Today I’ve got a more personal post. A little lesson learnt from our year away from home at Tonga hospital. Our home for 2014, was pretty small and not really a stimulating environment. In fact, it was sometimes quiet demotivating. We didn’t realise how much it could affect us, our moods or our marriage.
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Funny signs we’ve seen // hospital life
With just a few days left in Tonga it’s time to share pictures of a few funny signs that I’ve been collecting over the year from in and around Tonga. Every now and then these little gems brought some added humour into my day.
10 months in, 2 months to go // hospital life
The older I get the quicker Christmas seems to come around. Years also seem to be much faster in retrospect. Michael’s uncle had a good point the other day though; for each new year that goes by it is a smaller proportion of your whole life than any of the previous years. For example, when you’re 2, the…
Overseas adventure – Sydney and New Zealand // Travel
You know those times that just go so quickly because you’re busy? Well, the last month has been one of those. Last minute prepping for our trip to Sydney and New Zealand, followed by a course on treating severely malnourished paediatric patients, followed by a wonderful 3 week trip: Tonga > Johannesburg > Sydney >…
6 months in, 6 months to go // hospital life
Today marks the end of our first 6 months at Tonga. We are halfway! We’ve been told by many that the second half goes by very quickly. I can imagine how that’s true, when instead of still counting up, now the count down has started! We will also be heading to Australia and New Zealand (hopefully) for…
We saw cheetahs and it was amazing // hospital life
Yesterday after work we decided to take a quick evening drive in Kruger. We only had an hour and a half before gates closed, but it was our best hour and a half spent in Kruger yet. I’d checked the Latest Sightings facebook page and knew that there’d been lion, cheetah, leopard and wild dog…
Cape Town and Sabie camping trip round 2 // hospital life
Cape Town, what a treat! Soon after Michael got back from his first work trip back to Cape Town I was having a tough time and managed to find some great flights back home (Travelstart is a good place to look). Booking flights about 6 weeks in advance gave me something great to look forward to help me…
Language is a funny thing // Hospital life
Language is a beautiful thing. Each language has it’s own words (duh!), just kidding. Each language has it’s own feeling. Some languages feel soft and gentle, others feel rough, but each language is precious to it’s speakers. It is such a blessing to greet someone in their own language and see their face light up…
Lessons learnt from a washing machine // hospital life
Do you know what a twin tub washing machine is? Well, I didn’t, until we tried to buy a washing machine earlier in the year. The only (and very few) automatic washing machines we could find in Tonga were huge and very expensive. Everywhere we looked had twin tubs though. Granted, there isn’t much option…
Three months in // hospital life
Whoops! I’ve had photos sorted in an “update” folder but never seemed to get to actually doing the post. This has also meant that new photos keep getting added so we will see how long this post gets. Sorry this is so overdue. We were lucky enough to have both sets of our parents visit…
A little bit of the area around us // hospital life
This is a little post showing you a bit of the area around where we live and a few of its quirks. Click here to take a tour of the hospital grounds. Disclaimer: Almost all of these photos were taken while driving, to be as inconspicuous as possible, so please ignore the bad photo quality….
The hospital grounds // hospital life
This is a little tour of where we live. These are the houses. There are 1, 2 and 3 bedroom houses, each with varying degrees of space etc. They are also in varying conditions, but as we are learning, if you hassle the right people for long enough, hopefully the maintenance will eventually get done….
Cape Town to Tonga Hospital in 7 minutes // hospital life
This is the fastest drive that you’ll ever take from Cape Town, 2000 km across South Africa, to Tonga Hospital in Mpumalanga.
1 month in // hospital life
We have now been in Tonga for 1 month. In some ways so much has happened and in other ways things have gone quite slowly. 4 trips to Kruger 2 trips to Nelspruit Movie nights A new job A new church On the slow side: The broken couch in our house has not yet been…
The power of community, generosity and hospitality // hospital life
We have been in Tonga for just over 2 weeks now and one thing is for sure, there are a lot of very generous people around here. On our way up we stayed with Michael’s uncle and aunt for a few nights. Our car was fully packed with as much of the contents of our…
A small photo update // hospital life
Today we went on a drive to a nearby area known as Naas. The road was by far the worst “tarred” road that either of us have been on. They are currently working on the main road to get there, thank goodness, so we had to take a detour through the township. The townships here…