Don't read me

---

Did you not read the title?
Not much to report on today, I decided to prepare for the trillions of Holiday Club planning meetings next week, and I decided this would be much easier to do from the comfort of my warm, comfy, quiet cottage, rather than the Family Centre. So, my day began with a lovely long look into the book of James - thank you very much David for e-mailing your notes! I feel very united with you guys now, at least I might know as much about James as you (provided you were paying attention at Bible study!).
The Holiday Club is a few short weeks away and the theme is going to be culture. As a co-ordinator, it is my job to put some flesh on the bones which is our plan thus far. On the first day, we'll be looking at food & clothing - lunch time will be very exciting as we're having Zulu and ENGLISH food!!!!! If anyone has any suggestions of things that are simple to cook for 100 people in a very small kitchen, please let me know! Day 2 is my day, looking into cultural celebrations - a Zulu wedding and a Biblical wedding. Day 3 is all about music and dance with a party in the afternoon - woooo!
So the majority of my day was spent on wikipedia (because wikipedia never lies), trying to find out about traditional Jewish weddings. I also spent hours trawling through the Bible (which really never lies!), where I found surprising little about weddings and the customs regarding weddings. I did chuckle as I read that funny verse - Genesis 29:25 - "When morning came, there was Leah", thinking of David's preach a few months ago. I did learn though, that there was a lot of processing about and there was usually a week long feast, which I quite like the sound of! So, if you ever get a few spare hours (or days) go check out Jewish weddings, I found it quite interesting for the most part. Around 3pm though, clearly I'd had enough of Morhars etc and I actually fell asleep in front of my laptop! I haven't quite got rid of my cold yet - maybe it was that instead! I woke myself up and immersed myself in the world of synagogues & chuppot once again, wondering how on earth we're going to explain all this to the children! Our aim is to make it really interactive, essentially to act out a Zulu and Jewish wedding - I'm really looking forward to seeing 2 kids sitting on chairs in the air holding on to a handkerchief whilst being whirled around!
My plan for this evening was to go to a pudding evening with Linda, which, as I'm sure you can imagine, I was greatly looking forward to and only a little disappointed when Linda said we were having supper at her house - I thought it would make far more sense to go with an empty stomach! However, last time I had supper there, we made pizzas and they were even better than Domino's, so I was rather looking forward to supper too! Bizarrely I felt more poorly as the day went on, but went to get changed into some more expandable clothing, I was considering asking Shelly or Linda for maternity jeans, like Joey in friends, just to fit more puddings in. However, I ended up feeling very rough and so decided it wouldn't be a good idea to trek all the way to Pietermaritzburg, so instead Shelly made me a lovely pizza & I made apple crumble, which I scoffed, snuggling on my sofa, watching Ong-Bak.
Given the lack of interesting things to tell you about today, I thought I'd do the English thing and tell you all about the weather. Now you would be forgiven for thinking it must be lovely and sunny over here, it is after all summer (nearly) in Africa, or so they tell me. In actual fact, we have seen a few sunny days, which is lucky because it gives me just enough time to thaw out again! I'm so glad I decided to pack a few spare jumpers & my slipper socks, I've definitely needed them. Honestly, the weather is so random, every morning, as soon as I wake up, one of my very first thoughts is "what's the weather like?" and it could literally be anything - frosty or in the 30's! Usually, it's a bit overcast and a bit chilly, but not too bad. It's just weird how the extremes seem to follow each other, so there'll be a scorching day followed by a freezing day. Last weekend was very exciting because it was full of thunderstorms! I love these kind of storms, where it's been really hot during the day & they're so dramatic and grand, with lots of noise and light and...rain...etc. Well, as I sat on the sofa writing my blog, I could hear this huge storm going on, I actually looked up to check that the roof wasn't falling in! It really made me think about the people out in the townships, these storms must be really terrifying for them because their houses could literally be washed away, they could easily lose what little they have. At one point, I realised that my feet had suddenly got very cold. The floor of the cottage is just concrete stuff so it's quite common for me to get cold feet with no shoes on, so I stood up to go and put more socks on, when I heard a swishing noise. I looked down & realised the cottage had actually flooded! Not just a little bit of water trickling under the door - I waded to the door to ask Shelly if I could borrow a snorkel & goggles, where I was met by Grant, coming to check I was OK. We quickly moved all the furniture over to the dry patches & started sweeping the water out. Well actually, Grant & Shelley swept, I pranced about, far too excited to do any actual mopping or anything! Well, they soon had the place shipshape again and supplied me with hundreds of towels with which to block up the door, a rather desperate attempt to prevent it from happening again! The next day, Bongani, the gardener, was outside my patio, digging up a big trench round it, which you'd think would stop it from happening again, but somehow, the water still manages to sneak in! Last night I even had a frog in the cottage, clearly mistaking my living room for a pond! I'm so glad I had swimming lessons when I was a kid.
For those of you who know Mbu, he is moving to Mpophomeni tomorrow, which is very exciting - his house is just around the corner from the Family Centre, right opposite Lindela's, so I'm hoping for good weather, I won't be helping him if there's torrential rain!
Well that's pretty much all for now, hope you all have a good weekend :D

Over n out

---