The South African government has set the date for the upcoming elections: 22 April 2009. There will be national holidays around that date with no school at any level. We're starting to see some election advertising. It started only a week ago, which is about 2.5 months ahead of voting. That's blessedly much less electioneering than in the U.S. system.
Tracy and I talked with Mark's teacher, Mrs. Birt, today. She said he's doing very well in the classroom. He's ahead of the pack in reading and math, but that's to be expected because he's already been through half of Grade 3. He's making friends easily and fitting in well.
I saw his chess team meeting today and took a couple photos. See them at the side. The other day, Tracy took some pictures of Catherine playing in the back of our house with Tosca. I posted one of those, too.
The South-Easter has re-ignited some of the brush fires on the mountains around here. The smell of smoke is everywhere again, even though the fires are quite a distance from us.
--Matt