I'm going to try to post some more photos soon!

Car photos

Well, I said I'd post car photos after Abigail got back from her trip.  That was a month ago!  I guess the moving phase is over and I'm back to the pace of "real life" (maybe having to do with having a car!).

Here they are:

 CRV

Fit

There wasn't a lot of selection to chose from, hence the boring color options (and they're the same color as the Rav4 we sold earlier this year!).  Color wasn't really a big issue for us - we're glad they work well.  It's remarkable how many comments we get on them - most cars here are quite a bit older.