Bex in Moz

Guest blogger: Eva

ICE-CREAM!

SWINGS!

MADELEINES!

GRANNY!

GRANDPA!

AVOS!

MY FAMILY!

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Labels: Eva, holidays

posted by Rebecca @ 11:20 am 4 comments

Guest blogger: Joaquim

I took the medals to school the next day to show my friends, and now I've put them in my treasure box. The gold medals were for the juniors championship, I did a really good demonstration - I've been practising at home - and then I had to fight this mean little kid. He kicked me in the neck - which is against the rules - and made me cry, but I got up again and kept fighting and then won. We shook hands after the fight so it was OK. Sebastian, Eva, Mum and Pai were there to watch, and we had grilled chicken and chips to celebrate afterwards.

S: I love chicken and chips.

Then there was a cowboy party. Sebastian and I looked cool and dangerous. There was a horse, but I didn't get on, it was really big. Sebastian did though.

S: I wasn't scared.

Then there was another karate thing, a graduation this time, and our teacher was really tough on us and made us work really hard in the sun for hours. But I got my next belt.

S: I got a bit bored and took lots of photos, but we had more chicken and chips afterwards. I love chicken and chips.

And then, there was a fund-raiser at school, International Day. Everyone had to go dressed in a national costume. Sebastian chose French, Eva and Mum went Chinese, Pai wore a silly straw hat, and I was an English Country Gentleman and I won a prize: PIZZA AND A SOFT DRINK! Awesome! Mum also won a prize with her cupcakes, for the prettiest cake. I thought they were pretty delicious.

S: I liked my moustache.

Hmmm, that's about it. We're going on holiday in 10 days, which is soooo exciting. Sebastian and I are crossing the days off on the calendar. Pai and Mum seem to be quite excited too. Eva is too little to know.

S: It's MY turn to cross it off today.

Byeeeeeee! Joaquim xxx

Labels: holidays, Joaquim, Pemba life, Sebastian

posted by Rebecca @ 11:36 am 0 comments

Slack slack slack - not my tummy!

Never mind New Year's resolutions, all my good intentions back in - when was it now - November - to be more assiduous in posting here went out the window in grand style. To which there is only one solution, which is to post a bunch of festive-season cute photos of the boys and hope that that will make up for it.

I love the concentration on Sebastian's face. Serious business...



Yes, that was our Christmas tree, and yes, it's still weird for me too that we decorate it in the blazing sunshine every year.

Note the dim quality of the next picture. That's because it was all of 4.45am when Sebastian came tearing into our bedroom shouting "Look what Father Christmas brought me!!!" and after the stocking frenzy came present madness, all well before 6am. Yawn.


I am proud to say that I did make it to midnight on New Year's eve, which is the first time in a long while, which we spent with friends in 3 little rented bungalows some 80km outside Pemba. The all-day pool session (followed by dinner, roasted marshmallows, and sparklers ) ensured that the kids were tucked up nice and early and we adults managed a very civilised dinner under the full-moon partial eclipse and brilliant stars of the tropical night sky. Lovely.



I like the way Paulo looks like he's wearing one of my earrings there, do you think they'd suit him?

And then next day it was more pool and more good food and enough nap time for all of us to head home happy and smiling and feeling up to whatever 2010 has to throw at us.


Which in my case, and very shortly now, is of course a new baby. I'm off to England on Wednesday, and so the next you may hear from me may well be some pics of a very new number 3.

Cheerio!

Labels: holidays

posted by Rebecca @ 2:29 pm 1 comments

Summer loving

So I realise that reading about other people's holidays is not always thrilling and as such I shall keep this year's resume to a hit and miss list and a few photos.

HITS:

Family. An all-round winner; many happy hours spent in the company of parents/grandparents, siblings, cousins etc.

Friends. Many and varied and best of all several whose path we haven't crossed for far too many years. Wonderful.

Dinosaurs. The Natural History Museum once again scored highly on the boys' holiday satisfaction reader. The animatronics, the big teeth, the toys! What's not to love?

Aquarium. Going strong in its third summer holiday, the Lisbon Oceanarium is a must-see, and the sea otters don't get any less cute over time.

Food. Daily ice-cream, real cheese, stylish sea-food restaurants, awesome take-away curry, freshly picked figs and super-Maman's home cooking. Yum.

Dentist. Unlikely one this, but we all got the all-clear. Result!

Murtal. 3 days in the country cottage where we got married, eating fruit staright off the trees, swimming in a glorious fresh-water tank, reminiscing and the rest.

London Zoo. Much changed since my last visit (decades ago), my sister and I enjoyed this as much if not more than the kids.

MISSES:

Lost luggage. My bag did not turn up in Lisbon. I think it's still in Heathrow. BA have no idea where it is. Grrrrr.

Sea. Lovely beaches, shame about the bloody freezing water in bot the UK and Portugal. I have clearly lost my nerve. The boys overcame their initial reluctance to romp gaily in the frigid waters of the North Sea/Atlantic. Obviously take after their maternal garndfather.

Pregnancy-related anxiety. I was very much looking forward to sharing the good news of our forthcoming thrid child with all my friends and family when a very dodgy nuchal translucency result - implying a heightened possibility of all sorts of chromosomal and heart abnormalities - went and threw a spanner in the works. Cue biopsy of the placenta (large needle stuck into my tummy, no pain but no fun either) and several weeks of background anxiety until the final results and a further two scans showed that there was absolutely nothing wrong with the little one after all. Not exactly what we had in mind for the holidays, but on the other hand our final HIT is that we are indeed expecting a perfectly healthy baby at the end of February, and no we don't know whether it's a boy or a girl, and although it's pretty obvious what I might be hoping for (Paulo is genuinely indifferent to gender) I am just grateful that all is well and I will love equally whoever turns up in 5 months.

After all, going on past form, we won't do too badly!

Labels: holidays

posted by Rebecca @ 3:30 pm 4 comments

World environment day: a late contribution.

On the evening we spent in the Himlayan Homestay houses the four of us in our house had a long discussion with our hosts and translator/guide from the Snow Leopard Conservancy. Somewhat unexpectedly we found ourselves discussing global environmental problems and climate change. The Ladakhi people in rural areas live on the whole in very small villages, largely dependent on their livestock for wool, dairy products and fuel, plus the small amount of barley and potatoes that they cultivate during the short summer, apples, apricots and a few other goods traditionally traded for but now mostly bought in Leh town. They remain self-sufficient to an impressive level, and an unusual one in this globalised era, which I suppose is an essential survival technique if you live in a place cut off by snow for 6 months of the year.

Or at least it was. Now, in Ulley village at least, the roads open a full 2 months earlier than previously. Good on the one front, as it allows them better access to town and the facilities therein, but bad - very bad in fact - in that it represents a much smaller annual snowfall. The snow is their only source of water; as it melts it irrigates their fields and feeds the grass that feeds their livestock. The glacier above the village, a fail-safe source of water for time immemorial, is visibly shrinking. Our guide, Jigmet, was seriously concerned.

Do I have to spell out why the glacier is melting? Do I have to point out that it has very little to do with the way of life of the people to whom it represents their entire livelihood? Do I have to add that it has everything to do with our lifestyle? Do I have to remind us that there is no emergency exit on this particular spacecraft and that sooner or later this is going to catch up with us when we find we can no longer buy our way out of trouble?

I acknowledge my part in this problem. Our summer holiday involves a trans-continental flight from which our share of carbon emissions are over 6 tonnes. For our trip to Portugal, I have checked out ferries and trains as an alternative to flying: they are so much more expensive that I cannot justify the extra expense. It was the same last summer. Please, I would like an alternative.

Labels: environment, holidays, worries

posted by Rebecca @ 11:11 am 0 comments

Happy birthday!

Toblerone. Surely one of the finest chocolates in the world. What could be more satisfying than those chunks of top quality chocolate (intense dark or rich milk, as you prefer, and I prefer the former) peppered with perfect nuggets of almond and honey nougat? And the excellent presentation: triangles of bliss. And yet – and I’m sure I am not alone in this – I only ever buy Toblerone in Duty Free. Which is how I come to have not one but two (see options above) large bars nestling in my fridge. When and how did it become such an airport staple? In the course of our five-hour stop-over in Heathrow I had the chance to compare the special offers on this Matterhorn of chocolates, currently celebrating its centenary (and may there be many more). I plumped for 3 for 2 on the large bars, spurning the arriviste limited edition fruit and nut, and sticking with the classics. The third bar, pure white, has found a happy home next door.

So it would appear that we have survived the flights and had a smashing holiday. I will not bore you with the details of our return journey which took a whopping 30 hours from the moment we entered Lisbon airport to the moment we left Pemba airport, but I must give credit where it’s due and in this case it’s due to my boys who were exceptionally well-behaved, all things considered. It did help - a lot - that they are very keen on planes and as a result relatively easily entertained watching take-offs and landings at the various airports, and remaining remarkably enthusiastic about every flight, yes even the eighth. Bless ‘em. What could have been Hell was downgraded to Purgatory.

So, highlights of the holiday.

Joaquim’s: Mekyla, the theme park in Johannesburg and in particular the big wheel, dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum, running with the pack (of cousins) in France, discovering mini-golf, pony-riding, the big sunfish at the Lisbon Oceanarium.

Sebastian’s: the elephant doing a poo at Jo’burg zoo, the “robot pick up rubbish” (wall-e), riding a chairlift up the mountain, late bedtimes in Lisbon, so many enormous aeroplanes.

Mine: being with my parents, siblings and all their offspring for a week against the background of the beautiful Alps, the London Eye (at last!), spending a night and a day at the house we restored for our wedding, exactly 8 years earlier, with a bunch of my favourite in-laws, eating figs straight off the tree.

Paulo’s: dramatic walks in the Alps, bonding with the lads (my brother, brother-in-law and oldest nephew), having his phone on silent for 4 weeks, seeing his 3^rd sister for the first time in 3 years, late-night sessions with old friends.

What more do I need to say?

Labels: holidays, Joaquim, Paulo, Sebastian

posted by Rebecca @ 10:44 am 1 comments

Boys on a plane

On Saturday we are leaving for our holidays. Four weeks of fun, family and friends. Oh, and lots of flights. 8 in fact.

First stop is Johannesburg (2 and a half hours), where we'll be staying with the lovely family who made friends with Joaquim and me during our 6-week stay in Milpark hospital and made us feel human again. Joaquim is besides himself with anticipation at being reunited with his "best, best friend", 10 year-old Mekyla. Sebastian is unaware that anything is up. I'm wondering just how chilly it will be (it's mid-winter here, down South) as I have no closed shoes and can just about remember what it feels like to have cold feet.

Then we'll be stopping-off in London (10 hours) for three days, followed by a week in the Alps in France (2 hours), another brief stop in London (2 hours) and ten days in Portugal (2 hours) before flying back to Pemba via London (2 hours) and Joburg (10 hours plus 2 and a half hours). That makes 33 - count them - hours in a plane with two children under 5. (I wanted to take the train to the Alps but our tickets would have come to almost 1 grand, and on Ryanair they cost 280 quid. That's how easy it is to take the environmental option.) Much as I am ardently looking forward to the holidays, in fact Joaquim and I have been crossing the days off the calendar for getting on for 2 months now, this prospect is slightly scary. I have plasticine. I will take a couple of books. I will buy some cartons of juice. Our portable DVD player is - alas - broken. I'm a bit wary of sedating them as Joaquim is unbelievably heavy to carry. Any winning tips?

Labels: holidays, Joaquim, Sebastian

posted by Rebecca @ 2:40 pm 4 comments

Ola malta!

No, not hello, Malta.

It means Hi guys! in Portuguese, but it's kind of cool in a way that "hi guys" never will be. Great holiday so far: Oceanarium (third visit, just as good, both boys loved it, will definitely go again), park (lots of, but with a great tower slide that J loves and P and S do together to mutual delight), zoo (today, lots of growling with the tigers, hooting at the monkeys and J awestruck by the dolphin display), lounging (family, friends, food, drink, all the usuals), late nights (Lisbon-ers, or little lettuces as they are rather sweetly known here, love late nights), bacalhau, and those fantastic little custard puff-pastry tarts.

What´s not to love?

Labels: holidays, Joaquim, Sebastian

posted by Rebecca @ 9:44 pm 2 comments