Trip to Johannesburg, South Africa

At the end of May I had to go on a trip to South Africa. I had never been to Africa before, so I was a bit giddy. I had to take two flights. The first flight was 2.5 hours from Shanghai to Hong Kong. The second flight was 13 hours and was from Hong Kong to Johannesburg. Jo'burg looks very much like America. Above is a residential neighborhood in the big city. 

After arrival, they took us to a mall for lunch. On that day, the mall had a rooftop market going on, and I got a latte there.

Next to the mall was an "African market" that sells local handicrafts. I picked up a few souvenirs.

Later in the day, a bus took me and my group to a conference location a couple of hours away from Johannesburg. We passed by a black township, and I saw these people standing beside the road waiting for rides. A township is similar to a Chinese village (as I view it), although I'm no authority on life in Africa.

During my trip, I was able to go on two jeep safaris in a game reserve. I'll soon post photos from that, so come back soon! 

Pixie does Sudoku

My parents got two new dogs in 2017. The got Bella in January and Pixie in March. I was home mid-February through mid-April, so I got to know the little doggies pretty well. I even taught them both to use the doggy door, and helped house-train Pixie (she was still in the learning curve when I left). I took this photo of Pixie sitting in my dad's lap while he works on a Sudoku puzzle. Some say Pixie's so ugly she's cute. I just think she is cute. She has a perfectly charming personality, bounds with energy, and loves to be held. Pixie is only 7 months old in this pic, and four-year-old Bella enjoys her company some of the time. 

I'm related to these people

Part of my family got together during the holidays. My brother J and his immediate family, my parents, J's mother-in-law, and J's son-in-law are all in the photo. H and her husband T live in Seattle, so group photo ops like this are rare. 

Mimi joy

Mimi and I have been going on walks in the neighborhood lately, right around sundown when the weather is bearable. Mimi LOVES to get out the front door of the house to see what's going on in the neighborhood. Access to the fenced backyard just doesn't hold the same appeal for her.

Indoor exercise always seems to involve re-arranging things in the house. Mimi knows that toilet paper doesn't belong in the living room, so she brings it there to get a rise out of me. Smart little doggy knows how to have a really good time. She's the best. I wouldn't trade this little doggy for anything.

The yard boy

I was looking forward to having my own yard to tend to. But I had some nerve damage to my right shoulder during surgery, and I was told that I shouldn't mow my own yard for a year. Yikes! I'm not even planning to be here a year. Fortunately, my 17-year-old nephew, Nathan. was looking for part time work, so I hired him as my yard boy. Here he plants a crepe myrtle. Nathan will be a senior in high school this year. I'm so glad that he lives nearby, for many reasons!

I bought a house

I used to joke that one day I would retire from my overseas work and come back to the U.S. to live under an underpass. But I really wanted a house instead. I'm picky like that. And since my salary has not increased in twenty years, while everyone else's in America has, I wondered if I would be able to even afford a house if the current housing cost trends continued upwards between now and my retirement So I prayed and asked God what I should do.

I know some people who live overseas buy a house in America and rent it out while they are overseas. But I was never home long enough to work on buying a house (I usually only stay in the U.S. for two months at a time). But since I have medical issues, I am home much longer this time around. 

I looked at houses in the neighborhoods I liked, and they cost too much. My tastes always seem to be higher than my pocketbook can handle. 

But THEN, a house in a good neighborhood came up for sale. I knew the people moving out. They had to make a quick exit for personal reasons, and the house needed a lot of fixing up since many maintenance issues had been neglected for many years. So they were selling it for cheap. I found out about it before it was made public, and the neighbors wanted to give me the first shot at getting the house. Without their generosity, I wouldn't have succeeded in buying the house. Others could have bid more and were waiting to do so.

So I bought it.

And it is next door to my parents' house. :-) 

Doing the needed repairs myself (with the help of family and friends) means I could make it work. I got it back during the spring. I did a few weeks of repairs while recuperating from chemo, then I had surgery and radiation which put house repairs on the back burner. But I moved into the one bedroom that was move-in ready, and Mimi and I live in the house already.

Some may wonder why a cancer patient would invest in a house since life is so uncertain. But life is uncertain for all of us, and we still buy and sell and carry on with our lives. No one knows if they will wake up the morning after they sign their housing paperwork. Romans 8:28 is at work in my life. The year in America has some good purposes for my life. 

A visit from my oldest brother and his wife

My oldest brother C and his wife P came through Houston a few days ago. We spent the evening together and I cooked dinner for them. Unfortunately, my all-electric kitchen lost electrical power while I was cooking. It was a minor disaster and we were still able to eat.

Memorial Day flood

It was my great misfortune to have been in Houston on the evening of Memorial Day 2015 when the great flood hit. Hundreds of motorists were stranded overnight on the highways, thousands had their homes destroyed, and my car was a minor victim.

The rains and thunder were unlike any I have heard in my life thus far. And I consider myself to have endured quite a few storms (mostly overseas, some in east Texas). The lightning and thunder were relentless for seven hours straight in my part of town. I knew my car was at risk, but it was too dangerous to go outside and move it. The rain POURED out of the sky without stopping, hour after hour after hour. I was thankful to be on the second floor of a garage apartment. I was also glad Mimi wasn't there. She might have died of fear.

I went outside several hours after the rain stopped. I didn't see the worst of the flooding, as I'm sure it had subsided somewhat in those few hours. This is what I saw.

 You can see that the water had been at least a foot higher before I took this picture.

The insurance adjuster says it still works. The interior is being replaced. Hopefully I can pick up the car sometime soon.

Insurance takes away some of the pain, but it is still an extremely unpleasant experience to go through. I hope I never have to go through it again.

UPDATE: The insurance company finally declared my car a disaster. It was totaled. Since the car was being leased from a non-profit organization that was in no hurry to replace the car, I was in Houston without transportation. But God provided and I never missed an appointment. I am back on four wheels again. More on that another time.

Friends

Three of my college friends drove over to see me this weekend. Two of them stayed over night. We had a four-hour lunch at Chuy's on Saturday! L-R: Cindy, Patsy, me, Mel. Friday was my birthday, so it was a fun birthday weekend.

Cold Saturday in January

It's a cold, bleak January morning, a Saturday. I get up and out the door early.

Mimi's excited to have her pink sweater and her leash both on. It means something is going to happen to her. But when I put her in her carrier in the back seat of my car, her excitement morphs into terror. I tell her not to worry, that we're just going to the nearby small town of Noonday, not back on an airplane to China. As usual, she doesn't understand.

We ride through nearly vacant roads on this weekend morning, made empty as others sleep in. These are back roads, lined with bare trees reaching their limbs to the frosty gray sky above.

This would be a charming ride through the woods if it were not for the wailing dog in the back seat.

We arrive ten minutes before the traveling small town veterinarian staff opens for business under a tent next to the Dollar General store. I don't want a line to form in front of me, so I get Mimi out of the car and we wait in the cold.

No line forms. No one else thinks it is warm enough to visit the outdoor vet today, not at this early hour anyway. Whether he offers cheaper prices or not, they have decided to stay home in their warm beds and postpone their doggy disease prevention to another day.

Mimi gets a blood test. We wait another ten minutes to get the result. Good news, no heart worms. We buy a year's worth of preventative medicine and jump back in the car.

Even though we had no stops at airports, Mimi is still not happy. She shrieks all the way home, over the undulating hills of east Texas.

I think she must get car sick, like me.