It completely goes against the nature of my upbringing with my being the product of excessively prepared parents, but I flew halfway around the world with Owen, with not the slightest idea of what we were going to do once we got here. And not only did I have absolutely nothing planned, but I hadn't taken the time to learn anything about the history and/or culture of the country I was going to stay in, learned no more than 3 words of the language, and hadn't even remembered to write down Walter's phone number to put in my bag in case of something unexpected happened. The weeks before the road trip had been just beyond hectic, and there were a lot of things that suffered. Planning for the international vacation was one of these things.
On our first day here, Walter went off to work, and Owen and I slept in and basically just bummed around, spending most of the day sitting on the deck and enjoying the sun. We load up on sunscreen everyday (I at least prepared for that one), and Owen has taken to telling people that he meets that "Our Alaskan skin isn't used to the sun, so we wear lots of sunscreen." At least he hasn't yet forgotten where he's from.
At some point during the day, we decide to walk outside of the "compound" (Walter lives in a high security community, enclosed with electric fencing and complete with security personnel who patrol the community, day and night) to the nearest convenience store to buy Owen some juice. I brought my camera to take pictures of flowers and Owen and anything else interesting that we came across. One of the community guards actually stopped me during the walk, pointed to my camera, and informed me that I am not allowed to take pictures of the houses. I smiled, told him that I was only taking pictures of flowers and the kid, and we walked on. Still, it was a curious encounter to me.
At this point and during the course of this walk, I became aware of how ill-prepared I was several times. First off, people are very friendly here and everyone smiles, waves, and often stop to chat. They generally seem to start the conversation in Afrikaans too. I was wishing that I had at least learned simple friendly greetings and responses. One man laughed and told me, "I just asked you how you are doing." I really should have learned something other than the Afrikaans words for: chicken, thank you, and hangover (hoender, dankie, and babelas). So much for my communications. Luckily though, everyone generally speaks English here as well.
The other thing that I had no clue about was the currency here. I had at least picked up somewhere on the term "rand," but I had not bothered to look up the exchange rate and had no idea what a rand was worth. So the 5.80 juice that I bought for Owen seemed outrageous, but later Walter told me that it was equivalent to 58 cents. I am seriously amused at myself over this.
I should mention that the highlight of the walk home was that as we walked past the golf course, there were some golfers sitting at a table next to coolers of beer and sodas. They stopped me and asked if we'd like drinks, so Owen got to try his first soda ever (an orange soda) and I got a Castle beer. Castle beer is The National Beer of South Africa, as it says on the label. I'm hooked. So, we finished our walks with soda and beer in hand and sat on the deck at home and consumed our treats. I like this place.
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