Home from RWA Nationals

What I'm reading: Partner in Crime by J. A. Jance

Home from RWA. While it's great to be home, finding the 'routine groove' seems to take forever. So far, the only major screw-up was that hubby left the air conditioner running for the two weeks we were gone. So much for saving electricity—not to mention a whole big chunk of change. Apparently when I said, "Did you turn off the a/c?" as we were getting ready to leave, he interpreted it to mean, "Did you turn off the water heater?" Selective hearing. I swear, he listens to the first two words and fills in the blanks with whatever pops into his head. He admits that a/c was on his list but wasn't checked off. I didn't think I needed to follow him around checking to make sure he did what he said he'd done.

TSA in Salem pawed through all our luggage. I don't mind, but it would be nice if they'd repack it the way they found it. Our ten bottles of Oregon wine came through intact, and are now safely put away in the wine rack.

Since I woke up at 6:30, I figured it was a sign that I was meant to get back to the Y. Four hours of sleep should be enough, right? All the recumbent bikes were full (has NEVER happened at that hour) and I almost turned around to go back to bed, but I managed to convince myself to stick around and use the elliptical. The new ones have a better ledge for books, and my eBook wise fit, so at least I could read while holding on to the stationary grips for dear life. This model had the other handlebars that move back and forth, but I ignored them (except for when I had to dodge them to get at my water bottle). Managed to survive, but it's not my favorite workout.

For the rest of the day:

Does it count as 'unpacked' if you get everything out of the suitcase, or do you have to actually put it all away? (I did get all the wine taken care of, though.) I tell myself it's good exercise to deal with one or two items at a time. More walking.

Then there's the laundry, and the empty fridge, and waiting for the mail to be delivered, which will mean another overwhelming stack of things to do.

Down/upload pictures from my camera. Wait for DH to share his much better ones. But because he shoots RAW, that means his pictures are about 8 MB each, and I have to wait for him to reformat into reasonably sized jpgs before I can share them with you.

Send ARC to the reviewer who requested it.

Deal with tracking expenses for taxes. (I know that one's going to hit the 'maybe another day' list).

Move files from laptop to PC.

When my brain clears a bit, I'll try to get back to posts about some of the RWA workshops and some more pictures of our trip.

The one-week at home mark

A brief interruption of my journal entries to reflect on the trip. It's taken a week, but I feel almost normal again, whatever normal means. At least I don't feel like my rear end is twenty feet behind me. Chaos still abounds, but it's the everyday level of chaos. The kind I'm used to.

My ‘to do’ lists and piles don’t seem much bigger than they usually are. I decided to sit back and reflect about the things I noticed, both on my trip and then what struck me about being home; the good and the not-so-good.

In no particular order.

Things I noticed in Africa:

That the one thing I forgot to pack was my binoculars, but Dan was busy with his camera most of the time, so we shared without too much conflict.

Driving on the ‘wrong’ side of the street. Glad we weren’t driving. Takes awhile to adjust to small children and dogs sitting in the ‘driver’s’ seat. And to know which way to look when crossing streets.

No big gas guzzling cars. And the busses, both city and the fancy tour busses are manual transmission. I saw more of ‘my’ car (Honda Fit Sport) while we were there than I have since I bought it here last February.

Everything sounds different, even though English is spoken. The accents, the cadences are much more varied over there. Of course, here, nobody asks me where I’m from.

No Internet access most of the time. A true vacation!

Someone else made the bed every day.

I didn’t have to cook or grocery shop. Some hotels had guest laundry facilities, thank goodness.

Huge breakfast buffets daily.

Almost no clocks in the hotel rooms. Only one hotel on our entire trip had a clock.

Haphazard provision of wash cloths, but bathroom towels, even the less-than-plush ones, were twice the size of US hotel towels. Nice to have something that wrapped all the way around.

Having to remember room numbers and how to navigate from bed to bathroom in the dark. Figuring out how the toilet flushed. Adjusting to different beds and pillows almost nightly.

The contrast between city and veld, of cattle wandering the streets, of people wearing bright-colored native attire and carrying loads on their heads. For some reason, I thought that was only in the movies. Becoming complacent about seeing certain species of wildlife. Signs in hotels warning against feeding monkeys.

And, now that I’m home:

No more five-am telephone wakeup calls. Instead, it’s the seven-am roller coasters at Universal.

Brewed decaf in the morning, which wasn’t ever available (see Rooibos tea, below; my switch rather than dealing with the icky instant stuff)

Being able to pee on my own schedule, not the tour guide’s.

Finding the bathroom in the same place every night, and the furniture hardly moves at all (aside from the universal law that says inanimate objects move just enough to get in your way).

Light switches where they belong, in the room where they turn on the light, not somewhere on another wall entirely.

Feta cheese no longer appears on almost everything (although I like it, I think I had enough. Even the Palak Paneer I ordered at an Indian restaurant used feta instead of the traditional cheese.

Remembering to continue taking the malaria pills until the 20th.

No longer living in one room, usually smaller than our master bedroom and only one bathroom. A month is a LONG time to be in close quarters. Thank goodness for the two hotels we stayed in with suite layouts.

The language itself is different, drawing heavily on British and Dutch roots. Some vocabulary adjustments I made:

Bakkie – pickup truck
Biltong – dried, spiced meat (jerky) usually made from game
Biscuit – cookie
Boerwors – sausage, grilled on the braii
Braii – barbeque
Chips, crisps – French fries and potato chips, respectively
Ja (pronounced ‘yah’) – yes – usually repeated. Ja ja.
Just now – Any time from immediately to the next millennium. (You’re in Africa)
Mealie – corn (maize), ground into a fine powder, mixed with water and cooked like very thick grits or polenta. Served as a side dish under many different names depending on where you are.
Robot – traffic signal
Rooibos – (pronounced ROY boss) red South African tea (available here too, usually called ‘red bush’).

Home Again

After a 34 hour travel 'day', I'm back home. I think my brain is a few days behind me, though, or at least seven time zones away. One travel observation (among many): Due to new regulations, we couldn't bring liquids of any kind above the standard 3 ounce containers onto the plane even though they would be purchased AFTER passing through security. So much for buying booze at the duty-free shop. We had some Rand to dispose of, so I bit the bullet and bought chocolate. I figured I'd buy some spirits on the plane when they do their duty-free merchandise hustle mid-flight. They didn't offer the Amarulla I wanted, so I got a bottle of brandy instead. BUT -- as we were about to disembark (I'm so glad they don't say 'deplane' anymore), they announced any liquids would have to be transferred to checked baggage. What a pain, and had I known, I wouldn't have bothered. The savings wasn't THAT much, and it wasn't anything I can't get here.

I'm staring at an empty fridge, an overflowing laundry room and enough junk mail and holiday catalogs to reforest half of North America. Also a dining room table covered with baskets, carvings and other assorted memorabilia. There's still a box en route (we hope) with things we had shipped.

I'll be continuing to post journal excerpts and pictures, so please keep coming back. I can't promise excerpts will be posted daily; I have two manuscripts to review, but I'll get things up as I can.

Meanwhile, waking up in the middle of the night is still disorienting. For the last month, it's been a constant challenge to remember where the bathroom is, where the toilet paper is, and how the toilet flushes. They're all different. I imagine it will take another day or two before it feels familiar. Maybe I won't get any new bruises now that the furniture is back where I remember it being.

Here's a bit more from the journal -- no pictures to upload yet; they're still on the laptop.

Wednesday 11/14

The new bus showed up on time, luggage was loaded, and we repeated the border crossing back into South Africa and headed for Kruger National Park. Even from the bus, we got some great up-close glimpses of impala, kudu, giraffe, zebra, rhino and elephant.

We got to the hotel around lunchtime, then to our chalets. We have a two-bedroom chalet with living room, kitchen, and two bathrooms. And they’ll do a whole bag of laundry for R60, which is about 10 dollars, and worth it as far as I’m concerned. Washed, dried, ironed, and ready the next day. The resort is an ‘upgrade’ on the tour, and I’m pretty sure it’s because they’re doing some major renovations, but it’s still a gorgeous place. About a five minute walk from our chalet is the ‘hippo hide’, and observation platform for watching a small herd of river hippo. Also assorted birds, and a troop of monkeys.

There are no street lights, and it’s strange to be in a ‘hotel’ without all the light bleeding in under doors from the corridors, or through gaps in curtains. One adjustment to traveling is always navigating to the bathroom in the middle of the night, finding the requisite seating and trying to remember where the hell the toilet paper is this time. This place was purely a ‘by touch’ affair.

Thursday-11/15

By 7 am, we loaded onto the small open vehicles for the scheduled game drive through Kruger Park. Within 10 minutes of entering the park, we’d seen a leopard. Well-camouflaged, but Bert, the driver, was patient, and moved back and forth until everyone had seen it. By now, we’re not even stopping for impala. There’s a herd of them on the hotel grounds. How soon we become nonchalant. Today’s drive afforded some better views of elephants and Cape buffalo, but the giraffes we saw yesterday were closer, and we didn’t see zebra today. But we also saw a lion, so we’ve seen the official “Big Five” of Kruger Park: Lion, leopard, rhino, elephant

In the shuffling of hat and binocular straps off and on, I lost one of my earrings, which turned up in the shoe of the woman seated next to me. She found it after we got off the vehicle and were having lunch. They weren’t expensive, but I was glad to have it, even if I’ll have to dig out a replacement back for it. I hardly expected it to be found.

Friday 11/16

We had an 05:15 wake-up, with bags due outside for pickup at six. Breakfast, then on the bus by 7 for the drive to Sandton, a suburb of Johannesburg. It was going to be a LONG day over a panoramic route, but the weather was overcast and we didn’t expect to see much. We were all surprised by the stop at The Potholes. Expecting a kind of leg-stretch and yet another “shop-stop” we found ourselves at something much closer to a miniature Grand Canyon. We hiked down a trail to an overlook of the Blyde River Canyon, with rock formations carved out by the water. Most impressive. There was a local artisan bazaar, and I bought a carved wart hog and a couple of baskets. Lightweight and relatively easy to pack. After a demonstration by local dancers, we proceeded to the next stop, an overlook called God’s Window. Due to the weather, the curtains were partially drawn, but we did get a glimpse of the country—probably a hundred miles or more of it. Then, we had to stop the bus so people could take a picture of a road sign saying “God’s Window” because the one at the actual overlook was too faded.

We went to Pilgrim’s Rest, an old mining town. Exactly what you’d expect of an old mining town, but inhabited by native South Africans selling their wares. Vendors with macadamia nuts and cashews greeted the bus, and I broke down and bought a bag. I also bought a stone carving. “Give you good price” is the local greeting. We had a late lunch in Dullstroom – again, the Dutch heritage showed, and pancake houses are the norm. The town is much more like Winter Park or Carmel, I’d say, and we ate at Harrie’s Pancake House, which doubles as an art gallery. Dark Belgian chocolate mousse and ice cream filled pancake (and these weren’t crepes, but thick, “US style” pancakes, and the mousse was more like a chocolate truffle than a light, fluffy pudding). I managed about half of it, then walked some of it off to get more Rand because we’ll be heading into a cash only zone shortly.

After a spectacular lightning display, we finally rolled into the hotel at about 7:30 pm. Like I said, a LONG day. Because it was raining, they directed us through the hotel rather than across the courtyard, and the rooms in our section are laid out in a long, long, long, line—eventually, we got to ours. I regretted not leaving a breadcrumb trail. Someone had arranged a bottle of wine—a 2004 Zonnebloem Pinotage—for Dan (and luckily, Dan travels with a corkscrew at all times). We assumed it was Allenby, but much later (once we found Internet access) it turned out to be from our daughter in Northern Ireland. Very nice. Too bad Allenby took credit for it when we asked if it came from him. The hotel hadn’t taken her name and sent it from “the management.” We found our way back to the lobby, went down to a middle-eastern restaurant in the attached mall and got some take out and had dinner in the room (with wine, of course).