Hmmm...I miss my blog...

It's hard feeling torn between so many online outlets... the truth is, face.book is easier for picture posting than the blog is (especially when the blog isn't really working, but even when it is), but, I also like this space as my writing outlet...although, as my audience has grown, my writing has become more censored. But there really isn't any safe place online anymore... I mean, I have people from all parts of my life in nearly every online community, and for an open book like me, it's hard to find a place, or a time when I can really express what's going on, without having to worry about offending someone or exposing some part of myself better kept out of the reach of certain people. Anyway, all that said, I miss my blog. Seems I used to have things to say, stories to tell, and I don't know what has changed, but, I feel like the most interesting thing I have to tell you now, is that Joel and I are sharing a cold. And that is pretty boring.

Evidence:

We've been spending our evenings eating warming foods like chili and soup and blowing our noses raw. I suppose the good thing is that feeling this crummy, we haven't had it in us to fight over the remote. :)

I'm home from work today, resting and generally taking care of myself. I decided this year that after the hell of last year, I wasn't going to let school stress me into constant heartburn and hating my life. So, at the first sign of getting Joel's cold, I marched into my principal's office and told her I was staying home today (I did that yesterday). It's not worth it to put my health at risk, or to push through and be cranky with the kids (which I was) when I'm not feeling well. I wrote up fine lesson plans, which apparently isn't even expected by some, and walked away from it. It is only the second week of school, but, the students are settling in pretty well, and I think they'll be fine for two days without me. Hopefully I will have kicked this bug by Monday. It took Joel about 5 days too (he went back to work today, after being home all week).

Ah, I just remembered, there is one other thing I could tell you! After a hand-wringing, stomach-twisting week, my passport arrived at the Embassy downtown, and I was able to go pick it up. It was kind of an odd sensation looking at my new name... it is a change. It's not one I ever thought about not making- I have always wanted a unifying name with the family I would help create, and there are plenty of people to carry on my family of origin last name, and well, yeah, it was just something I have always been ok with.

And I like my new last name. It might be slightly more common throughout the world than my old last name, but, in that sense, also slightly easier to pronounce for someone not familiar with it. Although that said, I still can't get over how much difficulty some of my student's parents are having with it- English speakers too, who just can't seem to spit it out! Weird. Anyway... the extra good news is that the passports (both my old one and my new one) have been handed in to the authorities to get the new work visa. This has already happened this week, which means we have about 7 weeks for them to get them back to us so we can go on vacation in October. Considering we've already bought the tickets to South Africa, we're just living in the outcome that they will be ready and back in our hands by then!

Our plan for October is to hit Kruger National Park and see some of the Big 5- mostly, I know I am interested in getting up for those 4 or 5am game drives where one searches for the big cats. We've seen elephants galore, and hippos too, and giraffes- but it's the cats that have eluded us completely, as well as the rhino. But, I really want to see the cats. So, hopefully we'll luck out with that, and me and my new camera will get some great shots. And then we'll head back to Johannesburg to spend a few days shopping and maybe going to a doctor or two.

The shopping by the way, will be more for our house than anything else. You wouldn't believe the little things that you just can't get... placemats for the kitchen table, toothbrush holders for the bathroom. I miss Target. When it comes to being able to decorate my living space, I think I belong much more in an American or Australian suburb than the place I have chosen to live. Ah well...Joburg is only 7 weeks away... I can live without placemats until then...

Although the tech guy is working on it, my blog settings have not yet returned to normal, so, I'll try to keep up here as best I can. :)

Well....maybe not...

Well, turns out the blog isn't 100% back on track. Uploading pictures still isn't happening quite as it should. Doing just this one took way too long, and I'm not up for it- so, if you want to see more pics, let me know, I'll send you a link to my face.book albums! :)

The new IT guy ROCKS. :)

He fixed whatever needed to be fixed so that I could access my blog again fully. I think I might be in love with him. You should be too, because this means I can get back to posting more again. :)

Now, does anybody REALLY need wedding pictures on here, or have you seen them elsewhere? Whatever is on face.book, is what I would put here...

Well, maybe I'll just put up a few... :)

Yay, welcome back to me! :)

An update worth posting...

Dudes... how wonderful is my husband?  I told you he was working his little tush off while I was posting... look at the difference a few hours makes in a room!  No more junk room!

Our new apartment...

So, even though blogger is being stupid again, I figured out how to do this, I just can't format at all, so, bear with me... a quick tour of our new apartment with crappy pictures that I took this afternoon.

First, the living/dining room as seen from the front door through which you might enter the apartment if we had the key to that door.

And here is the view of same room as seen from the hallway (which you can see on the right in the above photo)

Now here is the kitchen which is right off the living room- you can see how big it is. Nice. We have a kitchen table and a dining room table. It's nice to be able to eat in the kitchen at the table, totally away from any other distractions (like the tv, which we struggled sometimes to turn off during dinner, even though we both agree it should be off...)

Now we have another door to the outside off the kitchen, which is where I took this picture from. You can see through the kitchen to the laundry room (right now just a washer and a sink area- but we are SERIOUSLY contemplating shelling out for a dryer out of pocket. I for one think it would make life like, much, much better.)

Here is the study that is just off the laundry room. Because Joel is the one working on his masters now, and because he has football scarves that need displaying somewhere, the office has officially been deemed his space. Opposite this study, on the other side of the laundry room is actually also a maid's bathroom, which has a toilet and a shower. You know, cause, you wouldn't want your maid using yours! Of course, we don't even have a maid anymore this year...

Now as you head down the hallway, the first door you come to on the left is a bedroom. It has two twin beds in it, and as you can, right now is functioning as our junk room. Actually, at the end of last school year when we had to move all our stuff into this apartment, this was the room that a lot of it got shoved into- so, we're slowly getting everything out again. It's a work in progress- in fact, I think Joel is in there working on it right now, even as I sit here! :) Anyway, this is one place we have room for guests!

Nearly across the hall from the first bedroom is the hall bathroom, which has been deemed, Joel's bathroom. Hey if you have more bathrooms than people living in a place, you might as well each claim one right? :)

Further down the hallway on the right is a second bedroom. This one is a bit smaller, and only has one twin bed. More room for guests. The last couple that lived here used this room as the baby's room- we liked that idea, and are of course, working on it. :) As you can see in the picture though, right now we're just using it for drying clothes out of sight. :)

Across the hallway from the baby's room, uh, I mean the second bedroom is the master suite. When you walk in, immediately on the right is the bathroom, which has been deemed my bathroom. None of the bathrooms actually have baths (though three of them have showers), which of course is disappointing.

So then finally you reach the master bedroom, which of course, is our space. When I took this picture, Joel still had crap all over the floor... oh well. :)

As you can see we have a nice big bed. Not quite as big as the king's we slept in most of the summer in all our hotels, but, I think it's a queen, so it's a bit bigger than what we had in our last apartment.

And now a shot of the closets in our bedroom. In this picture I've opened one door on each of the four closets. Yeah, dude. Nice. The best part is, all three bedrooms have one entire wall of closets- the other two rooms only have three closets a piece I think, simply because they are smaller- but, basically, we're not running out of closet space any time soon. I feel like Carrie Bradshaw! Oh, and I know the closets look empty in the pic, but, as I said, Joel is working on all this stuff RIGHT NOW (cause he went surfing on Sunday when I put all my stuff away, so he's just doing it now) so it'll look full by the time I'm done posting, but, you won't see that picture!

Now back to the living/dining room and out onto the balcony. No more porch for us with a little square of green grass, but, oh well- I didn't get that far with growing stuff anyway. So this is our dusty, dusty balcony. We don't have any furniture for it yet (yes that is a dining room chair out there now...). I hope the school provides some eventually...

Here is a shot of the street to the left- this is the way we walk to school. We only have to walk about 50 meters to the gate to the school (which is at the back of the school grounds). So, our walk to work just went from like 30 seconds last year to about 2-3 minutes this year. Man, life is tough.

Here is the view to the right. This is a rather busy street. In fact, the last couple that lived here (the one with the baby) chose to move just across the hall when the apartments were being swapped around at the end of last school year, saying that they needed a quieter place for the baby. Their apartment across the hall faces the back of our building, which essentially looks over the school, so it doesn't get the street noise. After hearing the noise the last couple of nights, I no longer blame them. There must be a make shift bar of some sort right across the street and they were blasting music until about 11:30 last night. And it was loud enough that inside, even with all the windows closed, it was as loud as I would have had music if I had put it on for my own enjoyment. Of course, the big difference is that, they didn't choose the kind of music that I would!

Also across the street we have a police post. Joel actually saw a huge car crash today that happened directly outside our compound- in fact one of the cars actually smashed through the metal fence and into the guard house of our compound. Joel was only like not far away when it happened. He later told me he nearly pooped his pants. Suck. Surprisingly, everyone walked away from the crash, although I doubt the cars had such luck. Anyway, my point is that, Joel watched the police watch the crash. And, only after they had stood and watched for a good few moments did they look at each other and seem to think,"Huh, maybe we should go check if anyone is hurt?" So, yeah, that is the police post across the street, but, I'm not really sure what they do there...

So, that is the story of our new apartment. Oh but wait, I forgot to tell you that actually, there is one more bathroom in the house, which is also not pictured here which is right next to the front door off the living room. The last couple before us used it as a storage space/mud room, and we are following suit. So it's got our luggage, shoes and sporting equipment in it. How many toilets can two people use afterall? We still have three to choose from...

So, bit of an upgrade from last year right? This is why we were excited to move.

Good news/Bad news

Good news is, we're back in Luanda safe and sound.  We arrived mid-afternoon Saturday- to find work done on the airport which meant that the immigration lines which used to be in a very hot, very humid, very stuffy, very full of mosquitoes room were now in a new, air conditioned, somewhat spacious room. :) That was nice. Then we had to wait for our baggage for 1.5 hours, but hey- it can't all be perfect hey? At least it all showed up!

So we got back, and started the moving-in/unpacking.  By now (Sunday evening) we're mostly unpacked and most of our things have found a new home.  There is one bedroom (one of the three!) that we're keeping the door closed to for now, because well, there's still a pretty big mess in there.  But the general living space- taken care of.  Now we need to work on getting all our pictures, wall hangings, and art up on the walls to really make it feel like home.  Of course, the kitchen was the first thing I unpacked and got settled, and felt better right away! :)  We love our new apartment and well, we have lots of room for guests now, if um, anyone is interested! :)

Anyway, so the bad news, is that as soon as we got back to Africa my blog started acting up again, and now that we're back in Angola, I can't post to it properly again, which may or may not make it very hard to post in general- but especially to post pictures.

I will work on it, and hopefully maybe, the new tech guy can figure something out and we'll have all good news soon.

We start work tomorrow, and the kids start school next Monday... is it really that time again?  Where did the summer go???   Is that good news or bad news? :)