We have been slowly exploring the recreational opportunities over the past week, and have found there is much fun to be had here in PE. Where to begin? Might as well start with the weather. It has been absolutely beautiful everyday. About 80 degrees, blue sky, and a consistent breeze. Being situated where we are, PE gets a lot of wind. So much that everyone dries their clothes on outside lines; even our laundry man, Piet. Unlike back home where you think clothes are drying nicely on the line--only to find that they smell like an old wet towel once you start to sweat--the clothes here have a clean, fresh, natural feel. We get reports back from home that there is a couple feet of snow (ahhh, I mean just less then a meter), and the temperature is near 0 degrees (which would be about 20 below 0 Celsius here). I have figured out that every 10 degrees Celsius is about 18 degrees Fahrenheit, which has made the conversion process much quicker.
When people ask about what it is like back home, I keep telling them there is "A foot or two of snow and its absolutely cold--about 10 degrees. In this weather, we usually stay inside or else we will freeze. I mean, it is bone chilling cold," I've also been telling people we are from Michigan, the northern part of the U.S. that looks like a mitten. I usually get a few odd looks and an occasional shake of the head. After about a week of this, Kara finally informed me that a foot of snow means nothing to them here, as they do not use "feet" as a measurement value, 10 degrees in Celsius is actually about 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and most kids will have never seen a mitten since there is no snow or cold weather here. Good point. Now I speak in terms of there being about 40 centimeters of snow, temperatures of 15 below zero, and Michigan being the area of land in the north surrounded by all the water which makes it look like a hand with fingers together. As a typical Michigander, I don't bother trying to explain the upper peninsula of Michigan. For those of you from Michigan, you know what I mean. The upper peninsula is usually forgotten. Back home, the Michiganders from the upper peninsula (or UP as we call it) call us--who reside in the lower peninsula--(or "Michigan" as we in the lower peninsula call it) "trolls" (because we live under the bridge that connects the two parts of the state). We call the UP residents "yoopers" (U P ers). I am not trying to slight our northern neighbors, but it's too complex to go into here, especially when it is already hard enough for the people to envision what a mitten looks like.
Back to PE. We have been to the beach a couple of times. The sand is white and soft; very similar to the sand one can find along the west coast of Michigan on Lake Michigan. The ocean does not have a strong salty ocean smell to it, and there are very little "ocean deposits" (e.g., dead ocean weeds, jelly fish, etc.) on the beach. There are two major beaches in PE: King's Beach and Hobie Beach. Both have soft sandy water and are nice for swimming. The water temperature is a little cold by ocean beach front tourist standards. It is about the same temperature as Lake Michigan in July, if you have been there, which is not super warm, but also not freezing cold. That's about as warm as it gets down here because this is where the warm Indian Ocean and cold Atlantic Ocean converge. The temperature increases the farther north you go up the east coast, as that becomes more Indian Ocean. However, we don't have the shark problems down here--which is okay by us--which may be due to the temperature? Even though we don't have sharks, for the past 27 years every time I have stepped into a body of salt water I have heard that music in my head: "daaaaaaaaaa-da. daaaaaaaa-da. daaaaaaaaa-da. da-da, da-da, da-da..." Hasn't been a shark attack here yet. I don't want to be the first one.
Jack has found a new hobby, and has been able to entice Bekah in this new found pastime. He has discovered something better then gold and diamonds: bottle caps. We have discovered that a common practice in South Africa has been to discard beer and pop bottle caps wherever they are opened. Jack has quite a collection, complete with gold caps, rusty tops, flat ones, scratched ones--you name it, he has it. These caps have become better then anything you could find in a toy store. His bag of caps goes everywhere with us--to the beach, the store--wherever. One day this week we went to the beach for a few hours. As the other kids were playing in the surf, Jack had reenacted World War II--complete with a star wars flavor, of course. I think the gold caps actually won the battle.
On Sundays along the beach front all sorts of vendors set up shop and sell everything from cheap sunglasses to hand carved goods. Much of it is flea market type stuff, but there are all sorts of fun and exciting African-type items as well. We have had a lot of fun seeing how far the American dollar actually goes at these type of events. Speaking of money, Jack's second favorite activity is converting dollars to Rand and back. He is even able to throw the Euro in there and make exchanges that consist of Euros, dollars and cents, and Rand all in the same transaction. He is truly thrilled that the dollar is worth about 10 Rand. So, he is able to count his money and have over 100 Rand. That's like $100 in his mind. We found out from Thinus that 1 Rand is equivalent to about 40 Zim dollars (the currency in Zimbabwe). So 1 U.S. dollar is about 400 Zim dollars. Jack loved that concept. Even better yet was the conversion to the currency in Zambia (can't remember what it is called at the moment). It appears that $1 is equivalent to about 7,000 Zambian dollars. So, Jack's 10 U.S. dollars has values of either 100 Rand, 4,000 Zim dollars, or 70,000 Zambian dollars. When Jack heard this he immediately wanted to plan a trip to Zambia. You should have seen the look on his face; like a kid in a giant candy store. What is sad is that the Zim dollar and Zambian currency all were on equal footing with the British Pound when Zimbabwe and Zambia became independent from British control (not too long ago they were still known as Rhodesia). In the past decade or so, their money has bottomed out. Instead of the Zambian dollar having a value of $1.50, it is now less then $ .00015. That's 1 and half hundredths of a cent.
Jack is the only one who has more money then when he came to South Africa. He is quite the entrepreneur, and has learned how to earn money through currency exchange, making and selling items to his family, doing odd jobs for 1 or 2 Rand, and charging admission for us to attend "activity games" he has created. He came to South Africa with about 70 Rand, and now has well over 100 Rand. Ah, but that's not only 100 Rand--it's over 70,000 Zambian dollars.
The kids were invited to Andre's birthday party (see pictures above), and Bekah has since attended another party (with Jana). Kara has spent a couple of days on the beach with friends and we have recently discovered a swimming pool on campus that is only about 100 meters from our flat. A large pool that is hardly ever used. This was one of the greatest finds we have come across since being here!
