Breakfast of champs

My dad is in SA for 2 weeks, and last Friday he stopped by E-town for a 2 day visit. Love it when he comes home! I only get to see my fam once or twice a year, so it's like heaven when one or all of them come to visit. On a side note, how old do you think he looks?

We had the best breakfast EVER on Saturday morn. After J hit the gym with our upstairs neighbours and good friends (holla to the VH's!), we headed upstairs to their deck for a hearty breakfast consisting of fruit salad, bacon, eggs, rolls, mushrooms, onion and waffles. Kinda cancels out that gym session ha! Whilst we feasted on such luxurious foods, we plonked ourselves on the couch and watched the big rugby match on the telly. Well some of us were watching, I preferred to play dolls with 5 year old Keelynne. I should mention that whilst all this was happening, my dad practically ran to the other side of town for his daily run of 10 km's! Crikey!

The remainder of Saturday was devoted to the Olympics...until 11pm. Good thing we're all sport nuts.

After a brilliant morning at church on Sunday, we sadly had to drop M off at the airport at 15:30 to catch his flight to Gauteng where he's been spending the remainder of his SA business trip. Even though he's 10 hours away it still feels great to know that he's not too far away. His visit made us both stoked for our holiday in December. In fact we spent Sunday arvie making a list of places to visit, people to see, souvenirs to purchase and foods to eat when we get there. Can't.Wait!

Nothing like a kick-back weekend filled with family, friends and good chow!

Tradition!

A couple weeks ago I was assigned by our Relief Society president to do a presentation of sorts on traditions. She first thought that I was American (???) and then seemed disappointed that I'm ONLY South African. Hahaha!

Our country is basically one big melting pot of Africans, Dutch, Indians and British who call the Republic of South Africa HOME. Obviously the Africans were here first, then came Jan Van Riebeek and his Dutch crew to 'settle' in the 1600's, followed by the British in 1820. Every person here is first classified by their race, followed by their language and culture. 

I am an English South African. Meaning, my ancestors (from immediate grandparents backwards) are British. The same is true for J's fam, although he's slightly more English because his dad was born in England. 

Anyway, this is confusing and difficult to explain. 

Suffice it to say I had to display English tradition this past Saturday at our Relief Society meeting. It's strange to think of your habits and lifestyle as 'tradition' when you live it everyday. Only when the differences of how you live are highlighted does it look like a novelty. I guess for some having tea time everyday is unusual. Other sisters presented traditional dress and culture on the Xhosa's, Zulu's, Sotho's and Afrikaans. It was very informative and I learnt a ton about the people inhabiting SA. Each sister who presented made traditional food to accompany their table and at the end of the presentations we had a massive feast consisting of anything and everything from koeksisters (traditional Afrikaans sweet plaited pastry drenched in syrup) to umfino (a traditional Xhosa spinach dish). My English strawberry jam scones went down a treat too. 

This activity really made me appreciate my culture and how it has evolved with time and how it has been influenced by other cultures. Obviously we aren't completely British in our ways, but we are uniquely South African. 

Gold medals # 2 + 3

High hopes are paying off peeps! 

On Tuesday evening we tuned in to watch our 20 year old athlete from Durban, Chad le Clos, swim his heart out to become the fastest qualifier in the men's100m butterfly!

 What makes this truly spectacular is that he beat his hero, Michael Phelps, by literally 500ths of a second! Let that sink in for a sec, Michael Phelps, the man with the most Olympic medals EVER. Chad beat that dude!

We cheered sooooooooooo loudly! 

Like I said, this is a beeeeeeg deal to us Safricans.

As he stood on the podium to receive his GOLD MEDAL, we felt something that the rest of our nation is only JUST starting to comprehend - patriotism. 

Yep, we may even have had to choke back the tears as our anthem blared. Le Clos's face said it all - he wept. As did his mum and dad (whose voice sounds like the Cookie Monster from Sesame Street). 

A proud moment for him, his fam, and the rest of our nation. 

What a legend.

To top off the winning streak this week, today our men's rowing team (James Thompson, Matthew Brittain, John Smith and Sizwe Ndlovu ) cleaned up in the water in the lightweight men's four earning our country ANOTHER gold!

That makes 3 gold medals in 6 days of competition. We are currently ranked as 10th in the world. Not bad for a small country the size of Texas at the bottom of the world, eh. 

Proudly South African

Like the rest of the world, we are completely enamoured with the London 2012 Olympic games! Every weekend some form of sports blares from our telly, so the fact that we can now watch sports of all varieties all day, everyday for the next couple weeks thrills us to the bone! 

We started watching the spectacular opening ceremony at 23:00 on Friday night and finally went to bed around 2:00 AM Saturday morn. Man we felt mega old come 8 AM...our bodies just can't do late nights anymore. But losing precious sleep was totally worth it. We marvelled at the countries we'd never heard of and cheered like crazy animals when South Africa proudly walked, displaying our colourful flag on their chests. Our nation is completely behind our brilliant, talented athletes. Here's a few of our faves:

We have high hopes this year that our athletes will play hard and earn some sparkly gold medals for our country. 

And they already have. 

Enter Cameron Van der Burgh.

Last night he not only came first in the men's 100m breaststroke, but he broke the world record swimming in 58.46 seconds. What a champ!

So we finally made it on the board within 2 days. So what if we only have 1 medal so far compared to the other greats like the U.S or G.B. For our nation it's a big deal!

High hopes guys, high hopes!

View from here

And by 'here' I mean the gym...

So what if the equipment is old and has sweat stains on it? So what if their air conditioning system consists of two sub par floor fans attached to poles? So what if majority of its clients wear the same clothes they worked out in the day before? This can be overlooked with one glance at that spectacular view. Nothing beats running at top speed whilst watching ships docking at the harbour or watching the waves crash against the rocks along Eastern beach.

Majority of my gym's clients have left to sign up with the brand new gym in Beacon Bay, including J man! Sure their equipment and overall atmosphere is a trillion times better, but you can't see that in BB, can you!

This makes working out simply a pleasure :)

J's perfect Saturday

When J informed me Friday eve that on Saturday morn he'd be watching rugby, I was ALL for it - after all, what's a little rugby match in the grand scheme of the weekend? Right?

Well that little rugby match turned into a couple more, followed by a snoringly boring cricket match. Apparently South Africa played well. I wouldn't know though because all I heard was white noise (that's what rugby and cricket sound like to me...).

Midday J announced, beaming from ear to ear, "This is MY perfect Saturday!" Bless!

Honestly it was a good Saturday, the sun shone - allowing me to bask my ghostly pale legs and mismatched socks in its hot hot rays (love EL winters!), we got to relax from a long tiring week, and we even stopped for a pancake lunch! Who knew J was such a pancake artisan! This skill will definitely come in handy from now on! This whole weekend has been quite a revelation of sorts in that even though we are from the same country, we seem to use different terminology.  After I made batter for the pancakes, J was surprised and a little disappointed that they weren't his kind of pancakes. I was confused. I thought a pancake was a pancake. 

They were marvelously delicious, however, pancake or not. To top J's perfect Saturday off, he attended a Priesthood meeting, I read 80 Psalms in preparation for Monday's seminary lesson, we ate omelette's for supper (thanks J, again!) and watched Red Riding Hood (we're a tad behind in movies...). 

Love days like this!

Perfect Saturday

To be a perfect day, it must consist of a) people I love b) good food c) plenty of laughs. Not too much to ask is it! 

When Saturday morning rolled around, we slept in late, buried deep in the comfort of our warm duvet. It was pouring with rain and we felt grateful just to be in bed, listening the pitter patter on the windows.

As soon as I hauled myself out of bed to let Molly dog out for her morning ritual of taking care of business, I made little handouts attached to fizz pops for my seminary students to remind them of classes resuming on Monday morning at 6:00AM sharp! There are only 9 more weeks of seminary to go where we will finish studying the books of Esther to Malachi in the Old Testament. Come the second week of September they'll be learned boffins of the O.T. Quite an achievement, especially in 2012. In November they shall receive their course completion certificates and I'll have taught seminary for 4 years!

By 9:00AM J made an appearance in the lounge, and we promptly devoured our cereal. Best way to start the perfect day! And by 10:00Am we headed to Beacon Bay to run some errands and then to Hemingways to commence the search for a new winter coat for me, to spend J's clothing vouchers at Edgars that he received for his bday. J scored a pair of shoes for R25!! Bargain of the year! We also found an awesome grey and purple coat for me, which wasn't exactly a bargain, but it's super nice.

We then went to Boykies to spend his voucher he received from the W snrs, also as a bday gift. Boykies is down the road from us and it opened last year. We would never have paid it a visit had his parents not given him a certificate. The exterior of the building is brown...not the most appealing colour. To our surprise though, they serve such tasty, well priced food! We even took some venison biltong home to snack on later. The rest of the day was spent snuggled under blankets, watching everything from rugby to New Girl. 

This really was the perfect day.