Living "Green"

6 august

Ya howsit! It rained all day yesterday. I was feeling under the weather so i slept most of the day except when I went to eat at the cafe. I was really craving Panera’s chicken noodle soup today, and missing my parents TLC when I’m sick. I got neither, but hot chocolate and the apple pie did help a little. I should have brought my gloves/hat/scarf if I knew that it would be this cold here. Maybe I’ll buy some. 

Which reminds me, I have become very energy/water conscious since I’ve been here. Water is a scarce resource here and you pay for electricity by the usage. No like back home where you pay at the end of the month. This was a good year for South Africa with more rain than average. Before this year most of the country had a two year drought. So although the rain is an inconvenience to me, it is really good for the country so I won’t complain that much. To conserve water, we don’t take showers for more than 10 minutes, we also turn off the hot water when we are not using it. When we moved in we paid R600 (approx $94) for 577.8 kWh of electricity. The guy told us that should last us about 1.5 months. Right now we’re left with about 410 kWh in three weeks, so I’d say we are doing pretty well. We also turn off the stove circuit thing when we are not using it. So even though back home there is a lot of media about “Going Green” here it is more of a way of life I think. Well at least for the people I have spoken to so far. And they always have shows on TV about being using energy and water for efficiently. I think I’m learning to appreciate energy and water more, and hopefully I can still be conscious of it when I go back to the states. So basically everything has a switch to it so it is easy to control what is being used and when.