New Teacher Helena

We thankfully managed to find an au-pair for the girls! They had 2 weeks in Prague before school started and Colin desperately needed to get back to writing. Also, once the school starts, we are eager to get them into extra-mural lessons for ballet and swimming, and so would need an au-pair to fetch them from school and cart them to lessons, as well as take them for outings and do fun activities after school.

Teacher Helena is a student, completing a psychology / teaching degree specialising in teaching the sensory handicapped children. She is also very artistic, having done theatre, dance, music, piano and art - right up the girls alleys! These photos are taken from one of their first days together when they went to the top of the TV tower near our apartment.

 

 

The BIG move to Prague

I still cannot believe that we immigrated 18 months ago with only a handful of suitcases, and did it all on easyjet and on the London underground.... and it ALL fitted into a city golf!!!

I am not sure how, or why, but we have managed to collect a whole lot more that I ever intended. We hired a Skoda Fabia (like a small station wagon), but ended up doing over 20 trips between Plzen and Prague, and then also had to rope in a mate who had a big enough vehicle to transport our fridge and washing machine.

From our furnished flat in Plzen, we moved into an empty flat and had to spend close on 50,000 CZK (about R25k) furnishing it - with the absolute basics. Fortunately IKEA delivers and so we spent a good couple of week-ends mopping and cleaning, and then building flatpacked furniture.

This is the lounge / dining room, the small balcony you can see through the doors, looks into the centre of the block - full of trees and greenery, very quiet too.

Work that mop!

The girls bedroom - this looks out over the street, we're on the 5th floor again, but at least we don't have the main road going by with all the late-night speed freaks and heavies - this road is quiet in comparison.

The stairs going up to our room and the bathroom. No shower here... Booo Hooo and only one bathroom, toilet downstairs for the kids, and only 2 bedrooms, but at least the bedrooms are bigger.

This is what a diningroom table, a bunkbed, a couch, a TV table, a book case, a chest of drawers and a double bed look like when they arrive from Ikea...

All we did was screw and hammer the whole weekend!

A pink chest of drawers begins to take shape in the girls room...

The big move eventually happened on the 22-23 of August and the girls enjoyed their new bedrooms, kitted with working desk and bunk beds. Here we are having our first supper in our Novy Zeleny Dum (New Green House - yip, another Green House!!).

Remember all them flat cardboard boxes...

Last day at School in Plzen - Eufrat Skolka

The very sad day arrived when Amber and Sarah had to say good bye to their school and to their most loved teachers and friends, especially Teacher Hanka. The girls planned their party on the Thursday of the last week, taking gifts for the teachers and goodies for treats. Their last day would be the Friday, but it would be spent riding horsies on a farm, so not ideal for flowers and cakes.

Teachers and classmates posing for the camera (before the festivities began)

Class in action

Ever wondered how "Head, shoulders, knees and toes" sounds in Czech?...

(waiting for video)

The girls were very spoilt as they were showered with gifts from their class mates and teachers, thank you so much everyone!

The Eufrat teachers know how to get the class in high spirits and ready for games, inventing dress up themes that the kids love. Not sure what manner of princesses these are, but you can be sure that princesses they were.

I don't think that Teacher Hanka was trying to imitate a princess here - more like an air guitarist...

Teacher Katka behind the mountain of chocolate gifts and flowers

Thank you Eufrat for making our last 18 months in Plzen memorable and enjoyable for our 2 girls - you will be missed!

Swimming at Liberec

After all the touring that we have done lately, we decided to book a week-end that was purely for the kids. We had been promising the girls for the whole summer that we would make a plan to take them to a pool, and so decided that we would find an aqua park and spend the week-end on slides and in pools.

This is one of the things that the girls miss the most. In ZA the entire summer is spent in the pool, there's one 5m from the front door! Here, it's a different game, living in apartments means no pool nearby, not even a paddle pool like you'd find in a town-house complex. Public venues are the only viable alternative, (or friends with a pool - Mike and Stepanka are the girls heroes for being so generous with their pool!) and this makes swimming quite a rare thing. Add to this the absence of nearby beaches, the reluctance of parents to swim in public waters and you have a pair of girls starved for swimming. Poor things - hopefully we will remedy this now that we have a pool within walking distance, and some regular lessons in the offing.

Looking nice there baby :D

The entire complex is indoors - can only be when you're this far North - and all things taken together, it was a great experience. The kids had an absolute ball and got brave enough to do some pretty decent tube slides... hundreds of them actually - it was Dad's job to wait at the bottom of the slide and catch flying babies, pass them on to the steps so that they could scoot up to the top for the next descent.

It takes some discernment and practice to sift your own kid from the stream of little (and sometimes really big) bodies coming down the slides though. When we were first getting the method worked out, I would wait in the pool at the bottom of the slide, Hayley would take the girls up to the top of the slide and teach them how to read the timer at the top of each slide. The theory is, that, when obeyed, this timer spaces sliders wide enough apart so that there are no collisions on, or after the tube ride. In practice the timers can tend to be more of a vague suggestion than a hard rule. I was to discover the merits of having a timer...

So, watching from the pool at the bottom of the slide, I could see the wife and kids a the top of this particular slide, there were others that were a little more tricky, but we'll get to that later... The plan was, that, just before embarking on the slide, girls to go first, followed by mom, that they would wave to me, signaling their departure. By this, I would know that one more body should plop out of the slide, and then, the next person should be baby number one. Which is how it worked out for both girls. The first one came down at speed, can't remember which it was now, Amber I think, anyway, the catch was completed perfectly and she bobbed in the water while we waited for Saz to come down the tube.

After a few seconds, sure enough Saz appeared around the bend and I prepared to catch her. She was going at a good pace, but what neither of us suspected was that her mom was right behind her going at about 10 times faster. I knew there was going to be trouble. Saz was completely unaware of the speeding mom behind her. I caught her and turned away from the slide immediately, as I got myself between Saz and the slide, mom, without brakes of any kind at her disposal, smacked into us. It was quite something... the force of the impact sent us both underwater and pushed me completely off my feet. Poor Saz fortunately didn't feel much of the thump but got a good dunking. Not fazed about being torpedoed by her mother she set off for the top of the slide again - she is still fearless...

Can't wait to get rid of those arm-bands... roll on swimming lessons!

Sarah without a runaway mom behind her.

The complex we swam at is huge with many different, some quite unique slides. The other tame-ish slide the girls tried was a longer version of the red one you see pictured here. Its mouth is about 5m to the right of this one, but you can't see the top of the slide from the mouth... So, it was agreed, that when the girls were en-route, they would call to make sure I was ready to catch them. The idea was that they would get to the last set of curves and scream, or call out. What happened in practice though was that they began calling from the moment their little bums touched the slide at the top. The result was loud calling... "Daaaad!!! Daaaad!!! Daaaad!!!" coming from the roof of the complex and tracing the route of the yellow slide. Crude as it may have been, and attract attention it did, it worked just fine! If there's noise in a place - the Woods are there.

The most novel water slide I've ever seen was one with a standard tube, perfectly straight but descending at a heck of a rate. The drop is made in complete darkness, so there is no clue that a turn is coming, and then the tube empties out into what looks like a giant, curved funnel. If toilet bowls were spherical, this would have been a giant toilet bowl. Anyway, you get shot out of the tube into this bowl, going at a cracking speed. At which, your momentum makes you swirl round the bowl in a helix until you eventually are going slow enough to drop out of the hole in the bottom into the pool below.

Here is Jane Public doing her slide...

In case you are vaguely interested in where Liberec (say Liberets) is in relation to other things, it's up in the north of the CR - see the map below.

Visit with the Oosthuizens

On one of our recent visits to the UK, we were able to catch up with Oom and family.

Mariette, cooking up a storm in die kombuis, and looking radiant at 6 months. Just to illustrate how tardy we are in getting this post up... the baby was born on Sept 5... slack ne?

Miracle upon Miracle, it was a sunny afternoon in Oxford, one of the very few in the whole summer according to Pieter. Amber and Sarah try their hand at badminton... we have a long way to go.

We got spoilt with the rare treat of a good ol' SA Braai! If the die-hard boerewors and braai tong mense will excuse the use of a gas braai! It actually works really well... might even consider one myself when we stop in one location long enough to warrant it. Please notice the castle in the background - haven't seen one of those in 18 months or more. They still taste good, but I don't know if they top a PU...

Amber was introduced to WII tennis and was developing a smashing forehand... almost literally - I was worried about the virtual game getting a little too realistic - putting some top-spin on Pieters new HD TV or something like it! nothing is safe in the environment when this game is being played - furniture, light fixtures, passing people etc are all in grave danger of swinging remotes. Watch this space at Christmas time... (Sorry luv!!)

With a little luck, occasions like this will happen more often than once a year when we're in that neck of the woods.

Thanks for a stunning day guys! And good luck with the new arrival!