Our Angolan Family

We couldn’t make it without help from our great “team” here.

Felipe, our driver. Beatrice, Ryan’s nanny. Mize, our maid.

Carlos, our gardener.

A Regular Zoo

 

 

One of our neighbors gave us this great banana tree last week.  It should produce next year.

Okay, Mike gave in and said we could get a chicken for Nicholas.  So here it is…all I can say is it’d better produce or it’s outta here.  Produce eggs that is, not chicks : )

Here’s Feather… Cheerio’s inspiration!  Cheerio wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t seen Feather 8 years ago in Scotland.  And to think we met up again in Angola.  It’s a small world!!

Life so far in Angola

Sorry no pictures this time. I thought I'd just post a little bit about life here in Angola. We've only been here two weeks, but we feel like we've adjusted pretty well so far. Here's the pros and cons : )

Pros:
1) The boys are doing well...Nicholas likes school and is slowly adjusting to the all-day time schedule. Ryan is growing like a weed and has started sitting up now - Yay!!
2) The church is more organized and populated than we expected. In fact, it's amazing, but there was a family we met in Scotland 8 years ago when we were there for a summer. It was this family that introduced us to Westies. Well, guess where they are now? Here!!! And their Westie is still with them. In fact, we're going to be exchanging dog sitting. How amazing is that...Cheerio's inspiration in Angola...what a small world. There is a primary with about 40-50 kids in it. And there's even a nursery....yippee!! Since there a 3 or 4 expat families here, we're thinking about having Sunday school in English for the kids and then joining the Portugese kids for singing and sharing time. I was called to be the pianist so I'm excited to get everyone singing!!
3) The recreation center here in the compound just opened...it's beautiful!! A nice fitness center, pool, two playgrounds, tennis courts, soccor field. I went swimming this morning and it was so nice!!
4) Having a maid, nanny, gardener, and driver. And cook : ) I talked my maid into cooking dinner 3 times a week :)
5) Great neighbors. There are 80 homes here and most families have kids. So it's great for the children as they have lots of playmates. Plus everyone looks out for each other and there's lots of social activities.

Cons
1) Having a maid, nanny, driver, and gardener : ) You're probably thinking...come on, how spoiled is she. Well folks, it is hard work keeping everyone happy, working hard, on time, fed, etc. You'd think I'd have lots more free time right? Well, half the time I spend getting stuff for each of them to do (plants to plant, food to cook, cleaning products to use, etc). And you're never alone in your own house. But I can't complain...I've been blessed to find good help and I literally could not do it alone. I always griped about how tiny our house was in CA, but it's overwhelming have a big house. There's no way I could keep it clean with Nicholas and Ryan needing lots of attention.
2) Most things are spotty and of poor quality. We have a 2.2 million dollar house, but something's always breaking. Plus, the telephone service isn't great and internet comes and goes. The electricity goes off several times a day here.
3) Having to use cash for everything. No credit cards here so I'm constantly paranoid someone's going to steal my purse.
4) The malaria risk. Enough said!

Well, Nicholas is about to arrive on the bus so gotta run! We'll post some pictures soon!!! Gotta show you the banana tree we planted last week!

Nicholas’ First Day at LIS

We caught the bus early this morning at 7:20 to get to the international school.  This is what I got of Nicholas.  He was a real trooper and told me he wanted to stay all day (until 3:00) on the first day.  It took him just 5 minutes to warm up to the classroom and find the trains : )  Looks like he likes school like his mama : )

 

Saturday at the Beach

 

    

Chevron has some beach areas on a small island near Luanda. It takes about 15 min drive and then 20 min boat ride to get there. They have umbrellas, picnic tables, BBQ and a few beach houses with ping pong, pool tables, and areas to rest. It’s pretty typical for the expat families to spend their Saturdays here on a nice day. One of our neighbors went with us today, and we had the place to ourselves. It wasn’t sunny, so that may have deterred some folks, but I didn’t mind (since me and the sun should not be seeing each other much), and the kids especially had tons of fun playing in the sand and finding shells and coconuts. Ryan got fussy because he skipped his naps, but he loved the wind blowing in his face on the boat rides and smiled the whole way. If I were him, though, I’d be fussy too if I had to wear the blubber vest (infant life vest), which is pretty restrictive.

Looking out our front window

 

This is the view out of our front window. This will almost certainly become Cheerio’s favorite spot in the house. You can see Nicholas riding his bike, chasing after some other kids on their bikes and scooters. Carrie is chatting with one of the neighbors. They have welcomed us warmly. Almost everyone on our street has just recently arrived, and most have little kids.

Angolan dog

We made it safely. All went about as smoothly as we could have expected. The boys were good on the plane, and all 31 bags arrived. I was worried about managing the bags once we got here and passing through customs, but it didn't take long before we had many airport workers offering to help. There were no big carts, so we ended up with 4 guys each with 2 carts in tow. It was quite a caravan passing through customs. I made sure the 4 guys knew they were the ones getting paid, so there wouldn't be others jumping in trying to help with a bag or two to get a part of the tip. To my surprise no issues with customs, until a lady came up and wheeled Cheerio off and asked for his paperwork. About an hour later, we got him back for a whopping $35. They joked with us that he is now considered an Angolan dog...I guess he's got dual citizenship! Our driver's name is Filipe. The house is great. We already met some of the neighbors. There's a 3 yr old boy next store that Nicholas has already been running around with. A guy came by last night and said hi. He took me with him to the shopping center to get internet access set up. Another lady stopped by this morning to say hi and took Carrie with her to do some grocery shopping. Then one of the maids from another house came by and left her name and number in case we're looking for some household help. The welcome has been tremendous! Also, we accepted an offer on the house in California. More later.