HO HO HO

Merry Christmas to all the beautiful people I know! I hope you have a fantastic day where ever in the world you are and that you celebrate it with special people!

May the new year bring you lots of happiness and great things! YAY for 2011!

See you in the new year! Travel safe!

A weekend of Giving

This past weekend I realized once more how truly blessed we are and that we take so much for granted. We have so much to be thankful for, it's not even funny!

On Friday we had our office Christmas party and before receiving our secret santa gifts from our fellow office mates, we made 100 Christmas crackers from scratch for the Red Cross Children's Hospital. There are so many kids in that hospital that needs attention and love from all of us and it was great being able to contribute to their Christmas in such a little way.

Saturday, Shihaam and I organised a food/toy and clothing drive to Masiphumelele. Masiphumelele is a township just outside of Noordhoek. We support Yandiswa, a wonderful lady who runs a soup kitchen and looks after 40 kids daily. We collected 12 bags of clothing (for all shapes, sizes and ages), a bag of shoes, 5 parcels of food and a bag of toys. We allocated 3 very poor families and gave each a food parcel and between them they divided all the clothes. The rest of the food and toys went to the Soup Kitchen and the Peacock Creche just around the corner. They repeatedly thanked us and were extremely grateful.



Salome (in Korea) had her class kiddies make Christmas cards for all the kids and when we gave the Masi kids their cards they didn't let go of it once. They loved that someone far away made cards especially for them. We played with the kids and had lots of competitions with cool prizes for the winners. Thank you to everyone who contributed to making this day so special! Next year we will choose a few new places for Easter, June/July and again Christmas.


Sunday a few of us organized a braai at the Durbanville Children's home for the kids who doesn't have anyone to go to over the Festive Season. We raised R5000 in total and bought ingredients for a chicken and hot dog braai, salads and braai broodjies. We got a list of names from the orphanage of 26 children and we bought each child a personalized gift. Each child got lots of stationary, dolls (girls), cars (boys), toiletries (soap, toothbrush, toothpaste, roll on, spray, lip gloss), t-shirts (boys), sweets, chips, cutex (girls), 'waslappies'and back packs. The kids were so happy with their presents, they kept wearing their back packs for the rest of the day. One of my friends came as Santa Claus to surprize the kids. The little ones were very happy and excited about this and kept on hugging him and sitting on his lap. The older ones discovered very soon that it was Jacques but still enjoyed hugging and talking to him. We got a sponsorship for a jumping castle that gave endless enjoyment to all the kids - including myself :)














Once again, thank you to everyone for making this day possible and for making it so special. I'm sure the kids will remember this day for a very long time. Just before we left all of them asked us to please visit again. If you would like to be involved in our next visit please let me know. The more the merrier. We are going to try and go back for Easter.

It was such an emotional, yet most amazing weekend ever! I wish we could do this every single day!

World Aids Day

On Monday I was priveledged enough to go on a township tour. We started the day driving through Bo-Kaap, heading to District 6, Langa and then to Khayelitsha. Hearing and seeing the history of our country again, makes one realize how truly blessed and lucky we are. Once again you realize that you cannot take anything for granted and that you have to appreciate every small thing in life. Let's take a stupid example: a bathroom. I saw thousands of houses yesterday without bathrooms. Two families have to share 1 toilet. Not a bathroom, a single toilet.

There are 1.2 million people living in horrible conditions and half of Khayelitsha is unemployed. We have so much to be thankful!

We finished our tour off the Football for Hope centre, also in the township. It's a great establishment started by Fifa during the World Cup. They teach the local kids to play soccer and they teach them about HIV Aids. Each kid gets tested and treated and information about the virus and what to do when you are HIV Positive. So they are learning while they are having fun.

Today is World Aids Day, so appreciate what you have and the fact that you are healthy and happy!

Take every chance to give back to the community and those less fortunate. You have no idea how far a little can go.

To my future husband

FYI

Masiphumelele

Shihaam and I are organising the following get together to support the community. Check it out and become involved! We've also just got the Saasveld Lodge in Kloof Street (Cape Town) involved and they are offering a free weekend at the lodge. Each person that drops a gift/donation under their tree will be entered into the lucky draw.

Season is coming so the time for giving back is here. You don’t need to dig deep in your pockets, you can just raid your fridge and pantry. We don’t want money we want hands on help. Always remember a little for you is a lot for the less fortunate.

We came across a township just outside of Noordhoek that desperately needs our help. Masiphumelele has a cultural centre for the locals to take care of the kids and to educate them. ...This township is also up and coming for international tourists...

We need assistance with the following:

• Gardening
• Tidying up
• Food donations
• Clothing donations
• General games and gifts (Keep in mind Christmas is around the corner)
• Anything else that you don’t need/want anymore

Donation collection will be done on the 11th of December 2010 at our houses from 11am – 2pm. Please confirm if you are interested with a reply to either Antoinette or Shihaam’s inbox. We will then give you addresses and details.

If anyone is keen to join us on the mission to Masiphumelele after the collection please let us know so that we can organize lifts.

Always remember giving is much better than receiving!

Athens - Madrid

Viel, our new taxi driver friend picked us up at 3 am and took us to the airport. We accidently arrived an hour to early for check in time and just cruised around the airport getting our bags wrapped and looking for a Starbucks. The whole holiday we’ve been looking for one and haven’t found one yet ☹

Our flight from Athens to Madrid took 3 hours and as soon as we got to Madrid we boarded the metro and headed towards Serrano square. We caught the city sight seeing hop on – hop off bus and started taking pictures. We did the modern route around the city and stopped for lunch. This was quite an experience as the whole menu was in Spanish and the waiter couldn’t speak English. We ended up having a bacon and ham sandwich with fries for lunch. It wasn’t too bad. After lunch we walked around A LOT and took the bus to the Real Madrid Soccer Stadium. It was quite an experience. We paid for an unguided tour through the stadium and could explore on our own time. We spent quite some time there. We visited their museum, their trophy hall, some boxes, we went onto the field and sat on the bench, we saw the dressing room and even took a photo with Ronaldo. Afterwards we shopped in the shop and went looking for a metro to take us back to the airport. At the airport we started looking for a lounge to book ourselves into and during that mission we finally came across a Starbucks. It was like a little piece of Heaven in the airport. We found the lounge and booked in and showered and relaxed before our 10 hour flight back home.

It was probably one of the most memorable vacations ever and definitely a destination to return to in the future. We had so much fun and the best memories!! x

Athina Round 2

We started the beautiful day in Athens with breakfast in bed and immediately started looking for another hotel to spend the next two nights in. We just found out that the annual Athens Marathon was taking place and that it was a big celebration as it was the 2500'th marathon. Crazy!!!


We found a nice new hotel for the next two days and went to book in immediately. The rest of the day we spent shopping and chilling at cafe's.

Saturday night we were invited by one of Sox's friends, Stelios to his club Villa Mercedes. It was the most insane thing I have ever seen/experienced. It's a massive chic/sexy venue with girls dancing all over the show but in a stylish kind of way. It's not like something back home where you find grabby guys.. anyways it was amazing! Check out the pics




Marathon Day

Athens celebrated their 2500th annual marathon, so you can imagine the city was buzzing. We had breakfast which consisted of greek lamb and greek salad and lots of coke ☺ We walked around the rest of the day, went to the flea market and met a friend of Marnix, Michael. We got back to the hotel early enough to pack and go to bed. (we had to wake up at 2 am the next morning to catch our flight)

Adriano came to visit us at the hotel to say goodbye. We had a great time with him, laughing about silly stuff and looking at photo’s of our holiday. It was so nice of him to come and say goodbye.

We eventually got to bed at about 10 o’ clock, packed and ready to go.

Leaving Paros

The weather on the last day was horrible. We woke up to wind storms and rain and just plain miserable-ness. And it was horribly cold! We had some breakfast at the hotel and got on our 4-wheeler to explore some more. It was way too cold to drive around for long so we stopped at a coffee shop to drink some hot chocolate.


After we returned the 4-wheeler we went back to the hotel to get dressed for the ferry. We had to return the bike at 2:30, had already checked out at 12 and had to wait till 7 to board the ferry. We changed in the hall way where our bags were and finally caught a lift to the port. We anxiously waited in the freezing wind to board the ferry.


The ferry ride to Athens took 4 hours and was a bit bumpy, but luckily we were sleepy and had lots of things to keep us busy with.

We arrived just past 11 in Piraeus, Athens and took the Metro to Syntagma Square. We went to the hostel we stayed the previous time and when we got there they were fully booked. The had two beds left in the basement - which wasn't even a room. When we got down there, there was only 1 bed available and the other 10 beds were taken by creepy guys, so we turned around then and there and went to a hotel.

The hotel was really nice (5 star mind you). We ordered room service and breakfast in bed for the next day.

The Great Fall

We woke up to really bad weather and thunder. It was haling and it was as big as golf balls. We went down stairs for breakfast and the guy informed us that all the ferries for the day was cancelled. We were stuck on the island. No more Mykonos! ☹ We were really bummed about it, but decided to make the best of the situation. At least we got to see another island besides Santorini. We decided to leave Mykonos for next time.

We walked around town in the rain and hired a 4-wheeler. Before we got the the bike place Gizella bought a piece of land on the island. It was the funniest thing in the world! She was trying to climb over a chain/rope like thing and tripped while looking at 3 guys crossing the street coming to our side of the street. I wish we had a camera rolling to document the great fall. I was laughing so much I couldn’t even help her up and she was also laughing so much that she couldn’t even get up her self. We took lots of photo’s afterwards cause she was wet and full of sand ☺


We drove around for probably 10 minutes and took the bike back to the shop cause there was something wrong with the one wheel. We exchanged our bike for another cooler one and drove around for ages. On our mission we found a beach and a nice restaurant on the oceanfront. We had oven-baked chicken with potatoes and a traditional Greek veggie dish. After lunch we drove in the direction of Lefkos, another little town and had a beautiful view of Parikia. On our way home we stopped at a super market and bought some goodies for later. Just as we got home it started pouring again.





For dinner we went to a really nice seafood restaurant and tried the greek version of hummus. It was delicious! We also ordered a greek salad and sword fish to share. For desert the waiter gave us plain yogurt with sweet grapes on the house. Definitely something to remember to make back home.

Leaving for Paros

Packing for Paros was a bigger mission than we thought. During the week in Santorini we’ve accumulated so many things that we weren’t prepared to leave behind. We left everything in our room and went down to Fira to draw money and check our mails one last time.

We met the taxi at 2 just outside our hotel and drove off to Athinios Port to wait for our ferry to Paros. At the port we had lunch and watched Koreans sleep.

The ferry finally arrived at half past 3 and we boarded. The ferry wasn’t what I was expecting at all!!! It looked like a cruise ship inside. It was beautifully decorated and had cinema rooms, receptions, a gift shop, a few restaurants and one specifically that looks like Mc Donalds. Cool huh? The ferry trip was painless and just as we got really comfy we stopped at Paros. Unfortunately it was already dark when we arrived, but the little island looked very nice and welcoming.





We immediately found a place to stay and went to put down our bags. We walked around town a little and visited a very popular Greek Orthodox Church that was built 1600 years ago. We found a hotel restaurant just around the corner and had some delicious lamb shank, tzatziki and a greek salad. After dinner we went back home to drink a beer and just relax. We had a really nice little room with a balcony over looking the pool.