Moving in!

Chezzy's first day at college looking like a little schoolboy - this is why people don't believe we're married! Every Thursday we have 'formal' day, so the boys have to wear a shirt and tie and the girls pretty much wear what they normally wear but with more accessories; Lounging around at Jan and Bonny's house. We are their entertainment co-ordinators and we got them hooked on '24'! As they don't have a DVD player, we hooked up our laptop with their computer monitor so we could all watch it together.

It’s now been over a month since we arrived in Cape Town but it feels like we’ve been here for much longer (but in a good way!) I’m starting to really settle in over here which is great because we had a few setbacks in the last few weeks which were really starting to get us down and putting thoughts in our head about whether we should go back to Sydney.

The biggest thing was our home – each week we would ask them when we could move in, they would always say the following week. We would come back the following week, and they would say come back next week and so on and so on for the past month. This past week, it was down to days – we would come back every day thinking we could move in as promised, only to be told that there was still something that needed to be fixed and that it would definitely be the following day. We were so frustrated as we were being given the run around. Other things we were waiting on, like our shipment of boxes and a substantial refund from the travel agent, were also a couple of months late and added to our frustration. In the end though, we realised that all these things we were getting worked up over were just material things. The things that really mattered in life were going well.

On Wednesday, although there was still problems with the hot water, electricity and a few other things missing, we decided we would move in anyway and project manage the problems ourselves. It was a good decision as pretty much everything’s been fixed now and we finally feel a bit more ‘settled’.

You would think that as soon as we moved in that we would be happy. Well, I must confess that I wasn’t entirely. The college provides students with some furniture and necessities but all our neighbours (also college students), brought all their own furniture and homeware down as they live in other parts of South Africa. I started getting pangs of jealousy when I walked into their beautifully done up homes with nice furnishings and instantly compared it to our own meagre surroundings. I kept thinking about all the nice things we had back home and how instead of our nice leather sofa, we would have to sit in a wicker chair, instead of our nice crockery, I would have to use second hand plastic/chipped crockery. I knew it was wrong, but I started making big plans to buy all these home decorations and furnishings so that I wouldn’t have to ‘downsize’ my lifestyle too much.

But then I thought of some of the poor areas we had visited – most lived in shacks where whole families would be squeezed into one room. Roofs would leak when it rained and it was bitter cold in winter. People would be lucky to have electricity or running water and proper clothes or furniture. I felt so ashamed as our new home was very lavish in comparison. That was when I looked around at our place and truly felt 100% contentment with everything. We just got so caught up with thinking about what we didn’t have that we forgot to think about what we had already been blessed with.

And you know what? It’s funny because the very next day after we learned our lesson about contentment, we were given 2 big cushy sofas, a washing machine and a big study desk. Isn’t that amazing?

Below are some photos of our new home. We've decided not to get a landline or home internet access for the moment as it's not that cheap. We do have mobile phones, so feel free to SMS or call us (email me if you want the number). If you want to send us any mail though, it’s best to send it to the college as we don’t have a letterbox:

George Whitefield College
PO Box 64
Muizenberg, SA, 7950


The outside of our home. There are 6 cottages in our complex. Ours is the last of the first 3 in a row; Our front door!


Our living room complete with wicker furniture which has since been replaced by comfy sofas; The 'study' room. We had to take a small lecture desk from college, but luckily we have now been given a proper study table.


Our bathroom. Surprisingly, it actually looks really nice in this picture. For some reason, they used old tiles, so the floor looks really dirty in reality; Our bedroom - shhh, Eeyore is getting his beauty sleep. The wife of a student from college actually made all the curtains in all the cottages.


We had a neighborhood braai in our carpark on Saturday night. We had a great night hanging with the neighbours and brought out half our living room as well! All our neighbours are also in first year, so there is already frequent popping around to clarify homework and assignments. As you can see, there's still alot of construction left to do around the property.