The day after our arrival my boss came to visit us along with his wife. We were fairly well-rested and eager to have them drive us around. Hopefully we’d wear off some jet lag further, discover some preschool option locations and view possible housing spots too.

When they first arrived they asked us how we were doing. I answered the typical way someone would ‘pretty good – thanks’. They looked at me and said ‘no, really, how are you doing?’. The concern they had for us was very nice and very welcomed. I couldn’t pull a fast one on them and pretend everything was okay. Rob, my boss, is the project director for our company and he plays a very big role in things. It was really comforting to have him look about our temporary accommodation and say he was not impressed (like us, in truth) and that we must sort out our permanent housing asap. Jimmy also had a chance to voice his concerns and the difficulties we faced getting to know Joburg.

We all decided to get into their van (the installation of the kids car seats into their van was a breeze by comparison!) and have them drive us around several suburbs and past many preschools I had researched on the internet back in Canada.

We talked along the way and started to get a really good feel for the city. Claire & Rhys dozed comfortably in the van as we drove. Later in the day we decided it was time to stop for some lunch. Rob and his wife, Sharon, chose a very large casino called The Montecasino (http://www.montecasino.co.za) which had a large bird sanctuary and gardens. It was a great choice where the kids could run around and look at some pretty neat birds. They bought Claire & Rhys some duck pellets to feed the ducks. Needless to say they were two very excited little kids. It was so nice to be outside wearing shorts and t-shirts. My luggage was held up in London so I had the glory of wearing well-worn travel clothes for the third day in a row :/ in the warm sun.

We walked around the grounds of the bird casino and saw ducks, flamingos, bats, lemurs, snakes, storks and so many other birds. It was a really neat place to visit. The outdoor eatery had a children’s play area (we are finding that most family restaurants have playgrounds as there are very few public places to take your kids to run around and burn off steam -in stark contrast to North Vancouver/Canada). We ate a nice lunch, the kids played and we talked a lot about life in this special city. It was a good and hopeful second day which certainly helped our morale and confidence in getting around the city by ourselves, and doing so more safely than we initially perceived.

 

Claire asking the bird if it would like to walk down the stairs with her: