creatures

I meant to do a blog yesterday about the incredibly fat, hairy caterpillars and enormous beautiful moths, but never had the chance to take any pictures. Today my wildlife encounter was removing a tick from Tom's hair (the fourth tick in our family in the two weeks we have been here so we (I) are becoming quite experienced at removing them), last night it was meeting a mouse in the toilet cubicle. I decided from now on I would call him 'Squeak' in an effort to try and be less freaked out by the encounter and vowed to only visit the bathrooms in daylight (there are no working lights in our corridor so when it is dark it is really dark!) so I don't tread on him by mistake on route. I decided our wildlife encounters were fairly mild though when hearing that one of the other children had a maggot squeezed out of her leg this morning. So who wants to join us at Appelsbosch? It is fun, really.

Bunnychow

Apparantly one of the things you should do while visiting Durban is eat Bunnychow. While the Academy were learning about South Africa they got to try some and Tom wanted to go and find some so we could all try it. It is basically a hollowed out loaf of bread, filled with curry and then eaten with the scooped out bread. We warned Tom that the real version might be more spicy than the one they tried at school but that did not put him off. So after Church we found a cafe on the beach and ordered some to share with friends (and pizza from the place next door in fear that it might be too spicy for the boys, but Tom ate it fine, along with pizza and peanut butter sandwiches!)

 The said bunnychow, being eaten by Miriam and Ben.

Sand Art

This weekend after we found a church in Durban we headed down to the beach front. These are some pictures from North Beach:

 This lion was Josh's favourite.

Local Church

The first Sunday we were here we were invited to the local Lutheran Church, here in the heart of Zulu country. Below are some pictures of the church, which is just across the road from us. We actually met in the hall next door as there were too many of us, but we were welcomed by the Church into their community during their morning service. It was a traditional, high-church service, with inscence, robes and beautiful unaccompanied singing. I don't think our boys have ever experienced anything quite like it (actually not sure if Tommy or I have either), but coped fairly well with the 2 1/2 hours we were there.

The local area

It is very remote - but pretty. I've discovered it is very tricky to take pictures in a moving car without ending up with a tree or electricity pylon blocking the view but here are a couple from down the road, the last photo was taken from the campus we live on.