Day 5 in Stellenbosch

Today was an easy day where we could all relax and do our own thing. It was a beautiful day and the setting is stunning. Stellenbosch is surrounded by mountains and is just beautiful. Since the area has a similar climate to Napa, the place is just a touch arid, but the mountains are green and lush. The only shortcoming to our hotel/spa is that it is a bit out of town and we don't have a car. There are precious few taxis in this part of the world, so you either use the hotel van or walk. We chose to walk into town and experience it up close and personal.

In many ways, Stellenbosch is like a typical American or Canadian neighborhood. People live in either individual homes, condo buildings, or attached townhouses. The University pretty much dominates the downtown section of the city, but here are some really quaint shopping and restaurant streets in the old Cape Dutch style. It is going to be very pleasant studying here with all this wonderful ambience! They even have McDonalds and KFC here!!!

The rest of the day was dedicated to more grading. Does this sound like a constant theme here? Darned! The internet is not cooperating and school papers are due from my students, so the process is almost painful to complete. I did send Susan and Clay off for an adventure to get my cell phone unlocked so I could use the local cell phone service. ATT locks the network on all its phones, so getting it network unlocked is some mysterious process that cell stores do here using software from the internet. You then buy a SIM card for a couple of bucks (which is your cell identity with your phone number), and then buy minutes by the card. It is like a GO phone at home, but you have to buy the phones for their full price. The simplest phone here is about $50 USD, but an iPhone is over $600 USD. It is incentive to get them unlocked! They accomplished all that and I am now up and running with a local phone number. All I have to do is switch back to my ATT Sim card when I get home and all will be back to normal.

At 6:00 pm we had our good friends from 30 years ago, the Coxwells, join us for dinner. We knew them when Chris was the Managing Director (think President/General Manager) of my dealership up in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Chris and Carol became very good friends and their kids are the same ages as Clay and Greg. Robert, their son, went to University of Cape Town and now works as a producer for the BBC in London. Jane is an executive chef on a yacht for a wealthy American named Hall from the San Francisco area. She goes all over the world on the yacht preparing haute cuisine for the guests, so neither were there to meet.

We had an excellent evening in a private dining section of the restaurant reliving wonderful times. Chris has actually been back to the States with me and I have even had him over to my folk's place in Oklahoma City where we played golf with my dad. I knew his parents as well, and it just reminds you how special good friends are. Carol is a honky tonk piano player and we have had some wonderful evenings singing all the great songs in the distant past. They had a beautiful piano in the dining room which she was tempted to play, but it would have bit over the top for the stuffy crowd that evening!