7 quick takes..

A pretty place in Monkey bay

1. Good morning! I hope you’re all well. Last week, I missed because last Monday was rather dramatic. It started ok, I got up early and was full of energy and inspiration to start the week well. I made my breakfast, started my laptop and…… got the blue screen of death. I tried, and tried again. But there was no way that I could coax my laptop into starting normally. I cried and called Hartmut. After he let out a solemn sigh and told me that that blue screen is usually a very bad sign, I cried some more. But there is google, and trial and error, and prayer. And the combination of those three somehow helped to get my laptop to work again. But it took hours, and those hours took the wind out of my sails. So no blog. Also, no sitting down with the girls to do anything educational. Except maybe, that they got to watch me handle a disappointment and saw how I wanted to give up and throw the laptop against the wall, but didn’t and in the end it worked. I still don’t really know what went wrong, but it’s working again and that’s all that counts.
2. Raindrops are softly tapping the tent, the faint musty tent smell, caused by humidity and a lack of ventilation tickles my nose. A random folk playlist from YouTube is playing in the background and adding to the feeling that we are on holiday. The girls are playing outside, and I am sitting with my laptop at the small coffee table that we carried from our house inside the tent. A few weeks ago, friends of ours emigrated back to the Netherlands, and we bought their tent. We had actually no idea what it looked like or how big it was and because we want to go camping during the Easter weekend, we thought that it would be a good idea to try it out. Pitching the tent wasn't too hard (it was much bigger than we expected) and we carried mattresses, lanterns, pillows and a table from our house inside the tent (why would you be uncomfortable on a blow up mattress when you are that close from home?!). Now we are enjoying an amazing camping holiday, except that Hartmut had to get up early to go to work this morning. We couldn’t have picked a better night to try it out as it rained almost non-stop. We stayed dry, but the girls are convinced that we need to try a few nights longer. Maybe one night, or two, or perhaps the rest of the week. We’ll see. For now, I have no objection, and we’ll add a few nights to this adventure.
3. ‘You are so beautiful. You smell so nice! I love you so much!’ Sophie is, like a young mom, smitten with her newborn baby, gazing lovingly at her newest chicken. She has saved up her pocket money for a few weeks and calculated about daily how long it would take before she could afford her chicken, but Saturday was the big day. Sophie had enough money and could finally buy one. Her chicken is loud and thin, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so Sophie is in love. And we have another chicken to look after.
4. It wasn’t the only chicken that entered our household last week. Our big mother hen had been sitting on her eggs, and we were waiting eagerly for them to hatch which finally happened on Wednesday. When we checked the next day, there were still a few that had not hatched, but the mom had lost interest in waiting for them because she was too busy with the other chicks, so the girls took those eggs. One of them had a crack, and we heard noises inside. We gently helped this little chick to hatch. The small, cold, wet thing had no chance when she stayed with her mom, so the girls took turns in keeping it warm on their skin until, after a day, it was strong enough to go back to the mother. Later Sophie told me that they had found a very scientific method (ahem) to check if the other unhatched eggs were fertilised or not. They threw them against a wall to break them and see if there was a dead chick or an egg yolk inside. Fortunately the latter was the case…. Well, at least they are learning.
5. Now that Sophie has her chicken, she has a new goal for what she wants to buy with her money. She has made a sail out of sticks and a piece of fabric and realises that she needs a boat to take it out, so she is planning to buy a dug out. It’s a rather ambitious goal, and she is trying to lure Doris into her scheme. ‘Doris, how much do you like boats? A lot, right?’ Doris agrees. She likes boats. ‘Shall we put our pocket money together to buy a canoe?’ It takes a lot of convincing. Doris is saving for a toy parrot that she has seen in the shop. But in the end, with the help of  a  lot of of unrealistic claims like ‘A dug out is only a little bit more expensive than the parrot’ and ‘We can sail together to the island because I made a great sail’ Doris was on board.
6. Two weeks ago we went to Monkey Bay to find a new house for when we move. We walked entire bays to look for suitable properties and gave our phone numbers to more people than I can remember but so far, we haven’t been very successful. I have to say that I was a bit disappointed as I had imagined it to be easier. Fortunately we still have some time and I trust that it will work out.
7. The one thing we didn’t bring from our house into the tent is electricity and my battery is almost flat. I guess that’s a good moment to finish the blog. Have a great week, stay warm and safe and see you next week! 

The men were very surprised that she actually wanted to buy it.