The good thing about this trip, everyone is getting so close. The bad thing, everyone is so close. A cold seems to be making its way around and around our group. I’m on my second round, this time it is accompanied by an ear infection, I am not looking forward to the next couple of days. Besides being sick this week has been a pretty good one.
On Sunday we all went to Addo Elephant National Park and Scotia Game Reserve to finally see wild (or as wild as we are going to manage to see) African animals. We had to get up early to catch a bus that would take us to the parks. Our tour guide, Bradley, was absolutely amazing. He knew information about everything we were passing: townships, dinosaur fossils, plants, elephants, everything. Hands down, the best tour guide I’ve ever had. Anyway, at Addo we stayed in the bus and drove around keeping our eyes out for animals. The dung beetles are absolutely huge and illegal to run over with your car in the park. We did see an elephant. It was an exciting time. Everyone rushed over to the right side of the bus, hung out the windows, and tried to get a decent shot of the animal (considering its head was in a bush I don’t think anyone got a great shot.
After Addo we headed over to Scotia. By this point it had been raining off and on the entire day and I was expecting four hours of sitting in an open aired jeep being poured on by the rain, freezing cold and wet. Well, that is what happened but it turned out to be one of the best times I’ve had here. We were promised a lion sighting and did not have to wait long. Ten minutes after our tour got started we spotted a lion sitting under a bush attempting to get relief from the rain. The lion was no more than 10 meters from our jeep and I could get pretty good pictures of it. My favorite animal we saw that day was the giraffe. Right after break to thaw out, we spotted three giraffes and were able to drive right in the middle of them and later saw a couple more. We were able to get really close to them and they didn’t seem to mind our presence. Rhinos, zebras, wildebeest, impala, and hippos rounded out the other animals we saw.
After the actual safari part of our tour we got to eat a great dinner at extra large tiki hut like complex (I really can’t explain it very well). There were a couple of large fire pits that could easily fit 20 people around it. A cooking pit was situated in that general are as well. A bar and all the tables (at least 30) were surrounding all of this. We were able to warm up, dry off (we were absolutely soaking by this time in the day), and just have a great time sitting around and talking.
Monday was our first official day of volunteering. I decided on the House of Resurrection, an AIDS Haven. When we got there we went to the kid’s room and there they began jumping on us, screaming, begging to be picked up. The little boy that came to me first was Joseph. He is four years old, HIV positive, as are all but a few of the kids at the Haven, and have been at the Haven since he was a few months old. That first day I think I held Joseph for at least half the time (2 hours). I was expecting to be extremely sore the next day, but it wasn’t too bad. By the end of the volunteering I am going to have very toned arms. We went back on Tuesday and were all exhausted by the end.
For other random happenings this week I went to another Warriors cricket game, I dropped the political science class for the music class, and the entire group wore our NMMU International polo shirts to class on Tuesday. Tuesday was also the first potluck of the semester. The theme was Minnesota and tatertot hotdish and green bean casserole were served along with jello and buns. It reminded me of home.
We don’t have classes on Friday so the weekend starts whenever we are done on Thursday, for me that is 12:00 on Thursday. That meant an extra-long weekend and the weather looked perfect. On Friday the weather was perfect for the beach. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, it was hot and zero wind, the water was refreshing and the waves were “gnarly.” I couldn’t have asked for a better day. That night we had a braai. Boris decided to cook Serbian dinner for all of us and grilled meat and made potato salad among other things. It was absolutely delicious. I do not ever have to worry about going hungry on this trip.
Last night was a blast. Simon is in the orchestra here and last night was the concert in the park. The music was pretty good. It alternated between classical and modern pieces. The soloists, a saxophonist and vocalist, were amazing, the saxophone player especially. We had promised Simon that we would get people dancing. We sort of failed at that but our group was jamming out, especially during the last few songs. When you hear “I Will Survive” you can’t just sit around. People started singing and somehow we all ended up line dancing to it. Just imagine 20 people standing in a grassy opening line dancing (if people had been wondering where we were from, that answered it). A little girl came and started dancing with us. The encore song “Walking on Sunshine” got the attention of a lot of people around us. People around us had been noticing our little dance party and by this song there were at least 4 people taking pictures and dozens more looking on at the crazy Americans. The ride back in the taxi was just about as fun. We were singing songs from our middle school years and I was surprised at how many songs we remembered. The driver loved it and was laughing the whole time. We are filling the role of the loud Americans quite well.
F.Y.I. Flickr won’t let me upload any pictures until the first of the month so if you want to see pictures I’ll be putting them on Facebook for a while.
Peace.
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