Chartwell Castle Maze

As a Christmas present to a family who has taken us in as some of their own here in Johannesburg, we thought it would be fun to give us all a bit of an adventure.  We are not very good at giving "stuff" and we much prefer giving time and memories, so we decided to take the family to the Chartwell Castle Maze.  On Christmas day, we gave them a rebus (a puzzle that uses pictures to depict words) that they had to decode that read: One trip to Chartwell Castle Maze on us!  Chartwell Castle is about a 3-5 minute drive behind where we currently live.  The "castle" is just a guest house that was built to look a bit like a castle.  It's good in theory and certainly a good effort, but if you've ever been to a real castle, you might find this one amusing.  Regardless, part of the attraction of the castle is the hedgerow maze.  According to the Castle's website, this is the "largest uninterrupted hedgerow maze in the Southern world (and the third largest in the world) with over 900 conifers".  The picture below is a picture of the maze taken from a helicopter (taken from the website).  While this provides some entertainment on its own, it would have been a five-minute endeavor for this puzzle-loving family.  So we decided to spruce (pun definitely intended) it up a bit.

Before they arrived, we went through the maze hiding different Ziplock bags full of candy.  There were 5 bags, numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6.  Before they started the maze, we gave them a riddle that, once solved, told them how many bags they had to find.  They had to find all five bags and then find Nathan in the center of the maze.  Once this was completed successfully, Nathan asked them which number on the bags was missing, and they had to race to me (at the start of the maze) with the correct answer.  It took about two hours for them to complete it, which was definitely an improvement from the five minutes it would have otherwise taken them to complete the maze.  I am quite sure I, Adrianne, was the only one who  managed to get lost in the maze.

The maze was peppered with lovely little stone sculptures!  Nathan being the Nathan that he doesn't let most people see -- goofy!

Pictured above is Adrianne (far right, mostly cut off) reading the rules to the family before they began.  We had a lot of fun -- and think they did too :)

Pilanesberg

Just days before Christmas, we ventured out, along with another family (a Ph.D colleague of Nathan's, his wife, and their two-year-old daughter) on a two-day safari to Pilanesberg National Park in South Africa.  Pilanesberg is about a 1.5 hour drive from our home in Johannesburg.  Before we get to the safari, however, we have (what we think is) a very funny story.


We were to meet our friends over at their home at 6:30am on December 22 in order to leave for our safari.  Our alarm went off bright and early.  We got out of bed, packed our bags, made lunches for the next two days, put together several snacks and drinks, loaded the cooler with ice and headed out the door.  At this point, however, we were running a bit late.  We texted our friends to let them know we'd be a couple minutes behind.  We shut down our place, locked our doors, loaded the car, got into the car and we were all set to head out the drive way.  It was at this point that our friends called us, in response to our text, and said, "Um, you know we're not going on the safari until tomorrow, right?"  Shoot.  It was December 21st and we were a day early.  We hung up the phone and rolled on the ground laughing for a lengthy period of time.  We proceeded to unpack what we needed to and did it all over the next day -- except that time we actually left for our safari!

In focus in the picture above is Nathan snapping a picture of me in the backseat, with elephants in the blurred background.

Zebras!  

Rhinos!

Warthogs... normally these are not that exciting.  However, the babies were so fun to watch!  Due to the time of year we went on this safari, we were able to see the young of all of the animals!  We saw baby elephants, springbok, zebras, rhino, warthogs, giraffes, monkeys, ostrich, wildebeest, blesbok, impala, tsessebe, waterbuck, and hartebeest.  I am sure there are others I am forgetting, but you get the idea. 

Pictured above is Nathan with our friends' two-year-old!  We love this girl!  They are looking at the giraffes that were approaching the watering hole near where we had our picnic lunch on our second day.  This was the highlight of the trip for all of us:  We were eating lunch in a used-to-be restaurant in the middle of the park.  The restaurant is currently undergoing management changes so we were able to use part of the building to eat our picnic lunch.  The fence that was once erected to protect the restaurant patrons had been torn down and was laying on the ground.  This allowed the animals to get very close to us, which was amazing!  While we were eating we had three giraffes (pictured below), three ostrich, monkeys, mongoose, warthogs, and several guinea fowl just meters away from us.  Beautiful!

We loved watching these giraffe.  In the picture above, they were either practicing for the watering hole or licking salt from the dirt, we're not sure.  The way they did this was wonderful: Two were always bent over while the third kept guard and they would rotate roles.  In this picture you can see the two bent over are fairly young and the one keeping guard is much older.  Not only is this obvious through their size, but the lighter brown their coat is, the younger they are.

Above is a picture of Caroline, her daughter, and Adrianne watching the lunchtime entertainment.

We like this picture of the giraffes because it's a bit of a maze.  Not a difficult one to figure out, but a fun view.

Both of us at the top of one of the 'mountains' in the National Park!  Behind us is an excellent view of Pilanesberg!  

Above is a lion!  We never got very close to this lion, which was a tad disappointing (remember: we're in a vehicle!), but it was fun to watch him nonetheless.  What is happening in this picture was impossible to capture on camera, but a fun memory.  There were a pack of zebras and wildebeest grazing nearby and they kept getting closer and closer to the lion.  They were unaware of his presence, because before this picture was taken, he was laying down under a tree.  The zebras, wildebeest, and a new pack of warthogs got fairly close and then this lion stood up and started walking toward them.  All of the animals took off at an unbelievable speed!  All of the animals except...  one of the warthogs.  There was a bit of a standoff between this male lion and a warthog, but eventually, the warthog backed down.  As soon as the warthog turned and ran, the lion laid back down.  We were hoping to see a kill, but it's typically the lioness who does the killing for a pride of lions.  Oh well.  Of course, there are many, many more pictures we could share, but these few capture some of the more magnificent animals!  

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas from South Africa!  Our Christmas celebrations were unusual, to say the least, but we did the best we could do make it a celebration!  Our Christmas Eve was spent watching the movie Elf and baking cinnamon rolls with some good friends (Christmas Eve church services are few and far between here, so that was not part of our celebration unfortunately.)  On Christmas morning we exchanged gifts with each other, which were piled behind our South African Christmas tree!  Pictured is a hand-made wire baobab tree with red beads on the ends.  In the tree we have three ornaments, though you can really only see two of them in this picture.  The other two are a grey rhino and a brown giraffe shoved into the tree (we forgot to get ornament wires for them).  We wrapped our presents in boxes and newspaper we found in the recycling hut behind our house.  The newspaper was once used as packing buffers for a package that went through the mail.  We managed to get enough of the wrinkles out to make it work :)

We found some stockings at the Bryanston Organic Market that we love!  They are handmade by a group of women called "Out of Alex".  "Alex" is referring to Alexandra -- one of the hardest places to live in Johannesburg.  These women sew tablecloths, napkins, etc. in order to raise money for the Grandmother's Houses they run in Alex (not orphanages, but similar in nature).  We were excited to find these stockings!  The one on the left is Nathan's -- if you zoom in on the picture, you'll notice it has a more "male" theme to it.  The one on the right is Adrianne's.  They both have a South African flag stitched on the back of the taxi (the stitching nearest to the toe).  Also, our Advent Calendar we bought from Woolworths (or Woolies, as the locals call it).  

After we exchanged gifts we went to the church we've gone to a few times now.  Then over to the Derr's (same place we spent Thanksgiving) for a South African Christmas braai (a bunch of meat on a grill) with three other World Vision International families and some people form their neighborhood.  We didn't get too many pictures of everyone together that day, but here is a picture of Nathan talking to a few of the men at the celebration.  This was a fascinating day.  We celebrated with American, Zambian, German, British, Malawian, and Zimbabweans!  The family from Zimbabwe had just arrived in South Africa and were incredibly generous with the stories they told about life in Zimbabwe.  We read about and hear the horror stories from Zimbabwe, but on Christmas Day we listened to amazing stories of the resilience, innovation, and life in the Zimbabwean people through the toughest of trials.  What a joy it was to listen to the stories!

Our New Year's was pretty calm.  We watched a movie and made dinner with some friends (the same friends from Christmas Eve) on New Year's Eve and then spent New Year's Day working!  Though we did order pizza (pictures coming soon), per a Penner family tradition!  That was the first time we have ordered pizza since being in this country and my oh my was it a treat!


Merry (belated) Christmas and Happy New Year!

Thanksgiving (Posting this really late, we realize...)

To celebrate the American Thanksgiving holiday, we spent the day with several families from the World Vision South African Regional team.  The first picture below is of one of the turkeys (of 4) being grilled.  The turkeys here are incredibly small (about the size of a chicken), so our Thanksgiving hosts prepared 4 turkeys.  One turkey was fresh out of the oven, one was cooked the night before and served as cold cuts, and two were grilled.  

Here is our failed attempt at making Zwiebach.  I'm quite sure I messed up the recipe, first of all (they were grossly salty), and then because of the way altitude affects rising behaviors, they were either swollen to the point the Zwiebach's "head" fell off, or they didn't rise much at all (depending on the batch).  Oi.  So we put these in the food line next to store-bought rolls :)

Nathan spent a lot of his time at the grill, which he loved.  I was the meat-messenger.  

Here is a picture of everyone gathering for the prayer (Nathan and I are at the grill).  Attending this celebration were families from the Philippines, Canada, South Africa, Zambia, Japan, and of course, the United States.  My favorite dish was the Turkey Adobo ( a Philippino dish).  We were very grateful for a place to celebrate the holiday!  

Around the House

We were asked where we do laundry...  Below is a picture taken from our back window.  The little hut on the right has a washing machine inside and we hang-dry all of our clothes.  You'll notice in this picture that it has been raining a lot, because most of the clothes we brought with us to South Africa are on this line.  As much as I love hang-drying clothes (seriously, it brings me great joy), doing laundry during the rainy season can be quite an adventure--or altogether non-existent. A couple weeks ago, our clothes were on the line and while it was clear and sunny out our front window, we heard a huge crack of thunder.  The storms come in a hurry here -- it can be sunny one moment and dark skies and rainy the next.  Nathan looked at the darker skies from the back window and called for an 'urgent gathering of the clothes'!  We walked to our clothes thinking we had a few minutes, but just as we arrived to our clothes (about a 30-second walk), it was raining.  


Then, just yesterday, it was sunny in all directions but we started hearing the sound of rain on our roof.  A sunshower!  I was first introduced to these when I lived in Australia and they happen with uncanny frequency here.  We both looked at each other, Nathan called for an 'emergency gathering of the clothes' and we ran out the door as quickly as we could, got all of the clothes off the line and ran them inside with unbelievable speed.  Moments later, the rain stopped.  The good news was the clothes were dry and what is typically a commonplace task was a lot of fun that day!  A sunshower in South African English is known as a "monkey's wedding" (a rough translation from the Zulu saying and belief) and in Afrikaans, it is known as a "jackal's wedding" (translated).  Read the Wikipedia page linked above on the traditional beliefs behind sunshowers, it is quite interesting! 

The bird life around our house is a real highlight.  The first picture below is a little bird who tries to get into our place by knocking on our window with his beak.  We think he does this because the reflection on the window of the trees outside is very bright, so we think he's trying to get to the trees he sees in the window.  Whatever the case, he is very cute.

The picture below is one of our many male weavers that live in the weaver colony in our front yard.  This poor weaver has a cruel wife.  We know this because in weaver culture, the male weaves a nest and if the female isn't pleased with the nest, she snips it off the tree and the male has to start all over (there has to be some kind of metaphor or illustration here).  A few weeks ago this weaver was building a nest, but a few days later we saw his nest on the ground.  In this picture, he is working on the second nest (that we're aware of) and doing a fine job, in our opinion.  However, after we came back from Durban, this nest was also on the ground.  For the last couple days, he has been sitting on the branch where the nest pictured used to be, looking a little lost--probably trying to figure out when his once-cool wife turned so high-maintenance.  

Below is a picture of three of the weaver nests in the colony.  We really enjoy watching these birds!

Irene Market and the Johannesburg Symphony Choir

One of our favorite things to do in South Africa ("our" should probably read "Adrianne's") is visit the many, many markets here.  On Saturday, we went to the Irene Market (pronounced Iree-knee in Afrikaans).  This is an Afrikaner market.  An Afrikaner, according to Wikipedia's wording, is an ethnic group in Southern Africa descended from almost equal numbers of Dutch, French, and German settlers whose native tongue is Afrikaans (a Germanic language, which derives primarily from 17th century Dutch, and a variety of other languages).  Afrikaans is another one of the 11 official languages in South Africa.

Venturing a guess, about 95% of the people who attend this market are Afrikaners and about 80% of the people selling food, crafts, plants, etc. are Afrikaners.  Ironically, our two purchases came from non-Afrikaners.  The first was a crepe for Nathan (the making of said crepe is pictured below).  Our second purchase was a wall-hanging with a painting of an Ndebele Tribe symbol that used to be painted on homes to indicate an Ndebele presence inside the home.  You can learn more about these house paintings, its history, colours, symbols, etc. -- at this Wikipedia link.    We've been looking for a wall hanging lately, trying to make our home a bit more -- ours.  This hanging will help a lot!  

The picture below is just to show you a few Afrikaans words.  We know the third word down is "Waffles" -- we're not so sure on the others!  We don't really feel the need to learn Afrikaans, given that only 30% of South Africans are white, and the white population is divided between English-speakers and Afrikaans-speakers (a rough history and tension that lives into today exists between these two different populations).  We have learned how to say "Thank you very much", however, because it sounds just like the English, "Buy a donkey?"  We find this rather entertaining and, to us, the joke doesn't seem to be getting old.  At the Irene Market, however, everyone assumes if you're white, you're an Afrikaner, so people were speaking to us in Afrikaans all morning.  Our deer-in-the-headlights look usually tipped them off to our cluelessness.

On Saturday evening, we continued our endeavor into the Afrikaner culture a bit by attending the Johannesburg Symphony Choir Christmas Concert!  This was AMAZING!  We both had smiles ear-to-ear throughout the concert.  The songs were outstanding, very interactive with the audience (every few songs we sang a well-known Christmas carol and the entire audience joined in--such a beautiful sound), and the room was filled with the most life-giving spirit.  To top it off, we were both pleasantly surprised at how Gospel-centered the evening was.   The conductor must be a Christian, because before each song, he told the next part of the Christmas story and how each song helped tell the story.  They sang songs in German, Welsh, French, English, Latin, and Afrikaans.  The music was absolutely amazing and we greatly look forward to another opportunity to hear this symphony choir again.    

We're still getting used to the subtle language differences within South African English.  Below is pictured the South African English spelling of "Noel".  

Here is a picture of Adrianne's arm...  At the very end of the concert, they did an encore and sang the only "popular" Christmas tune of the evening, "Jingle Bells".  The conductor gave the crowd actions, which you might think would be cheesy--and maybe they were--but they were a lot of fun and the crowd really got into it.  Pictured below, Adrianne is shaking our car keys to the words, "Jingle Bells".  The concert was a blast and even though we brought the average age in the concert hall down by about 25 years, the camaraderie of Christmas spirit in the room was palpable.  

Durban/Pietermaritzburg

Welcome to Durban!  To celebrate our 2-year wedding anniversary, we went a couple days early to the Kwazulu-Natal province of South Africa so we could celebrate in beautiful Durban.  In the pictures below, you can see the Indian Ocean in the background!  We happened to be there on an unbelievably windy day, so the ocean's waves were not the least bit welcoming (this is also why Adrianne is wearing Nathan's swimsuit, her skirt turned out to be a horrible idea).  Our trip was unintentionally timed well though.  We were there during the 17th annual Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.  This was well-timed for us because it meant the city was inordinately clean, highly secured, and bustling with entertainment.  Our time there, however, was spent in one place (for those of you who know Adrianne well, this will come as absolutely no surprise)...

On our walk to the uShaka Marine World, we stopped to play around the public pools on the beach front.  The picture above is Nathan posing nicely, the picture below captures Adrianne nearly falling into one of the pools (this was hilarious).  These pools are set up to be some kind of game, but we could not figure it out.  There are numbers painted on the bottom of the pools and there are three or four pools in a row with increasing numbers, each pool has what looks like a shotput platform at one end.  We'll try to learn about this next time we're there (unless someone out there knows?).  

uShaka Marine World is right on the coast and is a very impressive aquarium and aquatic theme park!  They highlight a number of marine animals that are exclusively on South Africa's coast, though our pictures of these animals did not turn out as well as we had hoped.  uShaka Marine World is named after Shaka kaSenzangakhona, also known as Shaka Zulu, who is labeled the most influential leader of the Zulu Kingdom.  We thought uShaka meant "shark" in Zulu (one of the 11 official languages in South Africa), but alas, we were wrong.  Due to the presence of the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, the aquarium emphasized the impact of climate change on marine life.  This was fascinating and extremely informative.  South Africa also just launched a phone number that you can text (or "sms" to use the African term--actually, we think this term is used in all Commonwealth countries) before ordering seafood at a restaurant or buying it in a store, and within seconds they will send you information on whether or not it is wise to consume the stated seafood, based on its population (e.g. prawns--aka shrimp--are now on a watch list in southern Africa because of over-fishing).  We think this is brilliant and really hope people use it--ourselves included.

The other half of the uShaka Marine World is a water park!  Adrianne was giddy the entire time we rode the slides--we had an absolute blast!  Below is a picture of the lazy river. The best thing about this lazy river is that it wound through the aquarium so you'd float by the shark tanks, penguin tanks, seal and dolphin tanks, etc.  Loved it!  This picture is a tad misleading though, because it would lead you to believe the park was busy, however, this is not the truth.  We never waited more than a minute or two before riding a slide and frequently we walked right onto the slides!  

Below is a picture of three of the water slides.  The one on the right was our favorite.  There is a grown man going down the slide on the left, hopefully that gives you a bit of scale as to how ridiculously tall these slides were.  Adrianne was a tad scared to go down the one on the left, but ended up loving it.  From the tower where you get on the slides, you're looking at the ocean (just over our shoulders taking the picture).  So beautiful!

A few more slides.  There were 16 slides in this park -- all of which (okay, except one, but it was good in theory) were fast, fun, creative, and some had really entertaining landings (Nathan's favorite was one that poured you into a pool sideways at a very high speed--this is difficult to explain).  A day at the aquarium and water park was the perfect way to spend an anniversary!  

Below is a picture of our little (emphasis on little) cabin that we stayed in for the two nights we were in Durban.  We stayed at a backpackers lodge (Hippo Hide).  It served its purpose -- we were really only there to sleep because we were in late and out the door very early.

Now, welcome to Pietermaritzburg!  Pietermaritzburg is 70km West of Durban.  An interesting bit of information we learned while on the trip is between Durban and Pietermaritzburg, lives the largest Indian population outside of India.  Over 1 million Indian people live between these two relatively small cities.  


This is a beautiful city with the most amazing plant and animal life.  Nathan had 3 very successful interviews in Pietermaritzburg -- a very worthwhile trip.  While in Pietermaritzburg, we stayed at the African Enterprises conference center.  Below is a picture of the monkeys (or "pests" if you live there) that are constantly trying to get into the chalets, kitchens, garbage, etc.  Here you can see one of the monkeys trying to get through the window to the chalet next to us.  Pests, maybe, but we thought they were adorable (read: we don't live there).

  This is a picture we snapped quickly on our way into the African Enterprises conference center.  They have a beautiful stream with cascades (pictured, if you zoom) and two very large waterfalls on their campus.  Stunning!  The bamboo grows like weeds in the area (and they are treated like weeds, frequently being chopped down), but the atmosphere is absolutely stunning.

Below is Adrianne looking at the cascades -- we thought we should probably post a picture of a face!

Below is a picture of our chalet at the AE conference center.  The monkeys are nearby, hoping we forget to close our door.

Things are going really well for us.  Nathan has made great strides with his research, Adrianne has landed a job (more details on this coming soon), and we're starting to plant some roots in Johannesburg.  We're pretty excited about the way this adventure is shaping up!  Praise the Lord!