Good byes are not my favorite...In fact I hate them...

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. I leave Africa tomorrow! Holy cow. This is so hard. I hate saying goodbye, especially to people and places I have become so attached to.  I never imagined it would be this difficult. 

We have once again done quite a bit in the last week.  One of my favorite things was going on a boat ride on the open ocean for my marine biology class.  The boats were pretty small and kind of sketchy, but it was fun nonetheless.  It was a pretty windy day and the waves were pretty large.  There were a few times when I thought we were going to fly out of the boat.  We were headed to bird island where there is the world’s largest population of African penguins.  We ended up making it half way and had to turn around because up ahead there were apparently 5 m swells.  It was ok though because we ended up seeing about 11 dolphins super close to our boat.  It was so cool. 

Throughout this semester we have done so much and seen so much.  A lot of it has changed us.  For our last seminar class we had to do some reflections and this is some of what I wrote:

1) I know I have changed as a result of my experience because…

-my mindset is different, I feel like I am not as stressed about the little things

-I am learning to trust more

-I now want to travel abroad more

-I value culture more

2) Lessons learned that I never want to forget…

-not to stress over time or the little things…relax and enjoy life

                -African time has been good for me

-Be PRESENT!

I will be home in 2 days after traveling through many airports, planes and layovers for 36 hrs.  This is so crazy.  See you all SOON.  Please get in touch with me, I would love to see you!

Love from Africa,

-laura

How can it be?

I have 7 days left in this amazing place, this wonderful yet broken country, this place I now call home.  How can that be true? This time has gone so fast.  I can count the days on my hands…and when you can count the number of days on your hands, it is never a good sign!

I am excited to go home and see people, but I don’t want to say good bye to South Africa, to the people I have met, to the places I have explored, and to the kids who I have come to love.  I don’t think I can leave them without my heart breaking. 

Hmmm…I don’t even know what to tell you.  It has been a very busy two and a half weeks since our fall break trip.  We have had so much homework that we are being buried alive.  Other than that we have done a lot of random stuff:

-Experienced a little bit of Finnish culture in South Africa…our friends Suvi, Sari, and Jan had a Finnish party, where they made lots of foods from home.  It was all so good.

-we saw the NMMU choir perform….they are one of the top rated choirs in SA I think…they travel to different countries to compete. It was so good.  They performed some choir songs that reminded me of AHS choir, and then also some traditional SA songs.

-we went to an Ethiopian restaurant…it was in kind of a sketchy area but we had a big group and so it was fine. There was no silverware because Ethiopian food is usually eaten with your hands.  As could be expected, it was super messy.  The food was kind of spicy so I wasn’t a huge fan, but everyone else loved it.  It was still a cool experience though. 

-we had a “fun day” with the kids at House. We rented two bouncy castles, did face painting and had a braai.  It was so much fun.  Ahhh I love those kids.

-My friend Sara Sandwick, who is a CSB nursing student, arrived in PE. It is so much fun to have her here!

-we had our last day at House….I don’t even know what to think. It is already difficult to think about this and I don’t even think I have fully grasped that I am not going to see those kids again.  When I do grasp it…oh man…it will be not a fun day.

Anyway, that is a bit of the random stuff we have been up to.  There has been so much more but I am lazy at the moment.  Sorry. You will just have to hear the stories from me IN PERSON IN 7 DAYS!!!! Holy cow.

Miss you and see you SOON!

It's raining skydivers...

I WENT SKYDIVING!  Ahhhhhh it was so crazy.  I never thought I would, I wasn’t really planning on it at all for this trip but it just kind of happened.  I went and talked to the people and they said if the weather got better they would try to squeeze me in.  They were going to call and let me know.  I thought that meant when they called they would give me 2 hours or something but nope! Around 1pm, she called and asked if I could come now.  She said come quickly the plane was getting ready to leave.  Holy cow…. I panicked and got ready super fast.  Didn’t really have time to think it through or back out if I wanted to.   I was more nervous about spending the money than I was about jumping out of a plane.

  I got to wear a lovely blue jumpsuit.  My tandem instructor’s name was Ceis.  He told me that when we jump out of the plane I have to be like a banana with my head back, hands holding onto straps by chest, and feet trying to kick my butt.   I talked a lot out of nervousness.  Ceis was cool though.  I told him lots of random things in my nervousness.  I said that every time he said banana I thought of Bananas in Pajamas…he knew what I was talking about…said we were like B1 and B2 and started singing the song…this really surprised me b/c a lot of people in the US don’t know the show.  We got into a bus that looked like a kombi and drove to where the plane was to take off.  It was a small plane that I think dad would have really liked flying, especially over the beautiful mountains.  The other instructors were giving me a hard time and joking with me.  They told me that I was the last person Ceis had to jump with with his learners permit.  He told me that they were joking, he had done 1000s of jumps. 

During the day you could always hear planes and it looked like it was raining skydivers.  They were dropping everywhere. It was quite cool.  We finally boarded the plane; there were about 10 of us.  It made me a little nervous that I realized they never took my consent form.  They rushed me so much I forgot to give it to them.  Oh well.  As we went up Ceis would tell me how many ft we were at.  I looked out the window a bit, not quite sure how to feel.  I was nervous but more just shocked at what I was doing.  It felt so unreal.  At about 8000 ft Ceis strapped me to him. Finally we got up to 12000 ft. The plane ride was about 15 min. total.  One guy got ready to do a solo jump, they opened the door (creepy) and I needed to move a bit so he could get out.  I grabbed onto the leg of someone else so I didn’t fly out.  It wouldn’t have happened but it was scary nonetheless.  The guy just fell out and went soaring.  Then it was our turn.  It happened so fast.  Ceis said to tuck my legs under the plane like he had previously explained and then we fell.  It was so scary and such a weird feeling.  I didn’t really like the 35 sec. free fall.  

As we were freefalling, he tapped me and that signaled to let go with my arms and let them flap out…it was “lekker” he said.  Then he tapped me again to signal that he was going to release the parachute.  It was not as jerky as I was expecting.  It actually was a lot slower than I thought.  For most of the free fall my eyes were shut but I did blink them open really fast a few times.  For the canopy (part with parachute..~4-5 min.) part I had my eyes open for most of it.  At first I was a little uncomfortable but it got better and I started just chatting with Ceis.  I told him to keep it nice and simple, no fancy business.  He showed me how to turn it to the sides and asked if I wanted to try it.  I wish I would have but at the moment I was trying to calm myself down.  I kept saying holy cow. Holy cow.  Oh wow. 

The landing was fine.  Not as graceful as I had planned, my legs kind of slide under me a bit, but it was good.  It was just so crazy, fun, unreal and wow.  Today felt like such a normal day, but really…I JUST JUMPED OUT OF A PLANE!!!!!!!!

Busy Busy Busy….Cape Town, Durban & Drakensberg…

We had our “fall” break trip last week.  It was a 9 day CSB/SJU group excursion to Cape Town…and then 10 of us flew to Durban then 6 of us drove to the Drakensberg Mountains while the rest stayed in Durban.  Cape Town was a lot of fun.  We had a tour guide who planned everything down to the last minute basically.  We got to do and see so much but had little free time to explore.  Here is an outline of what we did the whole trip: (warning…do I even need to say it….it is long J)

Fri. (April 22^nd): bus to Tsitskama where people went Bungee Jumping at world’s highest commercial jump…me and a few others watched and took pictures…I was terrified just to look at the bridge….later we went for a hike to a beautiful waterfall.  We jumped into some frigid water in a pool at the base of the falls….I have never been in colder water…I seriously started to hyperventilate because I could not breathe

Sat. (April 23^rd): Spent night in Guguletu Township outside of Cape Town…. We first went to the home of Mama Knox who runs the homestay program.  It was started with 2 mamas and now there are 14.  They all live within 1 mi of each other.  Lindsay and I stayed with Mama Nosichele, she said we could call her Ellen.  Her house was pretty clean and quite nice. It was small but not that small.  It was nicer than I expected.  Right away when we got there she turned on her tv (maybe she assumed we as westerners would want to watch tv) and we watched American Idol. Ha!  We talked with her a bit and she gave us a cooking lesson.  We learned how to make Stavey mealie pap.  It is a lot like mashed potatoes.  We also had chicken, gravy, and butternut squash.  It was so good.

Sun. (April 24^th): This was definitely the weirdest Easter of my entire life! A few of us went to the Catholic Mass and then we joined the group at a multi-cultural, non-denominational church service.  It was pretty cool.  They had some Magis like songs, interpretative dance, the “Everything” LifeHouse skit!!!, and a sermon.  Then we went to lunch at Mzoli’s, which is supposedly one of Cape Town’s greatest restaurants.  It was crazy and chaotic.  They brought out huge buckets of meat and it was basically a free for all.  They also had “fat cakes” which is pretty much deep fried bread.  Overall, it was just too overwhelming for me.  After lunch we went to Robben Island, which is where Nelson Mandela was in prison for 17 of the 27 years he was in prison.  Going to prison on Easter was quite interesting.   We went to a nice restaurant for dinner and I ordered some African cuisine.  I tried Couscous with a cucumber, carrot, onion, green pepper, and tomato sauce on it.  It was delicious!

Mon. (April 25^th): The breakfasts at our hotel were awesome! You could order omelets, French toast, eggs, sausage, etc.  Today we climbed Table Mountain….there was a super difficult rock scramble and I wasn’t feeling the greatest.  There was a group of about 6 of us who aren’t in the best shape who took the Cable Car up to the top. We all took the long way to hike down the mountain.  It was a chilly, rainy, foggy day.  It wasn’t the greatest day for a hike but it was still fun. 

Tues. (April 26^th): We drove to Cape Point today…it is said to be the Southern most tip of Africa.  It was really pretty.  We then went to a place that had a lot of African penguins….fyi…for some reason penguins remind me of my brother.  Sorry Jacob, but you would make a good penguin. J Then we went to Groot Constantia Winery where we tasted 5 types of wine.  I found out I am not a huge fan of wine. 

Wed. (April 27^th): A group of 10 of us flew to Durban bright and early.  We explored a bit of the city.  We went to the botanical gardens, went to an Art center, the Natural Science Center, and then to TacoZulu for dinner.  Our backpacker was a bit sketchy…it was in not the greatest area of town and it had quite a

few cockroaches.  It was an interesting night, but now it makes a great story.

Thurs. (April 28^th): Lindsay, Taylor, and I started to drive to Drakensberg.  We got to our backpacker and had a very chill day.  It was in such a pretty area.  There were mountains galore. 

Fri. (April 29^th): All I wanted was a box of Kleenex, some orange juice and a bed but instead I climbed a mountain.  I felt soooo sick.  The mtn we climbed was 3121 m.  It was a 2 hr drive from our backpacker.  The climb consisted of a zig zag portion, then the beginning of a loop, a 45 min. difficult rock scramble, picnic lunch on top, walk to waterfall, rest of loop, down creepy ladders, and then back down zig zag portion.  We left at 7:30 am and returned around 9pm.  It was an exhausting day but so worth it.  The views were indescribable.  Tugela Falls is the water fall we climbed to.  It is the 2^nd tallest waterfall in the world and the tallest in Africa at 948 m.  The first tallest is in Venezuela. The ladders we had to go down were terrifying.  The 1^st was 9 m and the 2^nd was 23 m.  They were metal and strapped to the side of the mtn…I just about died.  The hike was sooo pretty.  It is probably one of my favorite places in South Africa, potentially in the world.  It is beautiful. 

Sat. (April 30^th):  I WENT SKYDIVING! LIKE JUMPED OUT OF A PLANE FROM 12,000 FT!  See separate blog post J

                After skydiving, we hung out around the backpacker.  There was a women’s music festival going on called the Smoking Dragon.  It was a huge hippie fest. …very interesting.  It was fun to look at the different tents.  Later at night they had some interesting music, a different, yet still pretty cool light show, and an awesome fire show (probably would not have been legal in the US at a festival). 

Sun. (May 1^st): We drove 14.5 hrs home to PE.  We saw lots of goats, cows, baboons, and dogs on the roads on our way home.  Overall, this trip was so awesome.  I loved it!