Impressions of Zimbabwe…Harare to be exact.

*** I wrote this blog out a few days after we got here, these were my first impressions, and I did make little edits where they were needed***

It was an incredibly long flight, but not too bad while sitting in first class. Spencer was able to sleep 8 hours of the 15 hour flight we had (which was our longest leg, yep we had one short flight before that and one after). When we got to the Jo-burg airport, I was quite worried that it would be a repeat of Kinshasa, which to say the least wasn’t appealing at all. Smelly, chaotic and people EVERYWHERE! Jo-burg was very nice, orderly and easy to maneuver in. When we got to Harare, then I thought, okay this is it, this is where the bad airport is…HAHA NOT SO!!! It was beautiful! We found out that it is only about 4-5 years old, and it was great. Didn’t have lots of people, smelled nice, and it was VERY orderly. We got all 9 of our bags and were able to get going very quickly. A bonus to this was that we live only 15-20 minutes away from the airport!!! The roads were paved and nice, and there wasn’t a ton of people milling around outside. I was impressed!

Getting to our house was amazing. I have to say amazing because it’s beautiful! I feel like we are rich somehow with this house.

We have a fire pit, with tables and chairs outside, along with our pool which does have a rock formation around part of it and a slide that comes out of the rocks…but that is not in use.

If you look right at the back of the pool you will see a light part on the rock, that is the slide, where the blue paint goes up on the side of the pool.

We have two Master Bedrooms…along with two Master Baths!!! They are upscale too, no little tub for me to soak in. It’s like a jetted tub, without the jets. Spencer took a bath in ours and looked around when he sat down and said, “Don’t fill the tub with too much water or it’ll come up to my shoulders!” Are we loving it here…YES!!!

Are there not so great stuff going on..sure. Our car doesn’t work, the phones aren’t the best here, and we could definitely run out of water at any time. Also the truck which brought some of our stuff cut our home phone line, so we don’t have that, so all we have is Tyler’s cell phone. Luckily today I did get one.(Edit as of today 11/25: we all have phones and a landline and the car is working fine...just waiting on the HHE, which has all of our stuff.)

Are there awesome things going on…YES. We got part of our things the day after we got here?!!??! AMAZING!!! The weather is GORGEOUS!! I mean really, paradise gorgeous! We went to a friends’ house Sat. night and sat outside the entire time. Didn’t get too hot or too cold. And we were even able to use their fire pit to roast marshmallows!!! It was great! The yards are big and it’s just great.

Bugs..I’ve only seen two cockroaches here so far, but lots of spiders. Which they just run away or I call for Tyler to kill them. They are the weird looking spiders too, I’ll have to try to find a picture of them. Other than that it has been great. The Zimbabwean people are nice, happy, smiling people. Our maid and gardener are wonderful people too. They live on the property with us, and I feel like we are a big happy family already!!

Spencer did start his first day of school today.
I was so nervous for him so I didn’t get much sleep last night, and he was nervous about making friends. I told him he would have lots of friends quickly. The people at HIS (Harare International School) are wonderful too, so kind and ready to help us. I’m worried about him and the car/bus that takes him and picks him up from school. But after this first week he should be able to get the hang of it. I hope, and he has. He doesn't like the weekends, because he would rather be at school.

That’s all for now. Maybe I’ll have Spencer get on here and tell me what to write about what he thinks about Zimbabwe so far.
There will be another post with all of our house pictures on it as well. :)