Working in the yard

Yesterday we spent the day in the yard. Here is a picture pre-yard work.

This is a picture of the same area after we were finished. We planted gerber daisies, a tree fern, and some flowers that I have no clue of their names.

Horrible Blogger!

Hello out there in blogger world!

Sorry I have been so bad about blogging. I planned to do a lot of blogging while I was in Jackson, but just never had the time or energy. And once I got back to SA I was either tired or doing something with school. I'm still busy and should be planning for my week, but I thought I would do a quick update.

I'm enjoying teaching this year. I was actually quite nervous about teaching the 10th graders, but they haven't been too bad - once we came to an understanding. If they work well during class, they don't have homework... If they mess around and don't do much in class, they do! The 8th graders are quite sweet. Hopefully they will stay that way throughout the course of the year!

Mark and I are doing well. We have both been very busy with work, but we still have our date nights on Wednesdays, Zeal (youth bible study that we lead with Sandy) on Mondays, Worship Team practice on Tuesdays, ballroom lessons on Thursdays, washing clothes on Fridays, dinner or movies Friday nights, cleaning the house on Saturdays, and church on Sundays. As you can see - not much breathing room. We still make time to watch our new dvds we got in the states. We are almost through with one season of Law & Order Criminal Intent and one of SVU.

I'll try to post the pictures of my classroom sometime soon. I'll also take updated pictures of the outside of our house - we moved our storage house. Hope everyone has had a great January. I'll try to post more soon (more frequently than I have been!)

Home!

Hey everyone.
Well, Mark decided that it has been too long since I've seen my friends and family in Jackson, so he has decided to take me home for Christmas! YEA! This has been unexpected, and it's been the main thing that I have been able to think about since. So just letting everyone know! More about it later.

12 October 2007

Hey everyone!!

Not much other than school and work has been going on around the Becking household. With the end of the school year rolling around, I have been busy busy getting everything in order. In addition to my work, one of the teachers who left in July left a bit of "organizational chaos" behind her. So Lorna Clinning (head of the Math department) asked me to get all of Charmaine's things ready for the end of the year also. It's not hard work, but it was very time consuming. Yesterday was wonderful... I walked out of the school without any work! It was great - the first time in a few weeks. I am tutoring this afternoon, then Mark and I are relaxing watching movies tonight after supper. YEA!! This weekend we are having Mark's family over for brunch then I am going shopping with our friend, Jenny, who is making a trip to the states in November/December with her dad. I'm so excited because she is going to be in Miami one night, so Robert is going to take our wedding photos to her hotel so she can bring them back to us!! I can't wait to see our pics!!!

Mark has been very busy as well - which is why I didn't mind bringing work home for a few weeks - at least we could work together. He's been working for around 6 weeks on a project for a company called Trialogue. Every company in South Africa has to be rated (don't ask me, I don't completely understand - this is just an overview). But it is all so confusing and stuff that no one has written a program that makes the process easier. I'm not sure that the gov't really knows exactly what they are looking for yet. Anyways, Mark has written that program - and since Trialogue has more resources than Mark, he is partnering up with them for this project. Pretty much he wrote the program, they are going to sell it, and the profits will be shared. Sounds pretty good, and they were impressed with his work. So, he flew down to Cape Town for the day on Wednesday to present it. He got home around 9:00, so Sandy and I went to see "No Reservations" - such a cute movie. I highly recommend it.

Well that is about all that is happening these days. I hope everyone had a good week, and I'll try to put up another blog sometime in the near future. Love you guys!!!

Our Holiday at the Beach

Hello everyone!!

Mark and I survived our first holiday away with each other - barely! We went to the Southeastern coast of South Africa to a place called Chintsa East. We drove for 10 hours there and 10 hours home. I cannot tell you how beautiful it was down there. We arrived on Saturday afternoon, walked on the beach, relaxed, ate supper, and went to sleep. We woke up around 11:00 on Sunday, repeated Saturday's walk on the beach, had lunch at a little restaurant down the road and got groceries, relaxed, walked some more on the beach, ate supper, went to sleep.

LOOK AT ALL THE SHELLS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After that is when it became not so fun. I woke up and didn't feel very well, so we stayed inside that day. Tuesday we drove 45 minutes into East London to find a pharmacy... by this time Mark wasn't feeling well either. We got our medicine, ate lunch at a restaurant on the beach, and went back to the house. We didn't really leave the house again until Friday - not even to walk on the beach.

On Thursday, though, we were out on the deck of the house and noticed some monkeys in the brush between our house and the water. We stayed fairly still and they slowly came into our yard. Mark got some bread and I cut up an apple to feed them. Don't know if we were supposed to do that, but it was fun!! You can see from the pictures that they were right next to us! They were so sweet, but we still didn't get too close - possible rabies and such.

And finally, here are pictures of the house we stayed in. It almost reminded me of the green cabin down at Star - kind of smelled the same too.... I wish we had gotten a picture of Lucy who came and cleaned for us each day, but we were too sick to really care all that much about lots of pictures....

Braai

Hey Guys!

We had a braai this weekend with a couple of friends, so we got the house cleaned up all nicely, so I took some updated pictures. We've added 2 bookcases and 2 pictures. Since these were taken we have also changed the office around, but I'll take pictures of that when it is completed. Hope you all have a great week. I won't be updating for a bit since Mark and I are going to the coast for the week (YEA!!). I'll post pictures of that when we get back home.

Happy Labor Day (late)

Just wanted to wish everyone a belated Happy Labor Day! I hope everyone enjoyed the bit of rain and the ribs and all the other fun stuff that accompanies the day. Here in South Africa we had work as usual. I think that I should take a day off here whenever there is a holiday there :-) Do you think anyone would have a problem with that? Hope you all have a great, short week. Love to all!!