The mystery of the lost bunnies...

I've written before about our bunnies and my last story was the battle of the bunnies, you can read again here. So we had the mother with the 5 babies, and just before we left for Holland to celebrate Xmas we let them all out in the yard. Our gardener would take care of them during our break. We started a few days before we left, so we could see for ourselves how it would go.

Well, they were as happy as a bunny can be!! They were jumping from joy to walk and run freely around our quite big garden, so much to discover! It was so cute to see. Winter with her 5 babies enjoying Paradise!! We had so much fun to sit in the yard and just look at them!

But then after the first night, we discovered only 4 babies... we looked and looked everywhere, no 5th bunny to be found. That is weird, maybe he/she is hiding in the burrow we thought and let's wait till tomorrow. The next morning we still couldn't find her and now we are worried, but it is time to go on vacation, so we tell Betias our gardener to keep an eye on them!

After 2 days in Holland we are getting a call from him, another one is gone!! Now we have only 3 left. We are speculating and guessing how can that be.... an owl or a cat that is taking our bunnies? But by this time they are almost as big as the mother and the adults never got eaten by predators?? Weird, but we give Betias the advice to put all the baby bunnies into the cage again, till we are back from our vacation.

After a few days home we decide to let the 3 out again, they are the same size now as the mother and we are hoping for the best. A few days it is OK, but then suddenly the 3rd one is gone as well. Devastated but not knowing what to do we talk to the girls and tell them the rules of nature. Survival of the fittest! We can't keep the babies, who are not babies anymore forever in the cage. So we decide to keep the last 2 out with the mother in our garden. And if they get eaten, well, then so be it! It wasn't an easy task to decide, but what we were doing the last few days wasn't easy either. We left them out of the cage during the day and then at night before sunset we would catch them and put them in the cage for the night. Well, this catching took us most days 45 minutes to 1 hour, that gets boring fast too!!

Mother Winter with one of her babies Amarula.



Luckily these 2 which are left over, are we guess now, fast and smart enough to run away from either an owl or cat that is roaming our garden at night. Because mother Winter and her 2 survivors are with us now since we are back from our Xmas vacation. We are happy with the family of 3 and hope we can keep them for a long time!!

This whole bunny story was quite the ordeal. We had 9 in total and now we ended up with 3... An important life lesson for JJ and Jezz. First the pregnancy, the feeding and taking care of the babies, seeing them growing up so fast, the attack of the others, then the disappearing of 3 babies. Life is not easy for a bunny ;-(

I had enough drama with these bunnies. I hope they just will live in peace in our garden without giving us too much trouble anymore.....

Have a FAB Friday!
Mireille

Shwe-Shwe Poppis

A few weeks ago I bought a cute little hand-made doll named a Shwe-Shwe Poppi. The Shwe Shwe Poppis Co-operative Project is a community-based doll production project in Soweto which provides beneficiaries with skills and a sustainable income. The dolls are adapted from drawings made by kids at the Zola crèche in Soweto, one of the biggest townships here in South Africa and are sold locally through accredited dealers and internationally throughout the EU and the US. After the child's doll is sold, (s)he receives a royalty payment for the ‘design'. A trust account is opened with these funds and the children can pay for school and university fees. The project started as a small, informal charity-based project which could not expand due to market failures that hindered the business accessing finance to expand production capacity. ComMark's involvement in addressing this failure has allowed the business to flourish.

The one I bought is in the first picture on the left, although it is a bit different. Each one is unique and mine is made by a little girl named Philisiwe. The poppi (doll) is based on her drawing. She loves to play buddy with her friends. Her favorite food is rice and chicken and yellow is her best color! This is written on the tag and bag you get with the doll.

It is such a cute fair trade gift!!

Here are some of the dolls the children draw and the mother's and grandmother's sew together, it is really a hand-made product and made from Shwe Shwe fabric, the South African fabric, hence the name: Shwe-Shwe poppi.



Here you see the ladies making them just on a kitchen table and the other picture is the label that is on each bag that comes with the doll or poppi as they say here in Africa. Of course on each doll is a different picture.



Since I have so many fabrics in my sewing room I am thinking of doing a similar project with local kids and mother's here as well. I am already researching who to do it with. More about this project and other ideas I have later!

Have a great day y'all!
Mireille

My heart goes out to all the children & orphans of Haiti!

I am thinking of all the children in Haiti all the time, children who are lost and hungry, maybe even hurt and walking around without any parents or family in Haiti, and it breaks my heart! Also thinking of the orphans who are waiting to be adopted. Must be a terrifying experience for all these precious children and adopted parents!! What if you were in a position that you are on the waiting list or already matched with a child from Haiti? How devastating you must be! You want your child as soon as possible.... catch a plane and get the child yourself, but of course that is not even possible, but the feeling that rages inside you must be just heartbreaking!!



I found this article here and wanted to share it with you:

Haiti Q&A: The ethics of disaster adoption

Q. How many orphans are there in Haiti?

A. There were already about 380,000 orphaned children in Haiti before the earthquake. The Caribbean island, which has a population of about 10 million, may now have more than a million children without parents.



A. Adoption agencies around the world have been flooded by enquiries from the public about adopting Haitian orphans. The Joint Council on International Children's Services (JCICS), a US advocacy organisation, says it has received 150 enquiries about Haitian adoption in the past three days, compared with about 10 a month usually. Some children – who were already in the final stages of being adopted by overseas parents when the quake struck – have already been airlifted out of Haiti, and the US has eased restrictions as a humanitarian gesture, as have France and Canada.

A chartered Dutch plane will arrive in Haiti today to airlift 109 more children, most of whom have already been matched with families in the Netherlands but whose adoptions have now been fast-tracked. Meanwhile, 53 orphans have already been flown to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Indiana-based Kids Alive International, which runs orphanages around the world, is expected to take 50 Haitian orphans to group homes in the Dominican Republic. The Catholic Church in Miami has asked the US government to allow thousands of orphaned Haitians to settle in America, in a scheme modelled on an initiative for Cuba, Operation Pedro Pan, in the Sixties. Under that scheme, 14,000 unaccompanied Cuban children, offspring of parents who opposed Fidel Castro's government, began new lives in the US.

Q. Is it ethical to relocate children from disaster zones?

A. There are honourable precedents such as the Kindertransport programme during the Second World War, which saved 10,000 Jewish children by bringing them from Nazi Germany to Britain. But children's advocacy groups warn against mass airlifts of youngsters overseas in the wake of natural disasters. They cite the 2004 tsunami and the Kashmir earthquake in 2005, arguing that the clamour surrounding children created a legal and ethical free-for-all.

Given the chaotic state of communications in Haiti right now, a big fear is that some children may be shipped overseas without proper checks to see if any extended family members are alive.

Q. Could any of them be evacuated to safety, or even to a better life abroad?

As for the impact on small children, some experts believe foreign adoptions, or being taken into care in an unfamiliar environment, could be psychologically traumatic. SOS Children's Villages, the children's charity has issued a warning that uprooting children in such situations can be stressful and unsettling, and lead to long-term psychological problems for infants who are expected to grow up in an alien culture.

"When you see any child who has lost their family on the news, your natural instinct is to want to go and pick them up and cherish them," it said. "Sometimes international adoption is the right solution for a child, but far more often it is not."

Adoption expert Professor René Hoksbergen, of Utrecht University in the Netherlands, also warns that the hurried evacuation of children may send the wrong signal, encouraging people to assume that children in chaotic situations can be easily relocated. Some of the children evacuated from Cuba under Operation Pedro Pan ended up stranded in remote parts of the US, far from other Cubans, and have since spoken of how the experience scarred them.

Q. Is there a better way?

A. Charities argue that it is more important to register all children, trace any extended family members, and work to rebuild the country rather than removing youngsters from their homeland. Unicef says its priority is to ensure that children affected by the earthquake get the help they need. "While both airlifts and new adoptions are based on valid concerns and come from an obviously loving heart, neither option is considered viable by any credible child welfare organisation," says the JCICS. "Bringing children into the US either by airlift or new adoption during a time of national emergency can open the door for fraud, abuse and trafficking."

Article by Sarah Cassidy, photo credits by Jan Sochor.

Please help Haiti, there are many different organisations out there who need your donation!

Mireille

New Year's Eve in Holland

We celebrated New Year's Eve with our friends Marisca & Martijn. They are very good friends of us and we had a blast. Another couple Petra & Norbert joined us as well for the evening, so in total we were with 6 adults and 6 children. M&M have a boy of almost 4 and a baby girl of 6 months.
P&N have 2 girls, age 7 and 4, so JJ and Jezz had enough company to have fun as well!

In the Netherlands traditionally there are many great TV and music programs, so a lot of people stay home and celebrate with some food and drinks. A traditonal dish is OLIEBOLLEN and APPELFLAPPEN, of course champagne and some other drinks and snacks. At twelve we go outside and shoot of your own fire works. Standing and shooting away, greeting the neighbors who also come outside, we just had a fantastic and traditional New Year's Eve. How fun to do that with some good 'old' friends from Holland!

The afternoon leading up to it we went bowling and we did Cosmic Bowling, that is in the dark and everything is glow-in-the-dark, so much fun with disco music blarng through the bowling alley. The kids and we had so much fun!!
Here some pictures of the events:

Jezz, JJ, Jillian and Justin, the 4 J's ;-)



Marisca, Dirk and Martijn being silly, because I was the big winner of the adults and that was hard to handle for the guys LOL!



Jasmine was the big winner of us all, she had the best score of everybody!! The kids couldn't throw the ball in the gutter, it was protected, so that's why...



Juliet a bit struggling with the big bowling balls...



Dressed to party, all the kids are ready for the big night, none of them wanted to take a nap and stayed up till 2am!!



Sofie, JJ and Anna



The princesses of the night :-) Anna, Jezz and JJ



The girls & Justin sipping children's champagne... but mommy this is just apple juice says Jezz ;-) You can't fool these kids anymore...



Norbert & Dirk, good old buddies!



We had some good times, lots of booz, old memories, because all of us lived on the Canary islands on Tenerife a long time ago and worked in the tourism industry together. We talked about those crazy times when we were young and beautiful.. haha!! And now all married and having children.... Time flies!

Have a good one!
Mireille

Slowly getting back into the groove of things...

It is the 15th already and this will be my second post of the year..... not a great start here huh? I am sorry but I have a hard time getting into my normal routine! I hope from now on to be a bit better and start blogging on a more regular basis, just because I like it! I like to post and I LOVE to read your blogs as well. I love to read the comments, makes me think and I like the creative process that blogging brings with it. And also I really like that connection I have with you all, from all over the world. I know so many people in every continent that I keep in touch with through this FDD blog, so I don't want to loose you guys by being a bad blogger, so hang in there I am BACK!!

Let me first show you some pictures I made during our vacation in the Netherlands, there are not many, because we only took our tiny camera, since the middle size was stolen and I don't like to schlepp the bigger one around too much. But the outcome of the smaller is not that great.. so here just a few snapshots....

The girls got skeelers for Xmas, and since it was snowing outside they had to try them on in my dad's kitchen, a bit small but for the girls it was perfect ;-)

All the children at the New Year's eve party: JJ, Jezz, Justin, Jillian, Sophie & Anna.


Me and my dad at his 70th Bday party!


My youngest brother Perry, and my mom with JJ and Jezz.



Dirk's side of the family: his sister Willeke and husband Martin, their daughters Nienke & Sanne, grandpa Sjoerd and boyfriend of Nienke; Aaron.



Our nieces, Nienke & Sanne with JJ & Jezz.



These pictures are all SOOC; straight out of camera, since I don't know how to work on my Mac that much yet....
Just a snapshot of our vacation in the Netherlands, or Holland as they call it mostly.

Have a great day y'all!
Mireille

HAPPY 2010!!

OK, maybe a little late but I wish everybody a really great New Year!! A much better year than last year if yours wasn't that wonderful. I can feel it this will be a good year for a lot of people!!

We are back into our ritme of school since today, so I have time to blog, am over my jet lag... I was in 3 continents and 4 countries these last 2 weeks, so for now I stay put for a short while :-) However, people who know me know that this won't be for long!!

We were in the Netherlands visiting our families for Xmas and some good friends for New Years. We really had a good time, celebrating my cousin's Jesse 9th Bday bash on the 24th, celebrating Xmas and my father's Bday on the 25th, celebrating and having a feast of a dinner with Dirk's sister on the 26th and on the 27th a big Bday bash for my dad and some of his friends and colleagues because he turned 70! So a lot of food, meeting friends and family, last minute shopping in Holland, celebrating for the first time in 11 years Xmas in the Netherlands!! Fun, but COLD, WINDY, RAINY, so... probably it will take another decade before we return to Holland to celebrate Xmas... rather go in spring or summer....

Funny, they say the Dutch are rude or blunt, direct and open and normally I don't notice that so much, since I am Dutch myself... but I guess I've changed and adapted a bit to more different ways because I was pretty surprised myself about the directness of the Dutch people this time around. I've sent about 120 Xmas cards to all over the world, which I do every year. It is my only contact in paper form that I keep up as my tradition, and normally I get nice comments about my cards or Thank You's from people that I knew from the past and are still in my contact list but they are surprised they are still there. Most people really enjoy a real card these days... which I do myself as well... so I make an effort to create a funky card every year. Not the usual Xmas scene, too normal for me :-) so I start thinking about this around August, theme, colors etc.. etc..

Well, you have seen my card and you know what I am talking about... so here are some comments of Dutch people... no need to mention names, just sharing their comments: "I don't like the card, a bit creepy with that 3rd eye"..... and: "You are exploiting your children too much!" Not a Thank You for the card, although I prefer a much simpler theme, more Xmassy... NO, just a blunt/rude comment, not even a side comment, nothing else, just that! On top of that, these people didn't send us a card... I guess this is the last year that I will send them one too!

How many people send a Xmas card with a picture of their children?? Is it that mine is just a bit more out of the box theme, or are all people exploiting their children when they send a Xmas card with their children/dog/cat on it?? Dutch people can be so negative or jealous that they are not able to create a unique card, I don't know what it is... but things like this makes me happy that I moved away!! Some people can never be happy for anybody else, always negative... I learned by living in the USA that: If you have nothing positive to say, don't say anything at all!! The Dutch people could learn a lesson from this!!

But enough about Xmas cards, it's a new year with new challenges, adventures, fun times ahead of us and I am looking forward to create a great year, have fun galore, travel to new places and some old but much loved places, like Thailand!!
Did I tell you that while the soccer season is going on here in June/July and Dirk is totally excited to go to 10 games, YES, he has tickets to 10 games. Which would mean I would sit alone, be stuck in traffic and have to deal with all the craziness I decided to go to Thailand with the girls for 8 weeks! Koh Samui and Bangkok here we come!! WHOA!!
The girls have 10 weeks summer (here winter) break and it is cold here, boring because everybody goes home so we are relaxing on a beach in Koh Samui. The girls will go to Thai school in the morning, so hopefully they will absorb some Thai language and culture, how nice is that??!!

Pictures I can't upload yet, I have a new Mac Book Pro and haven't installed the camera's on here yet... so you have to wait for that a bit more. I need Dirk's help for that, but he is traveling....

Glad to be back behind my computer again, I just read some of your blogs and updated on most of you again!
Have a great week!
Mireille

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!

I am leaving today for my trip to Holland and the USA. So I won't be blogging much...

I wish everybody a Joyful, Festive and Happy Holidays and a very Prosperous New Year!!

Since I couldn't make a decision which card, I printed them both!





Love, see you in 2010!!
Mireille

The battle of the bunnies...

As you know we have 5 baby bunnies. Last week they turned 8 weeks, so it was time to separate them from their mommy and introduce them to the other 3 adult rabbits we have. Which are their grandpa, grandma and auntie. First we put the cage with the baby bunnies on the grass, so the other ones could sniff them and get used to them. But the mother (Winter) we let out of the cage and walk freely around with her mom, dad and sister. Little did we know what horror story would unfold....

She got severely attacked by her mom, dad and sister!! We were shocked!! Fur was laying all over the garden and poor Winter had to run for her life! So needless to say, we didn't think a second to let the babies out... too dangerous! Hoping that the other 3 would calm down and slowly accepted Winter back into the group, but nothing was further from the truth. So I went to the pet shop to tell them my story and ask for advice... I mean they supplied me with the male rabbit to impregnate Winter, so they should know! He told me that once a rabbit goes away he/she can't EVER come back to this territory! So now he is telling me!! Why didn't he gave me this advice before I started this whole ordeal with creating a new family... people, I sometimes don't understand them! So I told him: "Why didn't you tell me this before??" Well... his answer was: "You never asked me." Yeah, because I didn't know, why would I ask questions if I don't know that the problem even exist!!

So I asked him, what should I do now? And the answer is: get rid of one of the 2 packs.. either the old 3 or the new family with the babies.... Needless to say which one the girls chose! So now I have 3 beautiful rabbits to give away, but all their friends want the baby ones.. no old ones!! So I am stuck with all these rabbits that nobody wants.... except my gardener Betias. I would love them for dinner he said! Yeah right, tell that to the girls!! hmmm... I need to find another solution, it would be devastating if JJ and Jezz would ever find out that they ended up as a Xmas dinner to some family in Diepsloot, the corrugated steel housing community here just a few miles from our house where he lives....

I guess we just won't tell them!! or maybe I can find another solution real soon!?
I hate this pet store owner and I am boycotting him by buying my supplies somewhere else!!

So either we save Winter the mother with her 5 babies who are 8 weeks old now....





Or... Venyl, the black father and Scamper, the mother...



and the auntie.. Spots?



Of course the choice for the girls is not that hard... but I feel sorry for the 3 ones, they are such a beautiful animals, but obviously they will kill each other if we would let them loose all NINE, so now we still have the new family with her mother in the cage again, waiting for a trial.... boohoo, I wish I didn't need to make this choice!! I will tell Betias that he needs to find a nice home for the 3 older ones! And since he is employed by us he has to listen!!

I hope you had a great weekend! It is really hot here in South Africa, some days even a bit too hot!

Ciao, Mireille

Sinterklaas kapoentje...

Sinterklaas and his helpers: Black Pete's were at school on Saturday, December 5th is
his birthday and the tradition goes then that he gives all the children a gift. So the girls were so excited to go to school on a Saturday :-)

They first had culture day in the morning for the Dutch school, so these children are only Dutch or Belgian. They made a drawing for Sinterklaas and practiced the songs again.

We were waiting and waiting, the kids in great anticipation of his arrival... how would he arrive this year?? Last year he came with horse and carriage, the year before in a fire truck and this year... in a car, since Americo his horse got his ankle strained... so the story goes :)

Here Jasmine and Juliet anxious waiting for Sinterklaas to arrive, with the drawing in their hands that they made for him.



The little ones even made a hat like black Pete, so cute :-)



Finally... there they come! A big roar of applause and singing Sinterklaas songs so he can hear from far away.



The kids are all excited when he steps out of the car!



First a welcome word and a small speech of Sinterklaas to all of the kids before the gift giving starts.



It goes by age, so the little ones get their gifts first, most of them so afraid that the mother had to come with them. Since the girls are 7 they have to wait a long time before they get their gift...



But then finally it is the turn of the 7 year olds and Black Pete is grabbing in his sack and there it is Jezz's turn...



She has to come and sit on Sinterklaas' lap and he hands her over her gift... what is in there??



Then it is JJ's turn, both get a 'scary book'. They had made a wish list and this was one of their wishes. So the girls are happy! Both the girls got a book by Enid Blyton with great adventure stories. A fabulous English writer!



So the week of putting their shoe in front of the chimney on a daily basis, getting small gifts and specific sweets for this occasion has finished. Sinterklaas is going back to Spain till next year. He chose a warmer location for his permanent residence than Santa Claus ;-) You can read about last years event here. See how the girls have grown in just 1 year!

And we can start concentrating on Xmas! Decorating the house a bit, not too much since we are in Holland for the Xmas break. My dad is turning 70 on Xmas day and we have decided to go to Holland and celebrate with both families! A first in 11 years!

Have a great Sunday!
Mireille

Xmas cards...

I am working on my Xmas cards and looking through my addresses realizing that I made quite some new friends through this wonderful world of blogging and moving to a new country. So there are a lot of you out there who I don't have a mailing address from. I would really love to send you a Xmas card, since that is almost the only snail mail that I am getting and loving to get, you probably feel the same.
By the way: I got this idea from my blogging friend Missy; she writes a wonderful blog about her life and in particular showing the most beautiful pictures of her sister Paige who is adopted from China I believe. See here.

This is a test/warm-up picture we took before starting with the Xmas set... the girls always need a bit of time to get comfy in front of the camera...



So please send your address to my email and I will gladly add you to my list! You can find my email here on the right, make sure you use the telkom address!

Are you working on your Xmas card and you don't have me yet on your list, you can find my details also on the right side of my blog. Hopefully a lot of you get this hint and I will receive tons of cute and beautiful cards... I just love to get one of yours :-)

Have a Fabulous Friday! I am off to a Craft sale, need to do some Xmas shopping :-)
Mireille

Sinterklaas is in town...

It's that time of the year again for Dutch children! Sinterklaas is coming to town. He arrived in Holland a few weeks ago on his steamboat and on Saturday he will arrive at the Dutch school here in Joburg!! The girls are so excited and putting their shoe with carrots and water in front of the fireplace and hoping for some treats the next morning!



Traditionally, in the weeks between the arrival of Sinterklaas & Zwarte Piet and December 5, before going to bed, children put their shoes next to the fireplace chimney of the coal fired stove or fireplace, or, in modern times, next to the central heating. The shoe is to have a carrot or some hay in it and a bowl of water "for Sinterklaas' horse," and the children sing a Sinterklaas song; the next day they will find some candy or a small present in their shoes. When a house has no chimney, Sinterklaas or Black Pete is said to enter using his special key that fits on every door in the Netherlands.

Typical Sinterklaas candy traditionally includes: mandarin oranges, pepernoten, letter-shaped pastry filled with almond paste or chocolate letter (the first letter of the child's name made out of chocolate), speculaas (sometimes filled with almond paste), chocolate coins and marzipan figures. Newer candy includes kruidnoten (a type of shortcrust biscuit or gingerbread-biscuits) and a figurine of Sinterklaas made out of chocolate and wrapped in painted aluminum foil.

Children are told that Black Pete enters the house through the chimney, which also explains his black face and hands, and will leave a bundle of sticks ("roe") or a small bag of salt in the shoe instead of candy if the child has been bad. If they have been really bad, Black Pete may take them back to Spain in his sack, a tradition now frowned upon under the influence of modern child psychology.

Traditionally Saint Nicholas brings his gifts at night, and many Belgian and Dutch children still find their presents on the morning of December 6. Later in The Netherlands adults started to give each other presents on the evening of the 5th; then older children were included, and today many young children also get their presents on Saint Nicholas' eve.

Poems can still accompany bigger gifts as well, though instead of being brought by Sinterklaas, people will draw names for an event comparable to Secret Santa. Gifts are to be creatively disguised (for which the Dutch use the French word "surprise"), and are usually accompanied by a humorous poem which often teases the recipient for well-known bad habits or other character deficiencies.





This is one of the songs the children sing in front of the chimney...



Such a fun time for the children, and probably it will be the last year that we celebrate Sinterklaas in this way. Because as soon as the children don't believe anymore most families only celebrate Xmas... now we do BOTH! Or they do celebrate it with giving only 1 gift to 1 member of your family by picking a name out of a hat and you create a funny gift with a poem for only that person you have on your tag. This is called 'pakjes avond'.

For now Jasmine and Juliet are so excited to meet 'Sinterklaas en Zwarte Piet' at school on Saturday, more pictures on that later. See last year's event here and here.

Have a Terrific Thursday, I am off to my cooking class today, we call our group: DOT = Diversity On the Table :-)

Ciao, Mireille

Thanksgiving weekend at the South Coast

Just like last year we went to the beautiful coast of Durban. Last year we went to the North Coast, to Sheffield Beach, if you can't remember see here. This year we went to the South Coast, although not as popular by mass tourism, we like it much better. The beaches are endless and so beautiful. I mean even the North Coast is gorgeous, but more developed already, we like the places on the off beaten track and that is definitely the South Coast! We stayed at Leisure bay, one of the most unspoilt and the most picturesque beaches in this area.

Look at this, hardly a person on the beach, beautiful rock formations, great for the kids to play on and find little crabs and fishes. The water nice and warm and no 'hutje mutje' like in Holland on the beach. No we had it all to ourselves!!



And this is how the crowded beaches in Holland look like, 'hutje mutje' (means: like a sardine in a can) on the beach!



Juliet made a snow man from sand, so proud of herself :-)



One day it wasn't so sunny, so we decided to drive to Durban, one of the bigger cities here in SA. And we went to uShaka Marine World, it has a huge aquarium and it looks like you are walking in a replica of a sunken cargo steamer from 1920. Very cool!

Since we are in Kwa-Zulu Natal or Zulu land we also met some Zulu warriors, which was particular nice at this moment because the girls are learning everything about the Zulu's at school now.



They learned at school that if a Zulu guy wants to marry a girl they have to pay 20 cows to the parents of the girls. Jasmine and Juliet found that that was quite a steep price! Dirk told them that their future husband has to give at least a house on the beach in Thailand for 1 girl and a nice sports car convertible for the other... they were quite for a moment and had to think about this! LOL



The dolphin show was really great, JJ and Jezz really loved seeing the gentle animals!



The feeding of the turtles was another highlight of the day.



Much more pictures I don't have unfortunately since my camera was stolen, these were taken on Dirk's little camera. At least some memories left of our fabulous weekend! Although some bad luck we have a lot to be thankful for!

Hope you had a great Thanksgiving weekend as well!
Mireille

International food festival & parade at school

Last week the girls had International food festival at school and the next day we had the International parade.

The food festival was amazing, we had so many moms cooking from their home country. I represented Thailand and made 150 Thai Chicken Satay with sweet soy sauce and fried shallots. The kids loved it and I was almost out of my supply before the High scholars came. We fed 800 children from elementary to high school! Almost each country in our school, which are 69 were represented. That is a lot of different food which we all could sample. Delicious, fun and such an eye opening experience every year again!! I mean there are yummy dishes I have never seen, let alone taste!

The next day we had the International parade. Each child represented their own home country in their national dress, walking proudly behind their flag. I was so moved to see all these kids walking across the soccer field in their national costume being cheered on by all their peers and parents, it is just such a fun experience!!

I mean 69 countries, that is one third of the whole world represented at our school, isn't that cool or what! The only sad thing is that immediately after this parade we went on our Thanksgiving break and there they stole my camera, so I have no pictures of these 2 beautiful events to share with you. Such a shame!! I have only this one left that I took after the girls came home and we took off their Thai dresses before hopping into the car to go to the South Coast just below Durban.



We had a wonderful long weekend at the beautiful coast of the Indian Ocean, and we didn't let the fact that my camera, and most of Dirk's clothing got stolen ruin our weekend!

More about our weekend in another post.
Have a great week,
Mireille