Christmas Greetings from South Africa

Ho Ho Ho! The holidays are coming, and in this regard we want to send a warm greeting to all our family and friends, as we miss u all loads during these times. We just moved from Stellenbosch into our new flat in Cape Town, and will be celebrating both Christmas and New Years here. We are extremely happy about our new place, as it is as central as it can be to everything, and we've got a balcony with awesome views, a nice pool to chill in and a braii (grill) next to it to make amazing food! We have had an amazing year in Stellies and will miss it loads, but at the same time it is a small town and we felt that it is now the right time to move on and experience the big city life for the next half year!

First of all, even though we said ho ho ho, it's impossible to get the "Christmas feeling" down here. It's been around 30 degrees the last month and mostly sunny every day - in other words there is not a single snowflake in sight, and the springboks alongside the road here cannot compare to Rudolf back home. What is funny is that as part of the Christmas decorations in shops, the streets and so on, snow plays a big part even though we are pretty sure most people here have never seen it in real life. Yet, what is quite nice about Christmas here is how less stressed out and more relaxed everybody seems to be about it. Perhaps except for yesterday when we went to the big shopping mall at the Waterfront, we haven't noticed any major panicking among people buying their Christmas gifts and stocking up on food for what seems like a year at least with the people back home.

This Christmas morning we woke up, made a nice Christmas breakfast and then we took turns opening up one gift each. Our families have just been down here visiting us for the last month, and they brought quite a lot of presents with them. And even though we are on the other side of the world, we have been sent awesome gifts in the mail from Oyvind & Anne (and Selia!), as well as Heidi & Siren - thank you so so much for that, it really meant A LOT to us!!! In total we had about 15 presents, which is crazy as it is more than we use to get at home, so we are two happy kids today Just now as Roger is writing this, Siri is putting the pork belly (which is the lovely English name for Ribbe) in the oven. It will be the very first time she is making it, so we are excited (and slightly worried ) about how the result will be. Even more so since we are preparing it for 12 people at the Christmas dinner tonight...This is all good friends that we have down here that also stayed behind for Christmas, and these 12 have 8 different nationalities; Norway, Sweden, England, Holland, Croatia, Canada, South Africa and Cameroon. Since it's only Scandinavia that celebrates on the 24th, we get a full celebration on the 25th as well, with lots of good food that everybody prepares for both days. We hope this Christmas will be amazing, even though it is something completely different.

Finally we want to send all our love around the globe to all our amazing friends and family! To all of you from all of us, a merry merry Christmas. And we wish you a New Year full of happiness and exciting events!

Warm Christmas greetings from,

Siri & Roger