Week 4- Crabby Pants.

I'm crabby. Leave me alone.

I'm apologizing in advance for this update being short or not funny or just whinny and bitchy. The awful cold I always get when I'm in a place more than a week has arrived. Actually, I usually get a cold in the fall too.  I hope this the same cold.  Unless it's two colds in one... Which is rapidly beginning to feel like that is the case.

This is our month anniversary! I can't believe time is moving so fast!   It feels like we just got here... I'm a little sad that we only have 5 months left. 

Ok.  So this week:

I drove a little. It's getting better.   I just need to remember I go in the middle of the road.  And that I drive from the right side of the car.  Friday, I got in on the left side and sat there for 30 seconds before I could figure out why it felt wrong.

Hi!  My name is Abigail and I'm super slow, I esp. have issues with hills.

It was Thanksgiving.  No, they don't celebrate the discovery of America here, although randomly,  they do "celebrate"  Black Friday here.  T and I had our own make shift Thanksgiving dinner.  We couldn't find turkey, tofurkey or pumpkin, but we made it work.  Of course, we did find pumpkin today, a little too late.  We made some pretty decent mashed potatoes and stuffing though and an interesting sweet potato pie.  And I had my Thanksgiving sausage with peach chutney.  

T cooking.

selfie with our feast

my thanksgiving "soysage"

Not too shabby.  I ate ALOT.

The aftermath.

The weekend:

We saw lots of lions at the Lion Park  The same place an American tourist got eaten in June. The tourist had the window open and the lioness had cubs around.  The lioness is still there.  The park's opinion was that the tourist was in the lionesses house and didn't follow the rules.  She was just protecting her family.  We  didn't get out of the car or have any windows open. I follow the rules around in situations where I'm considered lunch.  And we didn't drive this time, so we actually enjoyed it more and were able to learn tons of stuff about lions.   Too bad I have the memory capacity of an ant or I'd totally rock African animal pub trivia night.

We were on the fence about the "cub experience " add-on because cheesy and exploitation, but in the end we're glad we did it. I mean when is the next time I will hold hands with something that could easily eat me.  When in Ro...Africa.

Today we were supposed to go hiking, but I feel like shit,so alternately the plan was brunch and Hunger Games, but I barely made it through brunch. I almost need to take a break pushing my basket around the grocery store after buying soup.  So it was brunch and a long afternoon of crappy movies on the romance channel and naps.  :( 

This is so not a bloody mary.  F sickness. #givemevodka

I leave you with a meerkat. Because meerkats. 

Week 3

The Week in review....

I drove.  A little.  Decided I dislike it as much as driving in Chitown.  My car is still at work.  Tracy has graciously been chauffeuring me around.  Also the hijack training instructor told me that someone might bite my finger off to get my ring.  Engagement ring now lives in the safe. I like my fingers.

The summer storms started this week, which is good... There's a pretty serious drought here.   They seem to happen at night and are pretty bad ass.

I did my first plant trial.   I "tested" too much product.  I'm going to gain a million pounds.  Related to work and unrelated to the trial, I also "tested" a bunch of our current products.   This is my new favorite:

Offsite at the Johannesburg Zoo-team building scavenger hunt type game. Our team name was Versatole  cameleons.  Yes, we spelled it wrong.  As much as I liked to say we did it on purpose to be some kind of clever, we didn't.  I think that set the tone...  we didn't win.  I didn't know many of the SA questions, but I did get to see a lot of friendly animals... They come right up to the fence.  And a couple of birds took a walk with us (but the video is too big to upload.  sniff sniff).

The Versatole Cameleons

Cheetah!

Meerkat!

Hello! Hello!

There was also ALOT of peacocks:

Bryanston Organic Market-  Saturday craft and food market about 30m away.  Plenty of good excuses to spend my money and food and music.  At least I got a lot of Christmas shopping done (and bought a pretty bad ass bracelet for myself). Woot!  And market Dosas from Meera's.  Not quite the same as New Deli, but still yum.

Market view.

Delicious Dosas

Retail Therapy

Cradle of Humankind- where the whole evolution thing went down and our monkey ancestors lived.

The home of my great great great great great great... great  monkey grandparents.

Hangin' out in the homeland.

Sterkfontein Caves -still active excavation sites, where two of the oldest fossils were found, Little Foot ( he had really little feet, for realz) and Mrs. Pleas, which was most likely really a Mr. Pleas.

Decked out in our mining gear, ready to go.

Cave entrance... yes those are a lot of steep stairs.

Inside the caves.

Active Excavation Site run by students at Wits University...where either Mrs. Pleas or Little Foot was unearthed.

 We also paid a visit to the Tumulus Building,  the underground visitor center to learn more about Darwin, evolution and our ancestors.  It was pretty awesome to see evolution in action.  Go science and paleoanthropology (which I didn't know was an actual thing until today)!

Maropeng Visitor's Center

 The Lion and Rhino Nature Reserve-  kind of a shit show, because it was not well run and we had to drive ourselves around the reserve which we didn't realize until after we had paid and the gate was swinging down behind our car.   Despite there being almost no signage and us off-roading in the lowest end VW ever made.. we only *almost* broke the car a handful of times, scuffed the hubcap only once, did not run over a wart hog and did not get eaten by a lion... although we did witness an Asian tourist jump OUT of his car.   Oh and I met my giraffe.  Yay.  It only took 3 weeks.

So Giraffes!!

And other stuff...

And just because some Black Coffee and dudes in a truck:

I hope all my Midwest peeps are  enjoying your snow.   I'm feeling your pain.  I really am.

Dreamin' of a white Christmas... not.

Week 2

End of a second great week in SA.  Time is already flying by.

It was a week of firsts...

On the personal side:

First wipeout while running-  tripped over a curb and skidded across an intersection on my stomach.   Thankfully just road rash and a bruised hip.  And to think I was scared to run in my neighborhood due to crime. #theonlydangerismyself

#atleastitsnotmyface

This lead to my first experience at the pharmacy:

This wasn't my only injury this weekend, I also had my first run in with razor wire-

I was swinging my arms while walking and didn't see the wall next to me covered in razor wire. #thankgodfortetnusshots

We met new friends recommended by a co-worker.. They drink a lot, swear a lot and like techno... I think we'll get along just fine.

Little blue shots on a Monday.

First trip to the mall...

I also had my first international banking experience.  I'm not sure if it is actually required, but we could not find a way around it-  we had to hire a personal banker who supposedly sets everything up for us... It took over a week.  And I thought one of the perks was not having to go to the bank, but we still had to a week later although the banker did drive us there and it was in the mall,so that saved an uber ride.  I now have a bank account although it has no money in it since the lady I'm paying the big bucks to help didn't really explain the transfer part to me.

On the work front-

First visit to a township.   Went on a trade visit with work. The email said to wear casual clothes and "Trekkies" because we were going "Kasi-style".  Cue some furious urban-dictionary-ing. Trekkies =sneakers and kasi= township.   Our adventure started with shoving 9 people into our 7 people shuttle van.  They said the wanted me to experience a mini taxi.

Our first stop was the co-packer that produces our product. 

The next stop Tembisa Township and a wholesaler where are products are sold to smaller wholesalers and hawkers.

Our product, Nik Naks, are sold in large bags called bailers.  Nik Naks are similar to Cheetos.

Bailers are also sold at smaller stores such as these-

 The bailers are purchased by hawkers and the products are sold to consumers at road side stands like this one-

We have an incentive program where hawkers can earn prizes such as table clothes, t-shirts and umbrellas which increase awareness of our products and sales for the hawkers.

The program is run by ambassadors.  I had the pleasure of meeting one- he was one of the most passionate and proud people I've encountered.

Koos our brand ambassador for the hawkers program.

Some pictures of the township-

And chickens

We stopped for a very "kasi" snack- Mayo which is a yogurt drink eaten frozen. Very nice considering it was like 90 degrees. 

For lunch, quarters or kota...

A quarter loaf of bread, egg, cheese, French fries and usually meat.  And a spicey picked mango chutney. 

First work baby shower-

All and all a great second week...

Cheers!