The Great Escape!: Where are the Kitchings???

So where have we been? Its been a little crazy round the Kitching world. Cath and Ryan arrived back from work and travels and invited us to go and spend 3 nights with them on Nosy Komba. The boys were planning on going fishing, south to Caster Banks 120km's away, and us girls were planning on doing little more than chilling out! Oh how tough life in the islands is! Cath was actually just recovering from a bout of Typhoid, which seems to be doing the rounds here, and me ... well I was just up for another mid week mini break! This making a person business is tiring!

David and Ryan didn't have a spectacualrly successful fishing trip - Ryan was more keen on getting some awesome filming in, but the weather was dull and cold and the fish decided to not be around, they were searching for Marlin and other sword fish. David still loved it though as it was all a new experience for him. Especially as on their first stop to check out a site, Antoinin and David were in the water - still on the surface, and Antoinin lifts his head and shouts - HAMMERHEADS! Literally 6 meters away was a school of 15 hammerhead sharks swimming past! You don't get much more exciting than that .... well OK you do ... when you look down and see two 3 meter Zambezi sharks checking you out from below!

Well I didn't get to do toooo much relaxing because we were due for the first important 12 week scan, and we couldn't get it done locally on Nosy Be, so would have had to fly to Tana / Diego or even Reunion. Looking at the prices, it seemed to make more and more sense for us to rather fly to South Africa - where we are planning on having the baby - and having the scan there, and at the same time being able to meet the doctor and do some of the neccesasary formailities.
So mom and my cousin Lauren (who has her own travel agency) helped us get it all organised, and we arrived back from Ryan and Caths on Thursday afternoon and flew to South Africa on Saturday morning ... well that was the plan, however Air Madagascar decided they liked us here so much that instead of leaving Tana at 10am on Saturday morning, they cancelled our plane at 8pm (yes, after we had sat around the airport since 9am) and put a load of us up for the night in local hotels! Grrrrr.

We finally arrived in JHB and Mom and Dad picked us up and we stayed at my cousins Leigh and George. Much excitement for David and I as Leigh and George had prepared a delicious meal with all things we hadn't had in 5 months - like creamed spinach, delicious fat South African steaks, ice cream and much more. I can see this little stint in SA being a kg adder!!

We drove back from JHB which was great for us to have a good catch up with mom and dad and to start acclimatising to the South African winter ... brrrrr. 10 degrees during the day! A far cry from our usual mid 20 - 30's!

So this wasn't a holiday return - it was a working excursion. We have decided to move back to South Africa to have the baby and stay for a year or so, probably more if we can find a way to support it! We just thought it makes the world of sense to have our families around us for support - both sets of our parents, Davids brothers family, and my cousin Lauren and family live in a triangle of 5 kms apart from each other! Its also great that we can provide all our friends in SA with a laugh as they are all over the tough days with little babies and are just starting to get thier lives back (as they put it) and are now laughing at us as we just start this new adventure!! Thanks guys!

So while we were 'home' we thought it made sense to do a bit of house hunting. Get an idea of prices and whats out there. We started with very specific requirements of what we wanted and what we were going to spend, and the day we left we put an offer in for a gorgeous house that was nothing in our specifications and way above our initial price! Oh well .... its worth it! So the offer was accepted and now we have to try and do all the legalities and financials from the island. This should prove interesting and challenging. The first challenge was having to race to a lawyer on the way to the airport to get a Power of Attorney for Davids dad drawn up to act on our behalf for any signatures etc!

Our trip home was crazy as always and awesome to see everyone - even a special treat of seeing Geoff, Laura and little Dylan from Dubai who were in SA the same time! Just seeing everyone and spending time with our families brought it home (no pun intended) all the more of the good decision we have made to go back and share this next stage in our lives in the place we grew up. It was even more special that we got to take all four grandparents into the scan with us and they got to see the active little baby rolling around and stretching its little arms to say hi! We have missed out on a lot of family over the last 15 years not being in South Africa,
but we have had an incredible time and done so much in the UK, Dubai and now Madagascar. We hope that we can stay strong and bring what we have learned and picked up to continue a more simple way of life, keeping healthy and staying open minded!

So now we are back in Mada for the last two months of our island paradise adventure. Mom has come back with us for 10 days to see what its all about, and I can see she uderstands exactly why we have done it. She is so relaxed and loving the sunshine, amazing healthy food and divine Madagascar shopping!!! hahaha, I mean people!
Once mom goes it will be chaos trying to do admin and organising from the country of Mora Mora (easy easy / slowly slowly) as we try and get Inja sent to South Africa, along with another container of the little bit of stuff we still have, as we will need every scrap to fill the house we are buying!

Well Davids gone off to get some fish for dinner - yesterday he gave the guys at the hotel building site an 8kg fish, which they were totally STOKED with! They have seen him walk past for nearly 6 months with fish of all sizes and shapes and finally it was their turn to get one!
We made a decision to make sure we make the absolute most of the last couple of months left here and to make sure we finish doing all the things we set out to do in March when we arrived. So watch this space, I have a feeling its going to be jam packed!