Pretoria is big on restaurants with dedicated play areas. It lets the parents eat and socialize while the young-ins keep busy in a contained, usually outdoor, space. I guess we have Chuck-E-Cheese in the States, but that's not a place you want to go more than once in a while (or lifetime). Here the food is usually good enough if not stellar and the activities are quite wholesome. (The model is that it's free to enter; you just pay for the food and special activities like pony rides.) The party was at Jingle Jangle, a garden nursery with a restaurant and a random assortment of kids activities, including swing sets, motorized bikes, face painting, a trampoline and bouncy castles, and just in case you get bored, some farm animals. The best are the chickens who wander about under your feet (good public health policy?). Adam and I thought this could be a real opportunity for the States (minus the loose poultry), but our fancy friend who works at the World Bank said the required liability insurance and labor costs would be too high. We've now been to these places lots of times and Lucy always gets excited to go. Seems worth exploring.
Jumping on the trampoline with two of her schoolmates (Senna and Sofia)
Apparently I wasn't allowed on.
Lucy makes her Aunt Susie proud!
Birthday party time. (They go all out over here.)
Lunch was tofu tartar with a polenta radicchio salad.
(Not. Chicken Nuggets and some questionable juice liquid. Maybe Grandude Stan could help us with our new Jingle Jangle venture in the States. Healthy food that kids want to eat and parents beg to pay for!)
Lunch was quickly over. Back to the swings. (Lucy is in between Senna and Max)
The draw of face painting was too great.
The butterfly princess.
I mentioned the random chickens walking around, yes? (Another time we visited, Noah tried to eat one of the chicks. Just kidding, but he seemed to consider it. Would that be chicken tartar?!)
The party is over. Lucy enjoys the bubbles in her goodie bag.
Back at the Ranch
The kids get reacquainted...
(P.S. Could our government-issue couch be any uglier? You're allowed one furniture swap.. we haven't requested our yet. Beggars can't be choosers and it looks OK in certain light (i.e., the dark).
Braai Time
The next day, with some friends in town, we had a barbecue (or "braai" as they call it here) at the US Embassy community center. (Yes, we do work sometimes, too.)
Ami and Lucy decide the baby swings are more fun than the big kid ones.
The (in)famous Thu-ha, visiting from Atlanta. (She's the one who threw the Pho party.)
Heather Menzies, a South African also in from Atlanta, was visiting. Noah looks up at our friend, Heidi. (She and her husband, Brian, work at CDC and moved here from ATL many years ago.)
Noah loves Heidi.
Chef Brian manages the grill. (He later went on a 21 day cleanse which surprisingly didn't involve any Afrikans boerwurst.)
Jetson's time again... Before bed, we triple Skyped with Uncle Josh and the Mo'town G'parents. (See Lucy in the bottom middle...) Now we need to try this with Janet, Sue and the Bflo G'parents!
Quiet quickly descended over the veld. xo,
Glenn
I would love a Jingle Jangle over here, please! It's sad that everyone is so lawsuit-happy because that kind of restaurant would be awesome. But that trampoline looks like a deathtrap to some people--I think that even backyard trampolines here have to have one of those fence things around them or homeowner's insurance won't cover them if someone gets hurt. One of my fondest (okay, not so fond, but still vivid) memories is of being bounced off of a trampoline and being convinced that I dislocated my shoulder. Ice cream made it all better, but still....
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