Easter Celebrations

You never quite realize how important family holidays are until you are half-way across the world, and don't quite know what to do. We thought about preparing a feast for two, but there is no way our refrigerator could handle the leftovers. And I almost made it to church (within meters in fact), but judging from the overcrowded parking lot and the cars lining both sides of the street there weren't going to be any seats left even at a quarter to seven. So after realizing our Easter was going to be anything but traditional we created some Easter traditions of our own.

Firstly, and the mostly likely to be repeated, hot crossed buns. I don't mean singing the song or even playing it on a musical instrument, but actually baking hot crossed buns. After realizing that I wasn't going to make it into the church I decided to give them a try. From what we have gathered, this British delicacy is a major part of South African Easter festivities. The buns turned out great, and we have a few left over if anyone wants to hop on a plane and grab one:)

While the buns were busy rising we went on our first official marathon training run. It was a bit tough because our neighborhood, Northcliff, is inordinately hilly, but we made it though. Only 29 more weeks until the big marathon.

The rest of our day was relatively uneventful. We went to the park, watched Casino Royal, and just finished our stir-fry supper. Although the day was anything but traditional we had a great time, and I am determined to actually make it into St. Thomas Anglican Church next Sunday.

Running Update

For all of our running buddies out there here is a quick running update. We have officially decided that we are going to do the Soweto Marathon on November 1st, and we are beginning our base training on Easter--it is a rebirth of sorts. The marathon is part of the Nedbank City Marathon Series and takes place in the township of Soweto. The course takes us past the homes of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, and has three big climbs. Fortunately, we live in the middle of hills and have no option but to do some serious hills whenever we head out for a run.

Leading up to the marathon we have found a trail running series sponsored by Men's Health. We are planning on doing at least two of the four races during May and June. Lizabeth (my sister) will be running the 5k with me during the first race at the Cradle of Humankind.

We will keep you posted, and eventually ask for donations as we are running the Soweto Marathon for charity.

Kingsway Christian School

In our free time when Chris doesn't have class, we have been volunteering at Kingsway Christian School in a part of Johannesburg called Honeydew. We mentioned the school in an earlier entry, but it is worth elaborating on. We learned about the school from a Rotarian and began volunteering the end of February. Chris is splitting his time between the 1st grade classroom and the kitchen--hoping to spend more and more time in that kitchen--and I am in the 2/3 grade "remedial" classroom.

Over time Chris hopes to put his RD to use by helping develop a cycle menu for the school feeding program. At the moment I am helping out with routine classroom tasks, and hope to work with my classroom teacher to help connect her with some much needed classroom resources.

The students come from a nearby informal settlement, and are an absolute joy to work with. I am always amazed at their exuberance for life and their joyful demeanor. We will keep you all updated as we do more with the school.

For more infomation about the school visit thier website: http://kingsway.org.za/Kingsway/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1

Computers...and Beaches...and Breaks...Oh My!

Being that we are in the southern hemisphere we are headed into fall rather than spring. Hence the break between quarters is Fall Break, not spring break. Our original plan for the week long break was to join the other scholars on a ten day trip through Botswana and eventually to Victoria Falls. However, nothing ever goes as planned and our plans changed the morning Chris's computer decided it wasn't going to wake up and took his almost competed research proposal with it. We decided to stay in Joburg to try and fix the computer and to give Chris the option of rewriting the proposal if need be. Fortunately after a short stay at the computer hospital the logic board is fixed and all of the information was recovered.

After the stress of a hectic week of computer repairs and proposal writing we decided to go to Durban for a relaxing weekend on the beach. Being that this was a last minute decision we were unable to find a backpackers hostel with any vacancies so we ended up paying a bit more and staying at the Blue Waters right on the beachfront. Our room had a beautiful view of the Indian Ocean and we will post a video of the view shortly. The trip was quite short so we really only saw the beach and enjoyed the ocean, but we will definitely be headed back to Durban in the spring.