The House

East London is a very small town sort of in the middle of nowhere. There are about 700,000 people and very little industry. It's very much the Detroit of South Africa in that the auto industry was one of the biggest employers in the Eastern Cape (the province that East London is in) until that all went to crap a million years ago. So the data now says that approx. 160,000 people are employed, 100,000 people are unemployed and approx. 400,000 are "not economically active" which we learned in a meeting yesterday means that people are either unable to work or not looking for work. So that gives you an idea of the demographics.

The lack of an economy here means that there also aren't many people who can afford to buy real estate so the rental market is almost impossible. Lillian had absolutely no luck finding an apartment before I got here and we got incredibly lucky when she met two women looking for someone to watch their house and dogs while they look for work in Dublin. They have a great house and gave it to us at a really good rate and one of the women's mother even had a car (an automatic, impossible to find in South Africa, and a Mercedes, which is fun) that she threw in for much less than we would have gotten it in the rental market. So we totally scored. 

The house is in one of the white (read: safe) areas of town, Beacon Bay. It's a really nice area, like everywhere else in South Africa every house is guarded by high gates and secured walls (the walls were one of the first things I could see from the plane in Joburg) and there is also a mall (with all SA or British shops), a small casino, a movie theatre, about four coffee shops, a few restaurants and a couple of "retail parks". Our house is also only two blocks from the beach which is my favourite part!

The house itself is really nice. There are three bedrooms, but one is just for the dogs (seriously), two bathrooms, one with a huge jacuzzi tub and one with a beautiful double shower, a big kitchen, and even a swimming pool. The puppies are really cute, there are two Yorkies and a surprisingly friendly pitbull. There are also walls and barbed wire around the entire house (the wire is to keep the pitbull in, apparently he can jump pretty high) and alarms, gates, etc. It's terrifyingly safe. We also have very, very, very slow internet and cable TV which is awesome. Overall, we lucked out.

Here are some pics!  Sorry, I would have posted more but it took me two days just to load these (the internet is realllly slow):

the pool!

the living room

one of the pups in bed (yes, they have a bed)

the puppies' bedroom (yes, they have a bedroom)

Travel well,

kat

Next up: The Office!

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