I’ve been lucky enough to spend the past three days in beautiful Stellenbosch in the Western Cape. Stellenbosch has something for everyone: amazing food, outstanding wine, and stunning scenery. Stellenbosch is the second oldest European settlement in South Africa (after Cape Town). It was founded in 1639 (!) by a man named Simon van der Stel, […]
Hello and happy Thursday. No advice column today, I’m afraid. I’m neck-deep in revising my novel and can’t spare the time for blogging, since I’m leaving for an eight day trip to Cape Town tonight and thus must be productive before vacation. To tide you over until the next post, let me share a tiny […]
My friend Karen recommended that I read David Ebershoff’s The 19th Wife, a novel focusing on, among other things, the apostasy from the Mormon Church of Brigham Young’s 19th wife, Ann Eliza Young. I find all things Mormon fascinating, so, despite being in the middle of no fewer than three other books, I downloaded The […]
Last night, I got back from a wonderful weekend trip to Kruger National Park, one of the largest game reserves in Africa. It covers over 7,500 square miles. Parts of the park have been protected by the South African government since 1898 and it became a national park in 1926. Because of its long history […]
Al’s mom (Carol) and step-dad (Gerald) are visiting us here in South Africa and we have many exciting things planned while they are here, including a trip to Kruger for a safari and a visit to Cape Town for wine tasting. But when trying to brainstorm things for us to do here in Joburg, I […]
[Programming note: my in-laws are in town, so Al and I will be busy having fun with them for the next little while. Blogging may be intermittent. Try to hold on without me.] Far from the Tree is a book that I had heard a lot about before I read it, and then once I […]
One of my friends here, Mare, had a birthday tea today at The Westcliff, a hotel with great views of the leafy top of Joburg. The Westcliff, being fancy and a wee bit colonial (awkward), serves a lovely high tea, complete with finger sandwiches, scones, sweets, and, you know, tea. They didn’t have the kind […]
This weekend was, and continues to be, packed, hence my lack of blogging. On Friday, we went to a lovely dinner party at our friends’ house and woke up terribly hungover on Saturday. That afternoon, we bundled off to the Cradle of Humankind, a World Heritage Site where they discovered some super old (2.3 million […]
Dear Steph: How do you “unfriend” someone in real life? One of my best friends has a girlfriend that she met through work that I’m not particularly fond of. Whenever we all hang out, she makes passive aggressive and snarky comments to me and goes out of her way to prove that she and my […]
I’ve been reading a lot of books lately about places and cultures that I didn’t know I was interested in until I started reading about them. I learned that I was interested in Japan after reading Richard Lloyd Parry’s excellent People Who Eat Darkness, and I suppose, in the same way, I learned I was […]