Thursday, October 26, 2006

Customer complaints and South African spinach.

Due to a small number of complaints of impatient readers that there has been no update on the blog, I have decided to spew forth a posting.

The reason that there has been no update as of yet is because I had a relaxing weekend the past weekend, and read Nelson Mandela's autobiography ("A Long Walk to Freedom") in my garden in a bikini perfecting my South African tan (start getting jealous, ladies).

Life is grand in Grahamstown. I have been weaving in and out of shops in search of cheap finds and jewellery. I bought a necklace made of porcupine quills, yes, porcupine quills. It doesn't look half as scary as it sounds. There are no sharp points. Trust me on this one.

I will hopefully be moving into a marvelous flat on African Street that comprises of a study, a bedroom, a livingroom, a kitchen, a washing machine, a large and lovely veranda, all furnished and just for R2000 which is about $300 CAN per month! Don't think you can all come over now though :))))

To keep this blog interesting in the meantime until more interesting pictures are taken, I have posted two pictures of my bathroom snail (below) who kindly visits me on rainy days. In front of my door, also on rainy days, many relatives of the bathroom snail congregate in masses. There have been two occasions where I accidently stepped on a snail and crushed the poor bugger. To my horror, they were still alive, but couldn't move because their shells were crushed. I was forced to call for help: Hannah, my cello-playing roommate who loves to cook, came to rescue and promptly put these snails out of their misery by stepping on them with her right foot. That was the end of that.



There is a final thing that I would like to note: spinach in South Africa (and perhaps the rest of Africa) looks like rhubarb (see picture below). It grows on a stem which is quite long (about 20 cm) and then a little bit of spinach is on the top which must be separated from the stem and cooked in the same way as the spinach I am familiar with. The bonus about this, to my delight, is that the spinach is not covered in dirt and sand (which I am terrible at washing, according to Geza and my mother). Score: South African spinach vs. Canadian spinach --> 1-0.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

You Van Leusden...nice blog...i will admit this is the first time i have ever read or visited a blog...i figured you are special so i would check it out...good way to share info and pictures but i will never make one myself...s.africa sounds crazy...

3:12 AM  
Blogger Emma said...

who are you?

10:05 AM  

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