Car update

We still don't have our car. This morning we received an e-mail from the customs expeditor at the embassy. I think it means they just need to pay the company that's been storing the vehicle, take it to a warehouse, and put it in a container (?) to be delivered to Gaborone. How long it takes to get to us after this is done is still a mystery. Maybe we'll get it next week. :) We'll see. If patience is a virture, I'm practically a saint! But that's another post.

Another flood

I can't believe it! Our house flooded again!!! At least this time it's confined to the first floor. The heat has been on all winter (our $227 electric bill last month and $165 the month before will testify to that). The guy taking care of our house (Joe) checks it every few days. When he went there Monday night, his time, there were a few inches of standing water in the kitchen and living room. Apparantly the spigot on the outside of the house underneath the kitchen window froze and burst!? The water went into the house. My house is weird. The pipes don't freeze and burst where you expect them to. It's outside the house or in an inside wall on the second floor. The good news is that there are no personal belongings in the house. They're all with us. The only things that are on the floor to get ruined are the carpets, laminate flooring, doors, baseboards, and furniture. They can easily we replaced. It's a good thing I brought the two smoking tables that have been in my family for generations with me. They made the trip through 8 months in storage and 2 months on a ship across an ocean unscathed.
Joe thinks we're being blase, but this isn't our first time. Plus we're not there to see the damage. It turns out the claims adjustor is the same woman who did it last time. Funny, huh?

Our stuff is here!

YEA! Our stuff has arrived! It was delivered to our house on Tuesday. The movers unloaded the crates, and unpacked a majority of the boxes for us. I now have about 2 months worth of laundry to wash, but I also have my new pots and pans. :) And our bed!!!!!! And I have all of my crochet patterns, clothes, and boxes of books I haven't read yet. A lot of the clothes that arrived are for winter, so they aren't going to be much use to me while in Botswana, but you can't have everything. Mike also has all of his woodworking tools, books, and magazines.

We were given Wednesday off work as well to deal with organizing and putting things away. Most of our stuff is put away now. We have to put in work requests to have our pictures hung (all of the walls of our house are concrete), as well as take away the extra furniture. We brought our bedroom furniture, so now we have an extra bedroom set in the house. But we've been able to sleep on OUR bed for the past three nights! It's been wonderful. I've missed that bed the past 10 months. It's the little things that make life overseas comfortable for the long term. Like having my own pillow, too. Now all we need is the car we bought from Japan, and we can start LIVING in Gaborone. Maybe next week.

The snake!

The year of the snake?

Well, the holidays are over for another year. Living in the southern hemisphere is weird! It doesn't feel like January. It's been in the 90's most days. I'd be dying if it weren't for the A/C. Every room in our house has it's own A/C unit with a remote control. We only turn on the ones in the kitchen, living room, and our bedroom. I have used the one in the office while I'm working on the computer a couple of times. I also have one in my office at work. Until they hire a systems analyst to be my office mate, I have sole control of the remote. :)

I have found many bugs in our house. I've only seen three roaches, but one of those was 2 inches long (not including antenae)! Last night I was getting into bed, when I saw a snake! It was maybe 2 feet long and red. I didn't get a good look at it, as it was moving fast going underneath the nightstand. We grabbed a broom, mop, and flashlight to get it out. I'm not going to sleep with an unidentified snake in my bedroom! We moved the bed and both nightstands away from the wall and I found it with the flashlight...as it was climbing up into the boxspring. So we took the pillows, sheets, and mattress off the boxspring. We tried to just lift and drop the boxspring to scare the snake into coming out, but with no luck. We stood the boxspring up on the side, and then we saw the snake hiding between the coils and the top of the boxspring. We tried pushing it with the broom handles to get it out, but also with no luck. It just coiled up further into the corner. We finally took the boxspring outside (we have a sliding glass door leading from our bedroom to the patio and pool). The snake finally crawled out. Once it did, it coiled itself around one of the poles in the fence around the pool. I have a few pictures of it, once I get them off the digital camera. I still don't know what kind of snake it was, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't poisonous. It was more scared of us, probably. I used to have an albino king snake that was bigger than this red one, but I knew what kind of snake that one was. I'm not about to pick up an unfamiliar snake in Africa!