Christmas in South Africa

It still seems weird to think that we just celebrated Christmas due to this hot weather, but indeed we did, and so here is a little brief update on what we have been up to. Even though we would have loved to be home with our families and friends at this time - we had a great time with our South African family. The Salida's. Mark, Marchelle and their two daughters, Simone and Roxzanne have become our family here and we love spending time with them. We went over to their house on Christmas Eve, it was so nice we just hung out, played cards and even managed to have a small braai - which was really yummy!

Christmas Day morning came nice and early at 6am as Bob's family called on skype and it was so nice to hear everyones voice. I layed in bed as Bob talked to everyone, but because we don't have a headset the sound comes from the laptop - so it was nice to hear from them all. I did get out of bed at the end and talked to Mom for a minute or two. After we spoke to them, Bob and I started on the stuffing. See about a month ago, Bob and I decided we were going to try and make turkey and stuffing on Christmas Day. So, we got the recipe from my Dad. We started early because we had church at 8:30 and then we were heading back to the Salidas. After we made and stuffed the turkey we headed to church. It was a nice quiet little service and there wasn't many people there at all. After church was done, Bob went over to the Salidas to get the turkey in the oven and I went back to the house just to relax.

Around 12:30 Bob picked me up and we headed over to the Salidas for lunch. It was such a great meal - Marchelle made so much food and they had also invited four other guys over that didn't have anywhere else to go on Christmas Day. (three from Zimbabwe and one from Ghana) It was such a nice time. The turkey and stuffing turned out really good. After we ate the meal we just hung out and relaxed. We ended up watching the Christmas movie Elf. Although I am not sure how much of it I watched..LOL

Oh...the one thing I was going to let everyone know that we bought a car about a week ago. We ended up getting a 96 Jetta. It's been really nice having one, especially the last week - going to and from the grocery store and not having to worry about Mark, getting him to drive us around. I still haven't driven it and I think I need to do some practicing as I haven't driven on this side of the road yet. Maybe I will take a picture of it and post it so you can all see.

What else? Oh, yeah - Smallville! We have been watching so much Smallville the last week. See a while ago Bob bought season 7 of Smallville and he planned to watch it last week. But...I haven't seen all of the other seasons, so I wanted to get caught up. So, I started at season 1! I am now happy to say I am almost done season 4! I am actually enjoying them too. Some of them are a little far fetched, but I have been enjoying it.

So I am not sure what today holds, but I'm pretty sure it has Smallville and relaxing! Also one of the things Bob bought me for Christmas was a 500 piece puzzle and so I started a little bit of it yesterday and maybe can do more of it today. Also I think my parents are calling today as Mum worked day shift yesterday. Bob's Mom called this morning (last night for them!) - it is so nice now that Jimmy got her hooked up on skype. Thanks Jim and thanks Mom - it's great to hear from you!