Canal Walk

Almost school time

Nothing terribly exciting today as far as trips go, but we did make our first official visit to the kid’s schools. First we went to Rustenburg for Katy and stopped at the tuck shop to pick up all the supplies needed for a uniform, including paint smock, dress, underwear, swim suit and hat, as well as various bags for this and that. We then met Katy’s teacher, Mrs. Pain. Won’t be hard to forget her name. The school is very old, and it reminded me of an English school, with plenty of stone, brick and wood. Katy goes for her “tea” tomorrow at 9:30 before the first day of school on Wednesday. We then went to Henry’s school, Rondebosch Boys prep school. This was also quite stately with a courtyard in the middle of the school. Once we sat down to wait for the secretary, the headmaster dropped by to introduce himself to Henry and myself. He seemed quite nice. Ms Wood was also very friendly and she took us to Henry’s teacher (whose name I’ve forgotten). After meeting the staff there, we had to drive over the the Rondebosch high school to find the tuck shop and pickup Henry’s knee length socks, tie and badge for his blazer. We also found his swim gear. A tiny pair of speedos! Can’t wait to see those on him. Everything is in school colours. They have cool cricket gear there too, which I might get on future visits.

Henry and I then went home, had a bite to eat and then took the other kids to the library where we signed out some fresh books. Reading the same ones twice a night for three weeks gets a little tiresome.

For supper we were off to Spur’s but in a different location. I had heard about Canal Walk north of the city, so we picked up Carla from Groote Schur and headed into traffic to find it. This shopping center/entertainment complex/hotel/condo district is stunning…hard to believe we would find this in Cape Town. I could understand the waterfront as a tourist attraction, but the amount of construction going on here was mind blowing. Cheap labour I guess. This mall made Polo Park look like Fort Richmond Plaza! I heard from a neighbor that minimum wage here has just been increased to just over 1000Rand a month. That is about $160 Canadian. So divide that by twenty working days. So each store/restaurant seems overstaffed. The parking lots all have attendants as well which you pay when you leave a token 2rand coin for “watching” your car. Businesses can afford to pay these people such cheap wages.

Update – jan 16…got most of the kids supplies today. Henry tried on his speedo… got the proper pencils, erasers, etc. what a deal. Every crayone has to be labeled. School tomorrow, will take pictures of the uniforms.