Oct
04
This weekend marks exactly 3 months since we arrived in the UK. A very special friend of mine back in SA, Craig, said to me before we left, that if we could make it through the first 3 months without completely falling apart then he thought we’d be just fine. So, if I could mark it off with a pen on a board, I would tick the box that says “I would do it all the same if I had to do it all again”. Of course there are things that we have had to adjust to. For instance, I hate ironing! Whoever invented the iron was not thinking when he made that fatal discovery. The good thing though is that Mitchell and Jenna are learning to do all their chores more efficiently. You just learn to work as a team.
One of the highlights of this week, for me anyway, must be when Mitchell lost his PE bag on the bus to school. He got off the bus and left his bag behind. Inside the bag were his new PE kit, and his takkies (the Poms love that word for some reason). He phoned us from school in a panic to tell us that he had lost his kit. We started phoning the bus company and were battling to get through. It was within 2 hrs since he had left it on the bus, so we thought that at best it might still be on the bus somewhere doing the rounds through Tunbridge Wells. Mike was on his way to Tunbridge Wells so he just stopped in at the bus depot to report it missing and leave our details, in case it was handed in. When he got to the office the bag was already there with all the contents in place. I know it’s not always the case and we were probably lucky, but after I lost my wallet here last year and got it back with all my money in, this outcome didn’t surprise me too much.
Jenna had a wonderful week of spending time with her friends from school, after hours. I have realised that this is not something that she did all that regularly when we were back home in SA. Why is that? Why did it always seem like an effort to organise a play date, whereas over here it is just done. I think that it has something to do with the awesome sense of community that I find over here. People in villages get together, school friends meet after school and on weekends, groups organise get-togethers. I like it.
I too have made a new friend here in Tonbridge. Her name is Stephanie and she is a fantastic source of useful information. The nice thing is that she has a wonderful knowledge and understanding of South Africa and we can end up talking for ages about things that a lot of other British people just wouldn’t understand. We have promised to cook samp and beans for her, and in that vibrant spirit of hers, she says that she’d look forward to it.
Jenna also had a really good week at school. Her teacher writes the most wonderful compliments in her homework book. I am very proud of Jenna. She is working so hard to catch up to the other children in her grade. She writes and reads more than is required of her. She even brought home extra Maths exercises to do this week. Her cursive handwriting is developing so fast and she is just impressed that she can write as fast as the other children in her class now. Every day is a victory for her and her teachers are always full of compliments about her.
On Wednesday evening I went to a ladies quiz evening at the pub run and managed by my sister-in-law and her husband. I met so many new people, and it was my first introduction to a quiz night in the UK. Of course I realised just how bad my general knowledge is, although I think my “British knowledge” was more the problem than my “general knowledge”.
The weather is changing rapidly now. (Steve, autumn over here is not a gradual thing at all! There is no process in it.) You go to bed one night and its summer and you wake up the next morning and its autumn. The trees are absolutely beautiful. 
Everywhere you drive it is like looking at the background for a jigsaw puzzle. Leaves of every shape and colour cascade to the ground like confetti. There are creepers here that grow on the side of the houses and in summer they are a brilliant green. 
Within a few weeks they are now the most intense red. I think my family are getting tired of hearing me say “Look at the colours of the leaves” every time we drive anywhere. We park the car in a parking lot and they have to get out and admire the trees with me, we drive along the freeway and they have to ooohh and aaaahh with me as I marvel at the beautiful colours. I think they are wishing winter will come soon so that all the leaves will be gone, but that’s ok, because then I am going to get them to appreciate the beauty in the starkness of winter.
This weekend we went shopping for jackets, scarves, beanies, gloves, and boots. The temperatures here are already reaching what we would experience in the depths of winter in EL. We have some mornings where the temperatures are reaching single digits and some days it is only getting up to about 19 or 20 degrees. If the wind doesn’t blow and the sun shines (like it so often does in Kent) then it really doesn’t seem cold at all. It is so strange to try and imagine the kids going to school in the snow in a few months time and it’s so scary to think that we are going to have to drive on the icy roads. Whoo! Every day brings a new experience!
Mitchell played his first hockey match this morning on the Astro turf here in Tonbridge. His school does not play hockey, so he plays for the private club. Most of the boys are from other schools and it is an awesome way for Mitchell to get to know other boys, from other schools, who may live near us.
Mike writes yet another exam this week. It seems like a never ending trek through hours of learning and hopefully it will all be over really soon. He writes another one on the 19th October. The learning takes him away from putting in hours of work, but he must get these certifications behind his name.
This afternoon I made crumpets for tea. 
Look at the corresponding photo. Jenna set up a shop in the kitchen and sold the crumpets to Mitchell, Mike, and I. Note the price change… (from £2 to 20p). She is raising money so that she can buy some more plasticine to make her little world of plasticine characters.
Late this afternoon, as the sun was setting, we took a drive through to the next village up the road from us. Hadlow! 
Hadlow is a beautiful, quaint little village that you could drive through in the blink of an eye, but I have been longing to go and take a stroll through the little streets. We walked to the Hadlow castle, through the grounds of a church that was built in the year 975. 
The door of the church still has the date 1037 carved in the door. We walked through fields with bunnies running around. In the town there was a distinct smell of log fires. You know that smell you associate with Hogsback or Katberg or a log cabin in the winter time. It was really beautiful.
