Last year around this time.... well a little bit later when I was thinking of what I wanted for Christmas I started to see people wearing the coolest hat around... and to tell you the absolute truth I was so jealous I didn't have one... I wanted one so bad but didn't know where to get it.... I even walked up to a girl on the street and asked but hers was gift and she didn't know...I sent LP on a mission I wanted this hat for Christmas so bad... but alas come Christmas morning there was no panda hat...sometime during the year I found out who sold them as a friend had one but there was none left...you can then imagine my utter absolute extreme excitement when yesterday we were out and about at the shops and happened to stumble upon one! lucky for me I have an amazing Auntie who brought it for me and I have barely taken it off since... despite the fact that the last two days have been two of the loveliest days in weeks!... Panda hat is in fact going to now travel with me always at all times panda hat is not only a hat but a travel companion and lucky charm...(i know I'm so weird)...below are some delight filled photos of me and panda hat in the garden in the sunshine...
Panda hat as a mask
Panda hat as a hat
Playing with stones
Hiding behind a tree
Ok so moving on (I Know you don't want to I don't either panda hat is so amazing I'm still wearing it as I type) onto some other news...
"Money makes the world go round"
Not only a snappy tune from the musical cabaret... but also a sad truth... Today we had hoped to get all our currency we need a bundle of American dollars... so off we trooped around town getting the best quotes... we started off in M&S not a bad rate but we're not silly enough to take the first thing we look at... next we tried our bank LP left me in charge of speaking.... let it be noted for the record i didn't actually want to and surprise surprise somehow...(and I'm going to try and blame the cashier here but I'm pretty sure I just asked wrong I don't really get numbers...) they gave us an AMAZING rate I'm talking hundreds of dollars better then M&S... turns out that was the "them buying from us rate" not "the us buying from them rate" so turned out to be not that great so off we went...next stop the post office (where I let LP do the talking) the best rate so far but we still had one more place to ask and it was worth waiting for (ish) now I add the ish at this point because although Sainsburys gave the best rate (mostly down to the fact that they have preferential rates for employees... (and LP is an employee) but what a hullabaloo the travel money counter is quite new... its only been there a few weeks and they are still ironing out most of the kinks... for one it took so much longer then it needed to... we told them what we needed- American dollars,large bills,good condition,year 2000 or newer the lady at the desk just didn't seem to comprehend this... she wanted to give us some kind of travel money card and wouldn't quite listen that we were going to more African countries then just south Africa... when she finally realised we only wanted cash she tried to give us $300 in $1 bills slightly ridiculous? um id say hugely ridiculous! eventually it was decided we couldn't get all of what we wanted because they didn't have it in stock so we would get some today, they would order more, and LP would get it tomorrow... so we payed and then waited while she counted out the bills.... shes counting away "$100,$200,$300...etc...$1000,$1100,$1200...etc...$1600,$1650,$2000" im not so good with numbers but i don't think even I'm that bad but we all had a laugh about it and despite it taking a long time she was a lovely lady and we are half way to having all the cash we need so thanks Sainsburys travel money lady (called Moni which as a little joke in my head I read as Money!)
Later on......
After getting our money we did some groceries then headed home, had a spot of lunch, wrote a resignation letter for my job, then organised all our gear... last Wednesday I had a bit of a practice pack it wasn't to hard and I got mostly everything in (considering my pack is 65L but LPs is only 40L I don't think this was a bad first attempt)... but last Wednesday I didn't include everything... (not our mountain of Anti-Malaria meds, not all our electronics-torches,chargers etc and not our entertainment items-books,PSP,ipods, journals,mini-cludeo or monopoly cards)... to start off with we reorganised all our pills... they come in useless packs of 8 tablets so we put 3 packs in each box...Then we got everything we could possibly need out and put it out on the bed....we started by packing our carry on luggage. once that was done... we packed our packs LP had a brilliant idea and so his pack contains our sleeping bags,bed rolls ,first aid kit, and a few other bits and bobs and then my bigger pack has all our clothes and toiletries and boots which take up so much space! all in all it was hugely successful and LP even stuck around long enough to help unpack (unfortunately we still need things before we go)... as we unpacked we also started the process of packing up our room which has now left us with two massive bags of clothes to donate somewhere...I wonder if some of them will end up in a market somewhere in Africa....
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