This past week has been interesting. Bruce spent most of his time at the university trying to get an ID to have access to his office building. We also went to the library to get access to secure Internet. That is basically it. (and Bruce still doesn't have an ID) We were told that English is the official language here, but I am sure it is not the English we speak. I am really having a hard time understanding what people say. Since English is their second language, most speak with a very strong accent. That coupled with my southern accent makes for using a lot of hand gestures. For example: Going to library. There are three guards at the entrance. They asked us what we needed since we did not have an ID. Bruce explained that we were told to take all of our electronic devices to the library to gain Internet access. They laughed and said they did not understand what we were saying. So, Bruce pulls out his phone and accesses the e-mail from the international office giving us the direction to go there. They pass the phone around trying to figure out what it is saying. Finally, one of the guards recognizes the name of the woman who sent us the e-mail. She was very excited saying, "I know her" over and over. After about 10 minutes, they finally let us into the library. I don't think they had a clue what we were doing there, but simply wanted to get rid of us.

On Saturday, we started the process of shopping for a used car. We had gone on-line and identified several cars to look at. The most interesting thing about used cars, is that many of them are imported from Japan. They all have satellite displays, but the service is not available here. The displays were all in Japanese! We got sunburned walking around. There are many taxis running around, but we enjoy walking and seeing the city. The taxis all honk at you, hoping to get a fare. We get honked at so much that I am sure we will miss it when we leave. Since there has been quite a bit of rain this week, the city is alive with green and flowering trees. It is beautiful.

Bruce was asked this Sunday to work with the young men (ages 12-18) in the branch of our Church. There are about 8-10 young men. I think he is looking forward to it.

The only other update I have is the status of the washing machine. On Monday, the plumber came and it was decided that the easiest solution to the broken washer was to swap it out with the washer next door, since no one is currently in that apartment. So they hauled out the old and brought in a different one, hooked it up, and told me it was a go. I bravely loaded it up, turned it on, and guess what? It flooded the kitchen floor! I wanted to scream. Actually, I think I did. I turned it off and Bruce came in to see why I was standing in the kitchen screaming.  I guess this washer had a hole in the water hose. Called maintenance again and they replaced the hose. It took all my courage to turn that darn machine on again. And guess what? It worked!!!! I have spent most of this week catching up on the last month of laundry, but I have conquered.

I know from talking with my family that many of you are looking for pictures of wild animals, sand dunes and such. Unfortunately we live in the city and the elephants and lions do not. Hopefully we will be able to get a car this week and head out to the closest game preserve this week or next week at the latest. Until then, I have pictures of ,,,,,wait for it..... our apartment!!! I know, it isn't the same but it

 will have to do for now. 

 Living  room

                                                            Pictures of grandchildren corner

                                               Kitchen (I had just washed the dishes)

                              The infamous washing machine with the hot water heater above it.

                        Me working on the computer at the dining room table. I have no idea what I am doing with my hands. I don't think I was praying.

                                                                Our bedroom.

                                          Bath room. The hot water heater hangs over the tub.

                                                         Toilet is in a separate room.

                                 Guest room for all of those who would like to come use it. See I even have                     towels for you. I mean are we talking 5 stars or what!

                 

            Our front door, the iron gate not the solid doors (they house the electrical meters. We had to                wire them shut. The first night we were here, they kept us awake by banging open and shut.

    Views from the apartment.

                                                 

         Our balcony. This is where we eat most of the time. The clothes dryer is hanging above.

Hope you enjoyed the apartment tour. 

City pictures

 Just a couple of pictures of the city from our balcony.

"I blessed the rains down in Africa" (Sing along with Toto if you please.)
It rained on Saturday! While that may not seem like such an amazing occurrence, this was the first significant rain in over two years. The thunderstorm lasted for a couple of hours. I think the rain followed us from North Carolina.

We had not been able to find any electric fans here so we also took a taxi out to the southern part of the town. We passed a local craft market that I am dying to check out. Hopefully in the next few days. There is a new mall out there that you could plop down anywhere in the states and it would not look out of place. We found a fan and a blender to make smoothies so my life is much more complete. We will be able to buy just about anything out there. It was interesting to see the differences in the demographics in the more upscale part of the city. Here at the University, the area is nice, but not fancy. We have yet to see another white person here. Out at the mall, the ratio was closer to 50 white: 50 black. I told Bruce we had found the place where all the whites with money hang out. There is a great economic discrepancy between whites and blacks. While there are rich blacks, there doesn't seem to be any poor whites.

Sunday we attended Church. There are three branches of our church here in the city. People were very friendly and open. The building is about a 1/2 walk from our apartment. It did not take but a few minutes to feel at home. One of the things that I love about the LDS church is that it is a global church and is the same in Namibia as it is in North Carolina and Colorado. Where ever we are, we know that we had a church family. We have already been asked to speak next Sunday.

This morning we attended a security briefing at the U.S. embassy. I had never been inside an embassy before. We were told that Namibia is a relatively safe country except for driving. They have a very high rate of vehicular deaths and accidents. Some is related to accidents with wild life, but most is simply because they drive like craziness here. We were advised not to travel outside the city during the night. The main crime here is petty thief, crimes of opportunity, and what they call "car jacking". That term simply means stealing things from your car, breaking windows, etc. not actually stealing the car. I think this goes back to the fact that so many here have so little. Anyway, we feel perfectly safe here and just need to be aware. I think that is good advice for any place you are in. We also got to meet the Ambassador, who is planning a dinner for the five of us. He seems very nice and I don't think it is going to be a fancy nancy event.

Tonight we are eating Mexican. I made tortillas, a weird version of salsa (had to use what I could find) and will saute some peppers, chicken and onions. Also making a watermelon smoothie. Life is good!

We are here!

We are finally in Namibia. It feels like we left America a long, long time ago. It will be nice to be grounded in one spot.

The flight was long, but everything went well. We left downtown Munich around 15:00 ( I am getting so continental) on Wednesday. The weather was very cold so we opted to spend the early afternoon in the very cool Germany museum. It is a science and engineering museum that teaches and displays how things work. It was like walking into the the book "How things Work" if you are know it. It was very interesting and I wish someone in the states would open something similar. The exhibits would be great teaching tools from K through college. As a matter of fact, there was a group of college students there learning about mechanical engineering and processes.

We boarded our flight, spent the night on the plane and arrived in South Africa around 8:30 on Thursday. It is an interesting airport. You must go through security and have a bioscan even if you are not leaving the secured part of the airport. After that, you stand in line yet again to go through the ex-ray machines. Then you stand in line and get your passport stamp saying that you were in the airport. We had a four hour lay-over, but ended up only spending about 1 1/2 hours waiting for our connection. The rest of the time was spent standing in lines.

The Windhoek airport is about 40km outside the city. When we were on approach to land, you could not even see a city. We literally landed in the middle of nowhere. The only thing in sight was the terminal.

The country is greener than I expected and very beautiful. It reminded both of us a great deal of Nevada in the spring. It is clearly a desert, but there are some trees ( I don't know what kind, I asked our driver, but he did not know) The sky is an amazing blue and clear and bright. On our drive into the city, we saw springbok. I am not sure, but I think that is a lot like seeing antelope in Wyoming or deer in North Carolina. We also passed a security point on the road. Our driver said that they are checking and looking out for poachers. I guess that last week they arrested two Chinese with rhino horns. Namibia takes poaching very seriously and are aggressive in prosecuting them.

We will be living right in the center of the city. Our apartment in on the seventh floor of one of the tallest buildings here. We have amazing views of the city from our balcony. Although it is hot, there is a breeze and sitting out on the balcony is lovely. I told Bruce we could get rid of the dining table and eat out here all the time. Actually, I am sitting out here typing now with a cold drink. I think I could get used to this.

The apartment is fine--not fancy or pretty, but perfectly functional. We have an open iron work door that opens with a skeleton key. It took us five minutes to open it last night. Behind that is a solid wood door with a dead bolt. As you can see, we should be very safe unless we have to get out of the apartment for an emergency. That skeleton key takes some practice getting it to work. You walk right into a small dining room. All the rooms have doors and are not open to each other. The kitchen is off to the right. The fridge is small, the sink is small and there is a clothes washer next to the fridge, which you hook up to drain through the sink. This washer has been my downfall. We needed to do laundry since we have been on vacation, so I bravely threw in a load of whites, filled up the slot with detergent and turned it on. About five minutes later, water started pouring from the door. It went all over the kitchen floor. I turned off the washer. I had not turned off the water from the sink to the washer, so the water backed up. Cleaned it all up. Second try. Turned on the machine. Door leaked just a little, so I put a tray under it and let it go. After a couple hours, the finished light came on. Opened the door and water poured out all over the kitchen floor into the dining room floor. Turned off the washer and cleaned up all the water yet again. Bruce talked to the international staff who are looking out for us,. They will have someone out on Monday to try to fix it. In the meantime, I have to take out the white clothes and wash them by hand. Bruce is being very sweet and says he will do it since I have cleaned up enought today. The dryer is a clothes line on the balcony. Once we get the washer working, I will get to have the sweet smell of air dried clothes. The apartment does not have heating or air conditioning. We hope to get a couple of fans today. Each bedroom has a queen bed and dresser. The bath is between them. The most interesting thing about the bathroom is that the water heater for the bath is a round metal heater hanging in the shower. The living room has the ugliest furniture I think I have ever seen, but again it is very functional with a sofa, loveseat and two glass book shelves. The shelves held the only decorations in the apartment--a gathering of about 15 rocks.(I know that Jon Mitchell would approve.)

There is a huge supermarket just across the road in the mall that has just about everything except salsa, so food shopping will be easy.

The next few days will be busy as we need to get cell phones, figure out transportation (to buy or not buy a car--that is the question) We also need to find the church. Monday morning we have a meeting at the US embassy.

Anyway, Bruce has the laundry ready to hang out to dry, so I will sign off for now.

Pictures!!!

I finally have some pictures! Hope you enjoy.

Bruce looking very cold in Vienna

Stephansdom

 

Hofburg Palace (Part of—it’s really big)

We left Vienna and traveled by train to Salzburg. What a beautiful town. We booked a totally kitschy tour called the Sound of Music tour. It took you all the places that were used in filming the movie. The best part of the tour was that it was in a nice warm bus! The temperature continues to drop. Trust us to visit Europe during a cold snap. While the filming locals within the city are beautiful, we really enjoyed the trip up into the mountains where they filmed the opening scenes and the wedding. This area is called the Lake District and is stunningly beautiful. There was about a foot or so of snow. The village looked exactly like what you would expect a small mountain village in Austria to look like. It was simply charming. The church is even more beautiful in person than in the movie.

We also were impressed with the town of Salzburg. I would love to spend several days here (maybe in the spring or summer when it is warmer)

View of the house used for the back of the Von Trapp family home. The lake was completely frozen over and people were ice skating on it. This is the lake that all the kids fell into from the boat.

I am Sixteen Going on Seventeen Gazebo

House that was used as the front of the Von Trapp family home. The wall is where Maria walked down singing, “I have Confidence”.

The Abbey

Pictures inside the Church where the wedding was filmed.

   

Village of Monsie where the church is.

The next morning we woke up to find that it had snowed through the night and was still snowing. Walking around in minus freezing temperatures with more than a foot of new snow was challenging. We did tour the Mozart museum before heading back to Munich.

Then came the only real glitch of our trip so far. The trains had been delayed due to the storm. We knew we had left abundant time to get our plane to Barcelona at 8:00, but we, (and by we I mean I) was starting to worry a little bit. However, we were able to catch a 4:30 train. It was packed with people standing up for the two and a half hour trip. We had seats so I guess we were lucky. The flight to Barcelona was uneventful. We walked around the area of our hotel and found a very fun little shopping area before heading down to the port. It was wonderful to be in warmer weather, and by warmer I simply mean that we didn't freeze after ten minutes outside. It was still cold. My favorite thing so far, is that they still have Christmas decorations up. I have decided that I am really Spanish, and will embrace my native culture by leaving my Christmas decorations up until after Three Kings Day (Jan. 6)   OK. I know that I already do that, but now I have an excuse.

          Street by our Hotel with Christmas Décor! 

      

 A music and cultural hall in the area  

 

Three kings and Santa Claus hanging from a balcony.

                Church in Barcelona

We have been out of contact on the cruise. I am not sure why cruise ships seem to lag behind the rest of the world when it comes to internet access, but availability comes at too high of a cost for us at least. So to catch everyone up, here are the cruise details and a few pictures. The weather has still been cold. Barcelona and Palms are the only places where it has been comfortable to walk outside for any length of time. I guess that’s what happens when you cruise in the middle of winter. I just felt that Europe knew we were coming and would have nicer weather for us. I know, a bit self-centered there. God does have a sense of humor and always knows how to put me in my place.

It has been nice to just sit and relax on the ship without making any connections or worrying about anything. We have a very nice room with a private balcony that is too cold to sit out on, but we keep out drapes open to see the sea. We spent a very pleasant day in Palma de Mallorca just walking around the city seeing what we could find.

    Cathedral in Palma   

Street in Palma

Our Attempt in be “cool” and take a selfie!

The next day was an “at sea” day. We played a few games of trivia and found out that we are not as smart as we thought we were. However, on the famous historical person identification quiz, we were one of the few who got Teddy Roosevelt!  Unfortunately, we had no idea who Rasputin or the Duke of Wellington was. We also discovered that there is another couple on board somewhere that speaks English. We just haven’t found them yet.

Onward to Rome!

We decided to take a formal tour of Rome. Having just nine hours in port did not seem like sufficient time for us to figure out transportation and directions on our own. We were able to visit the Vatican to tour St. Peter’s and also spent some time in the Vatican museums and the Sistine Chapel. From there we had a bus tour of the city of Rome and walked from the Musei Capitolini to the Colosseum.  By then, it had started to rain, so we were grateful to get back on the bus.

       

 

     

St. Peters

      

                                                      Vatican museums   

                                                     

changing of the Swiss Guard

 

 

                                                   Musei Capitolini area and the Colosseum

We then cruised to La Spezia. This is a lovely town in northern Italy about 1 ½ hour drive from Florence. It has many stairs! We decided to just stay in the town and climb them all. Not really, just a few of them! At the top of the hill, is a lovely old castle of St. George.

  One set of stairs. Note the man in the picture for scale!

We sailed on under rough seas to Savona. I am getting my sea legs though, I only got sick twice. Savona has an amazing fort sitting along the harbor. It is very well preserved and you could see the entire town and surrounding port from there. It was easy to see why they chose to build the fort there.

 Next and last, we stopped in Marseille, France. We had decided to book another tour here and head up into the countryside of France, but sadly the tour was cancelled. So we spent the day exploring the city. This was probably our least favorite stop on the cruise. The city was not as clean and well-cared for. However, we did climb up to the top of the mountain to see Notre Dame de la Garde. The guide books call it a hill, but trust me, it is a mountain! The views, however, were amazing. After our “little” hike, we were cold and exhausted, so we did not do very much exploring—walked around the harbor which is huge and then headed back to the ship. Haven’t got the pictures downloaded yet, so I will try to post some later. You will just have to trust me on how impressive it is that we climbed up instead of taking a bus.

We disembarked back in Barcelona and spent the afternoon touring. I was surprised at how much I liked it. Barcelona does not seem like the huge city it is. We saw Sagrada Familia and several other Gaudi creations. But my favorite part of the city was the cemetery on the hill overlooking the port. It began as a Jewish cemetery, but has grown to include others. The afternoon sun hits the glass doors of the (I don’t know what you call them) but they are the doors to the vaults built into the hillside and they seem to glow. There are also many old crypts and monuments. It is a fascinating place, unlike anything I have ever seen. I also enjoyed the Olympic sites. We had dinner at a small place off the La Rambla.  We didn’t get a lot of pictures. I think we are starting to feel “toursited” out.

We headed back to Munich early the next day. It is -7 outside. We did a bit of walking around, visited an art museum, and had a traditional German lunch. I am now sitting in the hotel room. It is too cold to go outside and I gave my gloves to a homeless beggar this afternoon, so I really have no desire to step outside. We leave tomorrow for Namibia. To be honest, I am a bit jittery. I am looking forward to getting there and finally seeing where we will be for a year. It has seemed like we have been talking about this forever. Next post will come to you from Africa! Chow. Oh wait, I’m back in Germany. I tell you I keep forgetting where we are, so it will have to be just BYE!