Busy, Busy, Busy

We apologize about the break in communication, but we have started to get busy. However, we've taken a break to watch Eli Stone--Jimmy we think of you every time it comes on.

Today was Chris's first day of school. It is actually orientation week so he will be on campus Monday-Friday to get a feel for the campus and his program. Speaking of the archeology program we went to Chris's main professor's, Thomas Huffman, house for lunch. He is a Texan by birth and made Mexican for lunch. From what we hear it may be some of the only semi-authentic Mexican available in JoBurg. After a great lunch we watched the final match of the Australian Open--tennis is HUGE in SA.

The weekend was very productive after a week of disappointing car and house hunting. We signed a lease on a really neat garden cottage Saturday morning. It is newly remodeled and in a good part of town. It is right by a big park and the neighborhood is hilly and safe for running. Plus, our landlord is an Ironman so I think that he should be a good source of running routes. We also made progress on cars and will hopefully be driving by the end of the week. Our top choice is a old red Mercedes with an automatic transmission. We will post pictures as soon as we are moved in and have the car in our possession.

On the social front we have become quite popular. On top of lunch with Chris's professor, we also went to a Rotary Braai (aka BBQ) on Saturday. It was a welcome to all of the Ambassadorial Scholars, and a great opportunity to meet some of the local Rotarians. I made a lot of promising contacts regarding volunteer opportunities, and met one of the past scholars who works at the Oprah School and is going to set up a tour for me.

Everything is going really well, and we will try to do a better job of keeping up the blog.

Mary and Chris

(p.s: for those of you who haven't read the Twilight series yet, I suggest waiting till you have a good block of time on your hands. It's what I did all day:)