Australians for breakfast

Another week is coming to an end, but not in a dull way. Apparently we have internet at home now!! Can't wait to go home and check it out. At the moment I'm at Girl's College waiting for Jeanette to come back from the academy.

Phew I am tired. I don't hink I have fully recovered from getting up just after six yesterday to be able to go to immigrations with Maria. Everything ok. Last night Tom (foget how he is related to my zim-family now) came down from Harare and spent the night at us. Very nice evening with lots of jokes from John and Ian (friend), who were looking up fun trivia on their phones. Tom is down here because of a load of Australians who are coming up for a wedding, Dean and Sophie's. (I think Dean is a cousin of Maria. He is quite young anyway.) The couple are lovely people, and all their friends,  are also really nice. This morning we had breakfast with the gang, including some friends who had already arrived, at the National Arts Gallery. It's a lovely old building with very nice breakfasts. Thankfully the breakfast was after nine...Then Heather and I went back to GC, where Vuzi, Ben, William and another guy were playing at break time for the girls, who absolutely loved it! Fun! (I gave my camera to Heather to get some pictures and then realised afterwards that I had forgotten to put in the memory card...)

Anyway, I feel like I can hardly put together a sentence properly, so I better phone Jeanette and see where she is. Ah, she just came! Perfect! Have a nice weekend!

Glad midsommar i efterskott Sverige!

After nearly a week of internetlessness I am going back to the academy and am ready for business as usual. The weekend that we just left was exeat weekend, which here is half term and means that schools close early on Thursday and open again on Tuesday. And since all the kids were off I didn’t have any lessons then either. Instead I went to a braai at Thembi’s on Saturday, which was nice, and then spent the night and half next day there as well. I slept on the sofa, which for once was way too short for me, but I managed without any problems thank goodness. It was quite funny when Ben, Vuzi and William were supposed to get the fire started, they were all sure it would be really easy and then none of them managed to get it started, so I had to do it! Haha, I had a good laugh about that one. Thanks for all the braai-training dad!  

Another interesting thing that evening was that I got a lesson in how to make sadsa. It’s like a really really thick porridge made out of mealiemeal (majsmjöl), and you eat it with your meat and vegetables, like rice or potatoes. But it is actually quite a skill to get it good. I wasn’t fast enough with the whisking, so Thembi had to take over. But I did get a souvenir from the sadsa-making; a nice boil from where the superduper hot boiling sadsa splashed onto my hand…

Then yesterday Vuzi, Sam ( a very musical student) and I got together and played around with lots of different instruments to make some interesting music. We were all interested in stuff like Sigur Ros, Mogwai and other post rock/alternative music, so that’s mostly what we did. It was such great fun, I absolutely loved it! The two top instruments that morning were both Sam’s doing; playing with a violin bow on a saw or electric guitar. Amazing. We are now looking into getting a looping station, but they’re all so expensive and far away, so we’ll see when that happens. It would be so cool if we had one.

Yesterday evening Vuzi and I also played at like a couple’s evening, which was sort of a marriage course I think. We had fun though, playing for a while and then getting dinner (and a looovely apple pie for dessert (really, people should always pay me in desserts)), so it was a successful evening. We even improvised a bit at the end, which I never ever do, but it went well and was fun.

Now I should head off to the academy. (I’m at home, writing in word again.) So toodles everyone, pictures should be tripping off to tumblr soon soon.

Chocolate on wheels

Sitting in bed, ready to sleep after having watched the movie Chocolat and eaten a few squares of Cadbury's chocolate mousse bar. Heaven. The chocolate I got from Jeanette today, when she came back from South-Africa. I had earned it by being her today; taking all her classes in the morning and then all her piano lessons in the afternoon. The piano lessons were such fun, I think I might change and become a piano teacher instead! The kids were gorgeous and it was so much easier than teaching violin. Ten times easier, even though I'm only on book two and all the kids I had today were ahead of me. Don't get me wrong; I love teaching the violin as well, but then I need to help so much more, since they're nearly all beginners and some can hardly hold the bow. And today was just different, a fun break.

Tonight I also gave back Jeanette her car. She lent it to me on Friday, since they were going down south and it would help me. Typically on Sunday they then dug up our driveway because of a water leak and I couldn't use it anyway... But I did use it today and I loved it. Last Thursday was the first time I drove in nearly ten weeks. Weird not to have driven for so long. The only thing I noticed after such a long time off the road was that I drove too much on the left side again, just like when I started driving on the left side when I came here. I sort of drift over to the left very easily. But after only one or two turns in the car I'm fine again.

I'm hoping to find a car I can rent from someone I know, because I am going mad having to ask people for lifts all the time and being dependent on them. I want to be able to move around the place not burdening anyone else. But we'll see how it goes, you never know how things will turn out here. Until then I have my taxi Jeanette, who I pay with Sibelius helping and things I bake.

But now my eyelids are drooping too much. I will post this in the morning when I get internet. So in that case: Good Morning to you all, have a nice tomorrow!

Skiing times are on their way

I have now asked dad to register me for the 2013 90 km cross country ski race Öppet Spår. Yep yep. (Pepp!)

This means that I will have to say goodbye to the somewhat laid-back lifestyle that I have accuired since April. Watching a lot of tv, lying in bed forever and sitting down too much. So, on Sunday I made a plan for fitness and snared in Maria into it. She now has to ask every evening if I did my morning walk. If I didn't she won't buy me yoghurt when she goes shopping on Saturdays. I started on Monday with quite a short walk, but for every second week I will add another block to the walk and in a few months it will be very long and I will have to run at least parts of it to be able to get around before work starts. We just have to hope that my shins will be fine with this.

I have always had a trouble with motivation when it comes to these kind of things and wondered what would actually be needed for me to to it. It seems like I have found the one way to make me get out of my warm bed before eight o' clock, put on my shoes and get out of the house without giving up half way and going back to bed again; the fear of missing out on one kg of yoghurt (which has to last as long as possible since I only get one a week). And it works because Maria does the shopping and will not buy it if I haven't done my walking.

I must say though, it took me more than one hour of snoozing on Wednesday before I realised the danger I was putting myself in by not getting up (one week of yoghurtlessness). But of course I do love it once I've gotten outside the gate. Seeing the dust swirl in the morningish sun and feeling my pulse quicken. Sometimes it actually feels like a Swedish spring day, the sort of cold weather, but warm sun. Gorgeous.

Right, time for orchestra, so I better start unfolding the music stands. How hard can it be to unfold a music stand correctly when we've even had a short lesson about how to do it?!? Haha, anyway. Bye for now!

Ps. Happy Birthday Mum!!

Fruit salad

Friday and I am soon going home, having been at Girls’ College all day. If I’m not whisked off by Jeanette to a music department thingy at Petra High School where GC’s Marimba band is playing. It is quite probable that I might be. 

This week has past in a flash. I nowadays have the mornings completely free, all to myself, which for me is heaven. Anybody who has seen me in the really early hours of the day knows that at that stage I am not to be talked to, hardly even looked at. It is so nice not being tired all day because I got up too early for my body and brain. I get home late instead, which is fine with me, because then the evenings become relaxing. Ever since the festival finished I have just taken it easy at home. Recuperating. I found Harry Potter books (all except number 6 and 7), which is very relaxing reading. Add first one movie and then two oranges from the garden and you have a summary of my evening after dinner.

We have so many oranges now Joe keeps on nagging me to eat more and more. I am certainly not complaining. And they have even more trees at work, so Maria has planned on making lemon curd and marmalade tomorrow. I’ll probably end up helping her, if I don’t go to the bendover with Thembi, our office lady. Plus I noticed a basket of grenadillas/passionfruits on the kitchen table the other day, so add that to my fruit eating mission and I’m quite happy. Yesterday Maria and I were out in the garden picking garlic chives (gräslök med vitlökssmak) for our home made cream cheese and she pointed to the paw-paw tree in the garden, which was full of big, and still growing, paw-paws. I can’t wait for them to get ripe. Mmmm…

Right, time to go. I am apparently/obviously coming with to this music department thingy, so better get going.  

I hope you’re all well and have a lovely weekend!

Hugs from the south

The twentysecond weekend

Hey everyone, I hope your weekend was lovely, because mine definitely was. First Friday dinner with the performers remaining and their hosts, which was really great fun. Despite my age, which was mocked quite a bit. I got to sit at the fun table, with Jeanette and Marnie, the Academy's musical director Rose and her husband, the conductor from SA, Piet Mullman, the guitarist Morgan Szymanski from Mexico/London and his host Allan. We laughed a lot, ate gorgeous food (at 26th on Park), had good conversations and actually didn't freeze too bad. I nowadays wear my longjohns nearly every day which helps. Then I went out to see some friends I hadn't seen for over a month, but the maturity level dropped a bit too fast for me to think it was as good as the marvelous dinner.

Saturday was spent with Jane Austens best book (you better know which one it is) and then I made chokladbollar. Mmmm! (Sugarfilled cocoa balls sort of.) Maria and I proceeded to play cardgames and watch a romcom.

Sunday I went with Jeanette and Marnie to a farm outside Figtree to meet other farmers and families for a braii. We made fruit salad with perfectly ripe paw-paw/papaya in it (Mum, how on earth do you spell paw-paw?). It also had strawberries in it, which made me think of the Swedish midsommer quickly approaching. On the way back to Jeanette and Marnie's farm we took a road that used to be very good, but not any longer. It was very ... skumpig. Anyway, we watched a bit of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee thingy on the Thames and went to bed. But not before we walked outside to see the Kudu that was grazing just next to the house. I then fell asleep on an electrical blanket and woke at the absolutely ghastly hour of 05:40 to get into town in time. Can you imagine me being even remotely alive at that time of day??

So. I hope you had just as nice a weekend and are ready for another week of work and school. I have loaded nellieinafrica.tumblr.com with pictures, so you're welcome to check it. Now I better photocopy some music for this evening's little string group here at the Academy, before zesa goes.

Hej svej leverpastej!