Fresh Food, Transport, Guitar Lessons

...it's all related, honest!

Fresh food isn't the same here as in the UK; either the fruit & vegetables are organic, or imported, or both, but basically it tastes good but doesn't' last very long. Likewise fresh milk usually has a "best before" date only a couple of days ahead; it's obviously not treated the same way as milk in the UK. Yesterday I bought a litre of "fresh" milk from a big Hypermarket here, and when I poured it into my tea in the evening, it was sour!
Since I'm a bit of a house-husband here (Karen working at the Embassy and me at home), I'm currently doing most of the food shopping, and because I can't buy a week's worth of fresh stuff at weekends I'm making regular trips to the "corner shop" in the DQ. Flippin big corner though, it's a 20 minute walk away! So for that reason I'm going into town tomorrow to buy a bicycle. I have my own bike coming in Heavy Baggage, but that won't be here for a few weeks, so I'll buy a standard bike that all of us (possibly apart from Abigail)can ride, and we'll share that til mine arrives. Elliot's also dropping hints about buying Barry's quad bike when he returns to UK in the Summer. I'm thinking about it - but not too hard.

We got a letter from school the other day about music lessons; guitar, violin, flute, piano. Before we left, Elliot was learning guitar and Abigail was just starting with flute and was also having informal piano lessons with my Mum every Sunday, but the lessons are much more expensive here and that's put us off going ahead for both of them right away, so we're going to go ahead with Elliot's guitar lessons for now because he's doing really well with it, and review the Abigail situation in a couple of months. As a consolation prize I'm going to buy Abigail the rollerblades she keeps asking for tomorrow when I'm out bike-shopping.

So, stay tuned for the bike-and-skates buying trip story (and photos) tomorrow.