Thursday Thoughts: readjusting after vacation

1. I feel like a time traveler. We left Johannesburg on Tuesday night at 6:40 pm and arrived at Dulles Airport in D.C. at 6:30 am Wednesday morning. South Africa is seven hours ahead. Whenever I travel ahead of my time zone I want to contact people at home and be like hey guys! I'm from the future! Always a mind fuck and I hope today really is Thursday. 

via

2. We went from sweating our asses off in the summer on Tuesday to the leftovers of a snow storm on Wednesday morning. What a shock to the system. Huge props to our dog sitter Amanda for dealing not only with the snow, but with our prima donna dogs in the snow.  

3. I don't feel like thinking about how to write my posts on Cape Town and the game lodge in Limpopo but I'll figure it out and share them next week. In the meantime, here's a video of warthogs in the courtyard outside of our room at Mabula. They make me laugh eating on their elbows and all. 

 4. Spoiler alert: the shark diving expedition was cancelled. Originally we were told it was due to rough seas, but really it was because the water has been too warm and sharks haven't come to the boat in 21 days. I appreciated them cancelling it because then we didn't waste money going out to sit on a boat. Anyhoo we found ourselves with a free day at the last minute. MFD went and got a haircut like he lives there. Of course he made friends with the barber and other locals throughout our stay in Cape Town. 

5. This sign at the Victoria & Alfred waterfront cracked me up. 

 6. Things I miss the most outside of the U.S.: ice, iced coffee, knowing my phone will always work (even when I switch to international, I don't trust it), regular time (vs military time), english units of measurement vs. the metric system, temperatures in fahrenheit, not having to do math every time I wonder how much something is in my dollar. 

7. Thank the lord I slept most of the way over and back on the plane. Even so I managed to read four books, which I will tell you all about in the next Show Us Your Books on Tuesday, February 9. I loved the bookshelves in the lobby of our hotel in Cape Town:  

8. When we travel we like to buy things that are locally made. They had a great place in Cape Town with local artisans in stalls selling their goods. One USD is equal to 16 rand so our money went far over there. We got some animals fashioned out of recycled flip flops for the nieces and nephews, a book written by a local artist for my Lola, an elephant print from an artist who wanted me to show him on a map of the US where his art would be living, baskets made from recycled telephone wire, an awesome necklace they restrung for me to make it longer. All the artists were really lovely. I also got some rock crystal not from a local artisan, but I've been looking for something like that for some time. Of course I bought local coffee and a hand painted coffee mug because of course I did.

9. MFD is heading to the shore this afternoon to assess the damage to our house from the storm this weekend. Please let it be minimal!

10. Ecard of the week as I prepare to play the miles game to get tickets for our next vacation in November: 

And just like that, I'm back. Like I was never on vacation.