Thank you and . . . that's different!

THANK YOU!
A quick word from Savannah:

Thank you so much for helping me make more bags of hope!  I can make 20 more bags now and I can't wait! I am starting to make a list of things to put in the bags for the winter coming up.  It made me feel good that you wrote nice letters to me. I can't believe it! I'm just a kid but you make me feel like I can do a lot.  Thanks so much for your help!

Love,
Savannah


THAT'S DIFFERENT!
So we went to the library a few weeks ago because Mom made us do a book report on an interesting animal.  Savannah picked pangolins and I picked platypuses.

Pangolins are in Africa (they are like scaly anteaters) and platypuses are in Australia. We went to the library to find books on these two animals.  When we asked for books about platypuses they looked at us funny. Mom asked again, "Do you have books on platypuses?" The librarian finally said, "Well, if you want books on platypuses you'd have to go to Australia."  That's so silly isn't it?! They had nothing on platypuses, only stuff about or in Africa.  Mom said America isn't like that. Libraries in America have all kinds of books and if they don't have it they will order it for you. Plus you can take out more than 6 books in America! We can't wait to go to a library in America.

Mom and Dad signed us up for gymnastics! We love it!  We go twice a week and it is so much fun.  They accidentally charged us too much so mom asked if we could put the extra money toward the next month. They gave us the extra money we paid PLUS more money off to be nice.  Mom said America isn't like that, they may not give you your money back and they definitely wouldn't give you extra money to be nice. We will enjoy gymnastics here in South Africa and the nice money people. :)

Did you know they have McDonald's here in our city?  We are so glad because we love McDonald's!  Savannah and Dad like double cheeseburgers but you have to say all kinds of stuff to make sure you get a real double cheeseburger. When you say double cheeseburger they give you 2 cheeseburgers! So you have to say, "I want a double cheeseburger, not two cheese burgers, one double cheeseburger."  They get it right half the time, and the other half we end up with lots of cheeseburgers. So funny!

Kids here don't call adults "Mister" or "Mrs." they call them Auntie and Uncle (in Afrikaans) if they are white and if they are black they want you to call them their first name.  To say Auntie in Afrikaans you say "Tani" (pronounced Tah-knee) and to say Uncle you say Oom (pronounced Ooo-um).

We went to our first cricket game last week!  It was SO MUCH FUN!  Do you know they call cotton candy "candy floss" here?  Our friends thought cotton candy is a weird name and we thought candy floss sounded funny!  We don't get how you play cricket but we like the food they have there and we loved going with our South African friends (their parents work with our parents).  We definitely want to go to another cricket game!

Well, that's all for now.  Thanks for reading and we'll talk to you soon! 

Love,

Savannah

AJ

Chloe