Belated Birthday Picnic

It was an up and down weekend, but I think I might have to split the down into a second post. But the up was I was very very spoilt :)

Friday night was quiet. I got home and really buckled down into organising my dream Madagascar holiday. This was after I popped into a Flight Center during the week, asking the travel agent for some ideas. I thought I'd left her with a clear idea of what I was looking for: "A cheap-ish holiday in Madagascar ... but if you can think of any other sort of location, let me know too". I also pointed out I'd done a *lot* of tours in groups. This time I didn't mind the idea of doing another group tour, but was more interested in the possibility of doing my own thing. I've found out since that that is not as easy as it sounds because the road situation in Madagascar is not ideal and you pretty much have to fly wherever you wanna go. Anyhoo, so I left ... not really anticipating much from the travel agent. They tend to push those fly-in-fly-out spend 7 days at ye olde typical beach resort type of holidays. Me, I'm so not one of those types.

So on Friday I received an email from my helpful travel agent. I read thru the detailed itinerary. Looks impressive :) Then I got to the page with the costings. R85000. For two people. For 14days. Eighty-five Thousand Rond. To go to Madagascar (not the Antarctic, people). I was momentarily in shock. But it did spur me on to go and research my trip and where exactly I wanted to go and look at possible / probable accommodation options and pricing in each area. Now I need to look at the internal & International flight prices. Me thinks Madagascar ain't gonna be the cheap holiday I was hoping for. Internal flights will do that to your budget! Sigh.

Anyway, On Saturday Varen spent the day at home studying while I went to Bokkie's surprise 30th braai. I was running late but still managed to get there just before he did :) It was a pretty cool day although I knew barely anyone there. Tasted some Coffee Tequila. Yum yum :)

And then Sunday, my birthday picnic at Walter Sisulu. I had a lovely day and was very spoilt :) My gifts were like little product launches from my friend's new businesses! It was incredible. I got some divine cookie dough from Noogie's Cookie Dough (soon to be launched!). I even got some biscuits that were made with the dough - although the fun part really is eating the dough! And I got some Body Thrill's products from Exmi :) And an Ayurvedic voucher from LivingYoga (although I'm not quite sure what this one entails yet! Haha). And those were only the "product launch" gifts ;) Thanks to everyone who came, it was hugely appreciated and I thoroughly enjoyed lazing in the sun on the grass with such fabulous people :) Hope you all enjoyed yourselves too!

Varen & I got home around 15h30 and spent the rest of the day in front of the tv. We watched the Twilight movie.

Twilight is a 2008 American romantic-fantasy film directed by Catherine Hardwicke and based on the novel of the same name by Stephenie Meyer. The film stars Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson as Bella Swan and Edward Cullen, a teenage girl and a vampire who fall in love.

Meh, it was okay, I guess. I'll say that if I hadn't already read the books, I doubt the movie would spur me to. Perhaps I was a little hard on the movie since I have read the books tho. Although the plot was pretty straight & narrow and stuck to the book well-enough, the actors just really didn't work for me. The vampire ones to be specific. I didn't think they were that amazing and I am so not enthralled with the actor they picked as Edward ... or Alice for that matter. They were better in my head. Edward just downright annoying in the movie :P Well, then again, he's pretty annoying in the books too ;) I also thought Jacob would be hotter. Oh well ... back to my imagination me thinks ;)