Procrastination in slow motion

First I said I would visit home (also known as South Africa) sometime in 2009. Then I swore I'd make it back for Christmas 2010. And then early 2011 and then sometime later and then...

I looked at ticket prices for December 2011. This was on the 1st of December. And the cheapest price I'd seen all year, and the cheapest for December was a departure date of the 6th of December. So with some consultation with the spouse who'd be left alone to look after three cats, suffer a North Carolina winter and arrange for us to move house, I booked tickets for the Goblin and myself.

An international trip, with a 3 year old, for a period of approximately 3 months, made on complete impulse and with less than 5 days to plan.

Yup, that's me all right.

So on the 6th of December, we arrived at the airport at the unholy hour of 5am-ish, 4 large suitcases in tow. One with my clothes, one with the Goblin's clothes and two stuffed to the hilt with toys, fluffy animals and other essential survival gear for life with a toddler.

The flight was... hellish. It's over. Well, until I have to do it all back again. The trip from JFK in New York to Johannesburg was 15 hours. And the Goblin slept for a grand total of 1.5 of those hours. I slept for maybe 15 minutes. That's standard as I don't sleep in planes without chemical inducement and I wasn't going to take a sleeping tablet when I was solely responsible for a 33lb potential terrorist. I may frequently take a laissez faire attitude to parenting but I'm not that lax. ;)

Thank heavens for inflight entertainment though. I think Goblin watched a single episode of Pepper Pig (of which I'd never previously heard) 6 times. And he watched Rio at least 3 times over. Rio is now his absolute, undisputed, ultimate favourite DVD.

So we made it to Jozi in one piece, without losing any pieces of the aeroplane along the way. Almost as soon as he was strapped into the carseat, Goblin fell asleep. Way to adjust to jetlag kiddo... you wait until you've been up nearly 24 hours straight, it's now 3am back where you were yesterday and you go to sleep. Hmmmm....

The day after we arrived, it got cold. I love summer in Jozi. You never know what weather you'll encounter from one day to the next and it can and does get chilly here. Of course, it's a mild, temperate, tropical chilly, but still it's enough to encourage the wearing of the one and only sweater I brought with me for three days' running.

Fortunately I brought more than one item of warm clothing for Goblin.

There is a small selection of play equipment near the pool and club house in mom's townhouse complex. The playground is also right next to a bird sanctuary. On the other side of the fence is a bird hide and a notice asking for silence.

You'll probably see the sacred egrets hanging out in a fair number of pictures from the playground. Those are the white birds blobs in the picture to the left. The kid on the slide is Goblin, who managed to notice the existence of a playground despite being asleep and highly jetlagged when we arrived at mom's house.