Saturday, May 25th EWK Birthday

Today is Everett's birthday, so we decided to take a break from our hectic schedule and go to the beach for the day. The weather was beautiful and there was all kinds of stuff going on: a surfing competition, a jet ski competition, skateboard competition and probably others.  The walkways all along the beach are about 30 feet wide. The sand is really fine and very soft. It seems to go on forever. There are also 4 or 5 piers that go out pretty far and are popular spots for fishing. Children were riding bikes or skateboards or renting cute little peddle vehicles that looked like ATVs. They were having so much fun. It really is amazing. It was a great day for people watching. There was quite a mixture of black, Indian, Muslim and white. All seemed to be getting along fine and having a good time. We didn't realize that it was also some African holiday, which explains the big crowds. We watched a rather large woman strip down to a girdle and bra and jump into the waves. She had about eight children with her and they didn't seem to care that they were stripping down to underwear to go in the ocean and no one else seemed to mind either.


We had lunch at Zachs, an upstairs restaurant on the walkway that we've been to once before. It has pretty good nachos (which is unusual to find) and great salads. Per Elder Kyle, great hamburgers too.










We enjoyed the food and view and then walked down the beach again. We stuck our toes in the Indian Ocean. The water was really cold, but that didn't seem to keep other people from swimming or surfing, so I guess we are just wimps in our old age. We finally just laid down on the sand and closed our eyes and said, "Aah!"



We were surprised to also see some sort of carnival rides, an olympic-size public swimming pool, plus small child pool and another pool with water slides. There's probably dozens of things we did not see, as we did not walk the entire length (over 5K).



On our way home, we went to the grocery market. I think everyone else in Durban had the same idea, because the store was packed. We bought a small cheesecake for Everett's birthday celebration.

When we returned to our flat and put the groceries away, we got to Skype Shannon, Darin and the twins and we talked to Darin's parents. We will get to talk to Ryan tomorrow. Life in Texas goes on without us, but it's great to hear what is going on there. After that, we cut the cheesecake and it didn't taste anything like cheesecake, or anything else I have ever tasted...BLAH is how I would describe it, but EK wasn't quite so repulsed. It was quite a novel party for Elder Kyle's first Birthday in Africa. If it weren't for the fact that EK had to stand outside our gated community and wait for the water truck on Friday because there was a water line break and the truck was coming through to supply us with water,  and the fact that there is an ocean ten minutes from our flat, and that our family is over 9000 miles away...it would seem like home. Our love to everyone! Happy Birthday Elder Kyle!