40 year Reunion - Kloof High School Matric 1975

So I started another Facebook group today.. this time for our School Matric 40th reunion intended for a date to be arranged in 2015. Can we be planning so far ahead, and can it really be so many years in the past since we left school!! I have looked over the past few years for school friends on Facebook with little success. The only ones I have some contact with are my friends Greg and Ingrid Boothe over in New Zealand and Linda Peterson (now Rethman) I bump into at our local Spar from time to time. So I have found Shelley Cooke today - both she and Linda helped organise the 1990 - 15th year reunion which was a huge success, and I will delve into old records and see if I can recreate the class lists again. I was in Form VI A (Standard 10) which would now be called Grade 12 and I think there was up to a D class.... a huge project, particularly as it seems my generation don't seem to be particularly computer literate or on Facebook. So if you know anyone from Kloof High School in the 1970s, they are all welcome to attend and they may have brothers or sisters who were in Matric in 1975. Click on the link to the Facebook group here, join and let's chat and make this happen. I'm also on cell 083-7033329.

Kate-Lynn's first job

We were out celebrating with a sushi-feast last night as Kate-Lynn scooped her first job for when she completes her teacher training B.Ed at the end of this year- and it's a lecturing post at her training college. Wow that's awesome and a great achiement!! Well done big girl and another milestone.

So we were out celebrating the big news.

New life in Durban for our Sling

Our new baby has arrived (well my instructor Brad and I actually flew it back to Durban from the factory at Tedderfield Airfield in Johannesburg). Here Llewellyn, Kate-Lynn and I welcome the plane to Light Flight School where I will complete my NPL training in our plane.

Come check it out!!

You're invited to a bring-and-braai on Sunday at my Flying School, Light Flight in Cato Ridge to check out our new plane. Will be flying in the am but the plane can be seen any time from 10am and I will light fires from 12.30.. so please come and be part of the excitement.

Damascus, Syria

For some reason most of my photos of beautiful Damascus seem to have been overwritten by later pics with the same image numbers as my Damascus pics, so I seem to have lost them.

Having toured Jordan, which itself was incredible, we took a taxi up through Jordan on the road to Damascus from Amman. It was ridiculously cheap, like R200, for a 2 hour journey that took us into another country and border crossing all for that price.

Here are my only images of the border crossing and subsequently our palacial suite in the Al Shahbandar Palace Hotel in the old city in Damascus. (pics to follow.. my external drive is suddenly not working)

Al Shahbandar Palace Hotel in Damascus

Petra - incredible temples in the rockface

Red Sea at Aqaba

We met a great bunch of people on our tour to Wadi Rum and then together on to Aqaba where we stayed at the Bedouin Gardens (hostel) for 8JD each sleeping on the rooftop under the stars overlooking the Red Sea, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Sunset over Egypt seen from Jordan across the Red Sea

Desert safari in Wadi Rum, south Jordan

What an experience - cruising the desert with a group of foreigners and our Bedouin hosts, climbing rocky mountains and dunes and bedding down in a desert tent camp; finding a hedgehog in the sands and enjoying a feast (braai cooked underground)... and meeting our host Tyseer in Wadi Rum.

First views of the Jordan desert and Amman

First view of the Amman residences from the Citadel

Work is in the street

Hole in the Roman wall

Desert everywhere en route to Amman

Stopover in Dubai - Emirates everywhere

Misk Hotel, Amman - one of the better Hotels we stayed at

A culture experience describes our first glimpses of Jordan and it's capital city Amman.. house/boxes everywhere and not a blade of grass/flowers anywhere.