Big Kitties..and other Neat Animals

This Saturday I had an opportunity that very few people will ever have!  Alex and I went to the Rhino and Lion Nature Reserve where we both got the once in a lifetime chance to pet an eight year old cheetah, three eight month old white lions, and two 5 month old brown lion cubs.  Sadly, none of them were as soft as we were expecting, but it was such a cool experience.

 Eddie purred so sweetly anytime you touched him!

                                                                    Eddie the Cheetah

 It's a little frightening when the sleeping lion cub wakes up unexpectedly.

Alex holding the paw of an eight month old lion cub.

This sweet little lady looooved belly scratches.

We also saw a variety of other animals as we drove throughout the park.  Zebras, cape buffalo, impalas, gemsbok, and ostriches just to name a few.

                                                                         Gemsbok

                                                                      Cape buffalo

                                                                    Female Gemsbok

                                              Warthog (and ostrich and zebra in background)

8 Cheetah Crescent

Here is a little peek at our home in South Africa, 8 Cheetah Crescent.  We live in a gated complex (with a guard at night) in one of the northern suburbs of Johannesburg.  There are 11 other units in our complex, and the neighbors we have met are great!  (I have another post that details just how great some of our neighbors are...)  This is the front door of our little abode.

So this is a front view of our unit.  The garage is ours, and on the left is a carport where I park my Jeep!  There are no windows in the front of any of the units, so from the outside it is quite boring to see with all the red brick.  I am assuming the no windows in the front is a safety thing.

The complex pool and barbecue area.  (Our braii area as they call it here in South Africa).  Our unit is right next to the pool, so the brick wall on the right is actually our garden and master bedroom.  Even though it is winter here, it's been warm enough to put on a swimsuit a couple times and lay by the pool and read, but the water is cold.  So I am looking forward to when it warms up and I can go bask in the South African heat poolside!

Our house has two lovely gardens--they are easily my favorite feature of the place.  The top two photos are of the gardens off of the kitchen/den area.  I spend most of my time in this garden as it has the large table where I eat lunch, and a lot of seating.  The sound of the fountain is also quite relaxing, and it is usually warmer outside than inside so I read, eat, etc out there during the day.  The last two pictures are of the gardens that have entrances off the bedrooms.

And what grows in our garden, you may be wondering?  We have roses, lilies, tomato plants, rosemary, basil, and some pretty purple flowers I believe to be zinnias.

The best part of the garden is that our complex gardener, Davey, comes once a week and tends to it.  I am not really sure what he does besides mow and edge, but that is mowing and edging we don't have to do!

As they say, the kitchen is the heart of the home, so here is our HEART.  I really like our kitchen, much more since the dishwasher came back from repairs about a month after we moved in.  It is one of the more spacious kitchens for a house this size, and it has finishes and updates that a lot of houses in South Africa don't have.  The oven is not in fahrenheit (duh!) but I have a glass cutting board that converts it for me so that makes recipes much easier.  Not the clothes washer in the last picture; we also have a dryer (most homes in JoBurg don't) but it's tucked away in a hall closet and I have to use an extension cord when I need to dry clothes.  I try to use the line that is kind of visible through the window.

Here is our lovely hallway...haha.  This is where we play fetch with Jozi when it is dark outside.  And since we weren't able to bring picture frames, I concocted a clothesline to hang photos on.  Also, last weekend I realized that the plant was (once) alive house plant.  I am now in the process of trying to revive it.

Guest bedroom and bathroom!  COME VISIT!

I realized I don't have any photos of the master bedroom or bathroom.  (they probably weren't clean the day I took all these pictures) They are very similar, just slightly larger, and then master bath has a shower while the guest bath has a tub.  The closets are small here, so Alex and I use the closets in all three of the bedrooms.  I guess it was a good thing that I didn't bring all my clothes as the ones I have barely fit.

There is a little peek of 8 Cheetah Crescent....I guess if you want to see the den, living room, and master suite, you need to book a ticket into O.R. Tambo Airport.  :)

South Africa vs England

Rugby!!  I had the opportunity to attend my first rugby match a couple of weekends ago, and it was so fun.  A group of Alex's colleagues planned an outing to watch England take on South Africa at Ellis Park Stadium and we went!

We kicked off the day picking up our friend Jonathon and heading to meet up with the group to get Italian food for lunch.  Alex and I were bundled up, representing in our Springbok green and yellow, as we both know how to watch American football in the winter--and since it is winter here, and rugby slightly resembles American football, we stayed nice and warm.  (Several of our friends were not as forward thinking as we were.)  After lunch, we piled in cabs as our cabbie braved the traffic to get us to the stadium.

We were dropped off a short walk from the venue, and as we walked through the raucous crowd I couldn't help but think that 1) they needed a lesson in tailgating and 2) they needed a better method of funneling thousands of people through the gates to the stadium.  We did get free samples of face paint in the colors of the South African flag, although neither of us decked ourselves out.

We got to our seats, and Alex immediately delved in to teach me the rules of rugby.  Here are the rules that really struck me, and I still remember two weeks later.

1) play/the clock stops for nothing.  Literally.  A player was injured on the field, and when the John Deere Gator-esque car was being loaded with said injured player, THEY KEPT PLAYING.  I was appalled.

2) it's make it, take it.  So, you score, you get the ball back.  

3)  you can only throw the ball backward.  To move the ball forward, you must run with it or kick it to a teammate.  

4)  once you are tackled, you can just toss the ball backward to one of your teammates and play on.

5) to get a 'try', you must literally touch the ball down in the goal area (essentially the end zone).  Hence where the word 'touchdown' comes from in the glorious game of American football.

South Africa won, handily, and the mom of the two British boys I watch in the afternoons said it was because South Africa never loses at Ellis Stadium due to the altitude....I don't know whether this is true, but it was interesting none the less.

After the game, we hung out with our friends at KFC for a bit (yes, Kentucky Fried Chicken is wildly popular in this country.  Alex and I did not consume any, however.)

Here are a couple photos from the game.  Until next time, my friends.

 The view from our seats...we couldn't have gotten much higher!  Similar to the Birkett family seats at Owen Field.  :)

             Steffan, Alex, Anne, and Jonathon outside the stadium.  Camilla was taking the photo.  :(

Phantom

I have a longstanding love of musicals.  I am 99% sure it is inherited from my parents, who are so musically gifted and passed the love of music onto my sister and I.  (I'm not really sure they passed the gift of being able to make music onto us, but that's neither here nor there.)  I can remember my dad playing in pit orchestras for all the local musicals for as long as I can remember, and my mom would sing show tunes as she cleaned the house.  So needless to say, I was so excited when Alex told me a couple of months ago that Johannesburg had extended their run of Phantom of the Opera and it would still be playing when I arrived!

Alex and I went to go see Phantom the weekend after we arrived at a venue called Montecasino.  Montecasino is essentially this huuuuuge indoor/outdoor 'entertainment center'.  Alex compared it to Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas--Montecasino has a live theatre, numerous gambling areas, a myriad of restaurants, weird stores (in the USA-themed store we found Coors Light and Dr. Pepper...soooo excited), a movie theatre, and much more.  

We both got all dressed up for a lovely date night...and were definitely overdressed.  Most of the people there were in jeans and t-shirts; they had obviously been taking advantage of the gambling Montecasino had to offer and just threw in a musical viewing for good measure.

The performance was pretty good!  Sets were lovely, acoustics were good, and the cast did very well.  It was an entirely South African (read: all Afrikaans except one black man) cast, but they had decent French accents and sang without a trace of Afrikaans accent.

After the show, Alex and I ate at a very mediocre Italian restaurant in the Montecasino complex.  

All in all, it was a great first date in JoBurg!

Pardon the poor quality BlackBerry photo...

Meet Jozi Gertrude Siegel

26 May 2012 marks the day one of my dreams came true!  Alex and I brought home Jozi Gertrude Siegel, a 9 week old Weimaraner puppy!

Within the first week of our relationship, Alex learned that I have had a long desire for a Weimaraner puppy named Gertrude.  I don't really know the origins of this great need of my life, nor do I know why I so desperately thought her name should be Gertrude.  Perhaps it comes from the joy I found looking at William Wegman books, or maybe the stories my dad told me about his crazy aunt who made doughnuts and had weimaraners named Grey Boy...but no matter the reason, I knew my life would not be complete unless someday I had a baby weim.

We had our sweet, wonderful Tuffy, so we knew (well, thought) that we would not be getting another dog for quite awhile.  The best laid plans....

Our original intention was to wait until we moved back to the States and get a puppy as a welcome home gift to ourselves.  However, the more we thought about it, the more we felt that this would be the best time for us to get a puppy.  I'm home every morning, only working for four hours in the afternoon, and even though school starts in the fall, this will be the least demanding year of the next three.  After researching import requirements for dogs into the US (SURPRISINGLY SIMPLE), we decided to see what JoBurg had to offer in the dog department...and it did not disappoint.

Alex called me on Thursday and told me to clear my Saturday because we were going to look at Weimaraner puppies.  My smile was so big I couldn't see!!!

Yesterday we went and met our pup, her sister, and her mom and dad at their home about an hour south of Johannesburg.  Besides the excitement of being on the way to what could be our new puppy, I really enjoyed seeing what other areas of South Africa were like, AKA not the big city.  And it gave us time to discuss names.  I didn't want Alex to have to deal with having a dog named Gertrude...as much as I think it is a great name, I know literally no one else in this world does.  So my second choice was Scout, a book character from To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, one of my favorite novels.  Alex thought that a one syllable name was weird (hmmm...Anne is a one syllable name....) so sadly, Scout got the boot.  We settled on JOZI, which is the nickname for Johannesburg, to remind us of her origins even when we are back in the States.

We got to the house, went to the yard, and Jozi walked right up to us.  WE WERE SOLD.  We both knew she was the perfect fit for us.

She did great on the car ride home, great at the pet store, and knock on wood...SHE HAS NOT POTTIED IN THE HOUSE SINCE WE GOT HER.  We are so proud of our smart baby.

She also has really attached to both of us, and we are so thrilled.  She slept in her crate last night with no problems, too.  We are hopeful this isn't just the honeymoon stage of puppy ownership...

We also know that our sweet Tuffy is looking down on us and so happy that we are giving another pup such love.  The unending love and happiness he brought us is what made us realize that having a canine companion in our life was so important to both of us.

Alex and I celebrated two weeks in JoBurg and the arrival of Jozi with champagne that his sweet friends from Oxford had left (thanks Vits, Alan, and Sam!)  I made four cheese mac and cheese and roasted broccoli for dinner, and Alex and I spent the whole meal talking about how blessed we are, for so many reasons.  Cheesey meal, cheesey convo---guess it was appropriate! 

Let's start at the very beginning...

WOW!  Has this week been a whirlwind or what?

Alex and I celebrated the beginning of our marriage with a host of family and friends on Sunday.  The day and evening went perfectly and it was a night that we will always remember and cherish.  It was also bittersweet, knowing that as we said goodbye to so many loved ones that had travelled from near and far, we were unsure of when we would be reunited with them again.

Our excitement and happiness was quickly extinguished when we arrived at the vet to pick up our sweet dalmatian, Tuffy, early Monday afternoon.  We had painstakingly planned and prepared to take Tuff across the pond with us, going through all the necessary paperwork and avenues to ensure a successful transition for our pup.  We were heartbroken and devastated when the veterinarian recommended that Tuffy not make the trip with us as he was no longer able to stand on his own and was also exhibiting several other medical concerns.  These were issues that I knew would eventually happen, but I had no idea of the rapidity with which it would happen.  The vet also said he was unsure if Tuffy would improve any, if at all.  Alex and I made the very difficult decision to put him down.  We sure decided to test out those marriage vows of 'in good times and bad' pretty dang quick.  Alex has been so sweet and wonderful dealing with my incessant tears and freak outs and sadness.

Since Tuffy would no longer be making the move with us, our travel plans changed and we spent several more days in Tulsa before flying out to NYC on Thursday and spending the night with Paul, Liat, and Tali.  (Alex's sweet oldest brother, sister-in-law, and our darling niece!)  It was nice to be able to spend a bit more time with them.

FRIDAY MORNING!  We load our five massive bags, my bike box, and our four carry ons into a taxi van for the beginning of our journey.  After arrival at JFK, we saw two sweet dogs in crates getting ready to travel....cue tearful breakdown on my part.  We get all our belongings checked in, head through security, get our last American meal (Panda Express..mmmm) and head to the gate.  We had quick phone chats with sweet friends and family, and got in line to board the plane.  I was reprimanded several times by Alex for not being pushy enough to get to the front of the line....he was overly concerned about finding space for our carry ons.  We got on the plane (with room for our bags), and settled in for 15 1/2 loooong hours....cue second marriage test now.

I did a great job sleeping...Alex, not so much.  He watched five movies...I watched three.  I finally got him to take a melatonin so that he wouldn't be a walking zombie today.  The food on the plane was decent enough. Luckily both Alex and I will eat nearly anything.  I also think I asked Alex approximately 82 times how much longer we had left on the flight.  Mom and Dad, some things will never change.