Table Mountain! Chapman's Peak! Happy Birthday!

I am posting this without pictures as I brought the wrong cord to the internet cafe and cant get my pics yet! Bummer!

Last week, we finally made it up Table Mountain - yes, the lazy way, via the cable car! It was an absolutely gorgeous evening and each of the girls brought a friend. Lyle brought kite-flyer Kirsty and Molly brought Becca Gracey's long lost twin sister - Victoria. It's eerie how similar they look and act AND if you saw Becca as the artful dodger, accent and all, you'd swear this was her! Anyway, we got on the LAST cable car going up (8:15pm) and the last car coming down (9:30pm)! It got pretty dark around 9p and we were able to see the southern cross and the large magellanic clouds to name a few. Orion and his dagger are upside down and the pleaides, rigel, betelgeuse were all amazing to see, upside down...By the way, the pizza and cocoa at the top of Table Mountain were yummy and perfectly well-timed! The excitement of the evening created a huge appetite!

We are struggling a bit with fear of the ocean and the shark sightings that the local papers seem to think is VERY important news. Since newspapers are sold at every robot (traffic light), it's hard to hide the daily reports of shark sightings, even if they are 30 miles away. Kids are irrationally afraid. Think I need to find some homeopathic remedy for this, because with 10 weeks to go, I would like to go back to the beach.  In the absence of herbs and homeopathy, I prepared a BIG bubble bath for Lyle to soothe that sixth grade something I am still trying to understand. She loved it and topped the day off with a few skype calls.

Our internet has been on and off - more off than on, honestly. Needlesstosay, we are keeping the internet cafes in business. At the very end of last week, Dave and I attended a training session necessary to begin as a SHINE Centre volunteer. We are hoping to get going this week. The SHINE Centre has some hugely energized people behind it, including our friend Kathryn Torres, wife of a Middlebury grad. Visionaries, professional educators and specialist educators, fundraisers/stewards and a cadre of volunteers ready to get to work. Their formula is completely in place.  As I said earlier, we got hooked in thru friends of friends.

I had the great pleasure of joining my friend Chris for a training ride as he trains for the upcoming Cape Argus. We rode from Hout Bay to Noordhoek. (Not a long ride for those familiar with the area, but every rotation of my tire was more scenic than the one before. It was glorious! ) (This picture is on a camera for which I am told we left the cord back in VT! Bummer! ) He is trying to convince me to ride a part, if not all of, the Cape Argus - a 109km race (from Cape Town city to the southern suburbs beaches, down the penninsula to Cape Point and back up the other side via coastal route thru Noordhoek and Hout Bay and up the west coast back to the city) on March 14th that will draw over 35,000 riders. I just need to put in some saddle time - and I am considering it. In any case, we landed in Noordhoek at a lovely cafe for brunch! Chris and his wife Alison are neighbors and terrific ambassadors and tour guides here in SA. It was Chris who took Dave and me on a hike to Elephants Eye in Silvermine Nature Reserve last week (photo above). I saw a snake on the trail, but I don't think it was the puff adder or the cape cobra! OMG! Chris and Alison are friends of our landlords, Garry and Biz. We continue to feel so happy at home - Garry and Biz are just amazingly warm, thoughtful and energetic people!

We are off to Hermanus this weekend to celebrate my birthday - it's a full moon, too! We are hoping, weather permitting, to go sea kayaking and see some water wildlife. We are told seals are abundant and whales do appear this time of year, though not the southern right whale. They are long gone to Antartica.

We'll document the Hermanus trip after the weekend. Tomorrow marks our exact half-way point. How sad!