Chandler's Overseas

Today we celebrated the Chinese New Year with what seemed to be the entire Chinese population of Gauteng! The celebrations were held at the huge Nan Hua Buddhist Temple which is around 1hrs drive NE of Joburg. The celebrations included fireworks, dragon dances and lots of food stalls. The traditional chinese food was delicious, especially the dumplings & lemon jelly drink.

Video of our trip!

On Saturday, 20 December we flew to Amman, capital city of Jordan, to commence our Middle East/Northern African holiday (2 weeks returning 3 Jan '08) . First impressions of Amman, the only major developed city in Jordan included: - hustling men wanted to 'help' with anything for a small fee; - stark landscape of limestone and sandstone rubble; - minimal vegetation except for the dust covered pine trees; and - bland white square apartment blocks. I guess this impression doesn't paint a pretty picture of the country, however we soon learnt that the people are incredibly friendly & helpful... and it was the middle of winter! Amman We saw the sites of Amman including a Roman theatre built in the 2nd Century AD and the Citadel which sits atop the highest of 20 hills in town. Of course we decided that it would be good for us to walk around the city to see the sites. Only later did we realise that Amman is built on 20 hills, so the walking involved a lot of up & down! ...

We have some exciting news.... Jen is 14 weeks pregnant! See below an ultrasound of the baby at 12 weeks. A benefit of the healthcare system here is that an ultrasound is performed monthly. You can therefore continually monitor and see your baby develop! 'hi-5' from Baby Chandler! We are both extremely excited and can't wait for June to arrive!

Pete is loving the digital SLR, especially due to the enhanced features that enable him to take photo's like the below... The moon from Wendywood , Johannesburg The highveld is a high plateau region of South Africa which experiences summer rainfall with substantial afternoon thunderstorms in November, December and January. The thunder and lightning never fails to impress, especially as the roar of the thunder cracks directly above you! During November to January the average monthly rainfall is 115mm, whilst this reduces to 5mm from June to August. Pete took the below photo's from our house during a typical thunderstorm using a long exposure setting on the camera. The impressive highveld lightning

Jen's domestic side has appeared this December through some Christmas baking. Much to Pete's delight she made both mince pies & a Christmas cake. Pastry making is now perfected! In lieu of spending Christmas in a Muslim country (Jordan) we are having an early Christmas dinner tonight with some expat friends, complete with a full roast and egg custard. Yum! The final product, batch 1 of many!

In an effort to commence work on our summer tans and to reminisce our similar trip 1 year ago( http://chandlersoverseas.blogspot.com/2007/10/bollito-beach-weekend.html ), it was decided by us expats ( Soph , Dabbo , Chris, Nix, Rob and Keithy ) that a weekend by the coast was a must. Southbroom , 1hr south of Durban, was the chosen location and Chris took care of organising the accommodation in 2 houses with views of the ocean. We all flew down on the Friday night (bar Chris, unfortunately he and Nix missed their flights so ended up driving down late on Friday night!) excited that the weekend had begun. Beach time called on Saturday morning so we settled ourselves comfortably on the beach for a couple of hours. Soph & Jen enjoyed the sun whilst the boys run amok (as only they do when at the beach)! Unfortunately the South Coast was hit by terrible storms a couple of months earlier resulting in murky beach water. Still, it was nice to breath in the fresh ocean air. Southbroom is ...