August 2, 2009
After our fabulous weekend with the wild animals, Monday came around boring boring boring. The kids and I went to the Embassy to check email and have lunch with Ed. Not exactly exciting. Good news though, our new housekeeper/
Tuesday we arranged a play date for Lucas with a neighborhood friend and Charlotte and I headed to an interesting shopping area called Doon Estates. We browsed through a sculpture garden, chatted with some of the artists, poked around in shops filled with all sorts of treasures and then stopped for Belgian hot chocolate at a small shop called Veldemeers that makes chocolates on the premises. One shop we will certainly be returning to is a ceramics shops with lovely and very tasteful African themed dishes, tea sets and crockery. Prices are no longer cheap, but not outrageous either. We also found a huge variety of the carved wooden animals, Charlotte is particularly interested in the giraffes. I can see a herd joining our family in short order. Overall, we had a very nice "girls" outing.
Wed was another dull day, Lucas had another play date and Charlotte and I did more shopping. One good thing, our air freight arrived. It was mostly Ed's clothes, some linens and a few kitchen items, all very welcome!
Thur morning dawned beautiful, not a cloud in the sky and a perfect day for a horse safari at Mukuvisi Woodlands, the small game reserve near our house. We all rode our own horses, a first for both Charlotte and Lucas. They did great! We walked around with the zebra, eland, antelope and giraffe, we even got a glimpse of the elusive wildabeasts. It was an hour of great fun. Also got an update on our internet, it has apparently cleared customs at the South Africa/Zimbabwe border and is on its way here. Hopefully it will arrive safe and sound and can be installed in short order. Just wait for the pictures!!
Was able to get into the Embassy to check my email on Friday in relative peace, both kids had playdates in the afternoon! The are starved for friends and can hardly wait to get to school to meet some new folks. I admit it is quite boring around the house, even with the lovely weather and yard, when all you have is your brother or sister to play with, a few legos and a couple of video games, it gets rather boring pretty quickly. Hopefully we will meet some new folks at the Marine house this weekend. There is an awards/promotion ceremony for a couple of the Marines and they are celebrating with a pig roast.
The Marine pig roast was very nice, seemed to me to be a small turn out, but it is a small Embassy so I guess I need to adjust my expectations. The kids had a good time, a little angst for Charlotte meeting a few of the older "pre-teens" but that got sorted out quickly. Lucas had a blast until he decided to ram his head into a metal pole and got a goose egg the size of a small, well... goose egg. As his forehead swelled so did my anxiety with all the talk about traumatic brain injuries etc... needless to say I didn't sleep well that night. He is no worse for the wear, sporting quite a nice black and blue (now green and yellow) mark on his forehead. Just in time for the start of school!
Sunday we all got up bright and early and headed out to the Imire Safari Ranch, more of a conservancy than an actual game park. It was fantastic. About an hour and a half from Harare tucked away in an area that had once been mostly commercial farms, but now is just open spaces. Imire is about 6000 hectares and has zebra, wildabeasts, elephants, water buffalo, rhinos, all sorts of DLC (deer like creatures), a couple of lions and a couple of hyenas. The highlight for Lucas was seeing and Rhinos and then feeding the baby rhino. He was in heave and vowed after hearing the sad tale of poachers killing 4 of the parks Rhinos only two years back to be becoming a rhino protector. After the incident the rhinos now have 24/7 armed guards that wander around the park with the rhinos. The guards have been given special permission by the Government of Zimbabwe to shoot to kill if an unknown person approaches. They are serious about poachers. The AK-47's the guards carry are pretty scary looking. Lunch was served overlooking a lovely lake and after dessert the elephants arrived and we were allowed to feed them. It was pretty amazing... It was a such a wonderful experience for the kids and for us to see these animals in a setting were we can be so close and really develop a bond with them. I hope to repeat this many times so that the kids don't forget what amazing creatures we have on Earth and how precarious their very existence on this plant is.
Next week school starts!
Love, Shannon
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