2023…What a Year!
Well, it’s Dezemba here in South Africa and you know what that means…time to shut down the country until next year.
2023 marks my second full year living here. It’s hard to believe how quickly the last two years have flown by. It seems like just yesterday that I arrived with three boxes and three suitcases to settle in this amazing country so Kim and I could start our life together. Now here we are, two years later, settling into our routine and building an amazing life together.
The year started with a bang as I finally got my Temporary Resident visa. It took 14 months and endless emails and phone calls, but it finally came through. I can’t tell you how much of a relief it was to finally close that chapter. Now all I have to stress about is putting in my renewal paperwork in a short six months from now. But soon I’ll be going for permanent residence and all will be well.
The summer was hot…like ‘Africa hot’…and along with the heat came extended periods of Stage 6 loadshedding. It made things quite difficult, but like South Africans do, we managed to roll with it and get ourselves better squared away. Now we’ve got a studly UPS for the Wi-Fi, plenty of rechargeable light bulbs (which are AWESOME, btw), and Layla our inverter. Now loadshedding is less of an inconvenience and more of just an annoyance.
As summer ended and the seasons turned, we began to experience more of the cultural side of Cape Town living. Thanks to Collette Dawson and The CoLab Network we got to experience some great productions down at Artscape. We also did the ‘End of the Proms’, a couple of ballets, the Disney 100, and saw the philharmonic down at Cape Town City Hall. We’ll be back at CTCH this week to see Richard Cock direct ‘A Philharmonia Christmas’.
50 for 50…An Epic Fail
This year, inspired by some people in a wine appreciation group on Facebook, I thought it would be a great idea to try to visit 50 new wine farms before I turned 51. Well, we didn’t even come close. This winter was just miserable…it was long, cold, and rainy and the recurring bouts of being sick didn’t help either. It’s probably a safe guess to say Kim and I were under the weather for 2/3 of the winter. So, when weekends came, we were either resting or it was just too miserable to go outside.
But that doesn’t mean we didn’t experience any!
While we didn’t visit as many wine farms as we planned, we did manage to taste a number of new farms at the festivals we attended. We went to the:
Pinotage and Biltong festival at Allee Bleue
Stellenbosch Wine festival
Cheese and Wine festival (where we nearly got injured from a collapsing tent)
Lekker Italy at Ayama
Cap Classique Affair at Simonsig
We also spent plenty of time at our favorite wine farm, and home of the best wine club in the Western Cape, Rickety Bridge. We got to spend some quality time gaining an amazing education from Lizzie about food, wine, and pairing the two together. Come harvest season, we’ll be attending their harvest festival where we’ll get to stomp grapes and then have the wine made from said grapes delivered once they’re ready.
I even learned how to sabrage a bottle of MCC.
Lizzie teaching me how to sabrage at the Rickety Bridge MCC Brunch event.
Thanks to Kim, my palate has greatly improved and I’ve become much more discerning about wine. I’ve upped my ‘wine snob’ game a few levels compared to when I first arrived.
We also made some great friends at her events.
Seriously, if you’re in the Western Cape, join the club. I promise you won’t regret it.
Football or Rugby?
This year brought the Rugby World Cup. Now, as an American, I always thought rugby was a silly game that was a mix of ‘kill the man with the ball’ and ‘keep away’. Boy, was I wrong. I got bit by the rugby bug hard this year watching the Boks win the championship.
On the flip side, the NFL came to Cape Town and managed to disappoint on so many levels. We just will pretend that it never happened.
A New Hobby
One thing about living here is that because life is so much less ‘busy’ than it was in the US, I have much more time to develop new hobbies and enjoy older ones. I’ve read more books this past year than I think I’ve read in the last 5 years combined. This coming year, I’m shooting for finishing even more books.
Kim and I decided this year our Christmas present to ourselves would be to take up astrophotography. We’ve been talking about getting a telescope since forever and this year, thanks to a great Black Friday deal on Takealot, we pulled the trigger.
It is really nice to have something to do in the evenings, something that we can do together. We’re both learning how this whole astrophotography thing works, and man, is there a whole boatload of stuff to learn. We’re already looking to the celestial calendar to see what cool things are coming up that we can see and photo.
So…2024?
As I write this, it’s 3 weeks until 2024 comes rolling around. We’re already filling our calendar with events, plays, ballets, musicals, and other assorted fun stuff. While in 2023 I didn’t even come close to accomplishing everything I had on my “What I want to do this year” list, I have no regrets about missing those targets. This year has been a blast and I am looking forward to next year being even better.
So to all of you who read my ramblings I want to thank you for all your support. When I started this, I was just looking for a creative outlet to tell stories about my experience. You all have made this so much more than that. So, thank you, from the bottom of my heart.
I hope you all have a great holiday season (because all holidays matter), have time to enjoy friends, family, and some peace and quiet…We’ll see you again in 2024.
Christian
