Father Christmas

Yes, we met him today. He even gave Kitty a keyring with a plastic football on it, of which the mancub is hugely jealous. We were at the Arusha Christmas Fair - the social event of the year I have been told. We certainly met most of the people we are aquainted with here, which was nice. I even managed to reconnect with a friend from 12 years ago! S and I shared a house in Greece for 3 months where we were doing fieldwork for our Masters' dissertations. I knew she was headed back to Arusha after that but we didn't keep in contact and I had no idea if she was still here. It was great to catch up - a husband and two kids for each of us since we last met!

The fair is also THE place to buy your christmas presents apparently. We're not very good at shopping generally but did manage some rather nice salad servers, napkin holders (animal shaped!) and a couple of table mats and a bowl. Oh, and Mr B even got me a Christmas present after I handed it to him with instructions! We also managed some BBQ chicken, chocolate chip cookies and ice-cream, but that didn't last very long...

We officially take our rental house this weekend and are in the middle of manic furniture/appliance/kitcheware hunting so that we can move in as soon as possible with at least the bare minimum to function. We saw some things this morning on the way to the fair and are booked in to see some more this afternoon - we're mostly looking at stuff on sale second hand from other ex pats but there is a second hand furniture store that the Mancub and I checked out last week, which is another option. Busy busy times.

Meanwhile we're still house sitting with no internet, so I'm writing this from an internet cafe. Not really the way I'd choose to spend saturday night, but we needed to carry on some email correspondence with potential furniture suppliers so here I am.

Finally, I am staggered by how the Mancub can relate almost anything to vehicles. He discovered a solitaire board the other day and promtly declared the channel round the edge a "train track!". A few days later I showed him the piano where he discovered yet another train track. I've never seen the black keys in that light before... His has also added "quad bike" to his vocabulary this week. Along with "Bible study" and "Bambomboo" (passionfruit)