I Love It!

The past few days have been awesome! I have not loved South Africa so much as I love it now.
So. As previous blogs explain, I was wiped out all weekend, and I didn’t want to go back to work (washing windows and tablecloths and ironing curtains! Yay!) right away, and Phil and Christine read my mind! They kindly and lovingly and awesomely volunteered to take us to the nearby Tala Game Reserve to see all sorts of awesome animals, like giraffes, zebras, rhinosaurs – yes, rhinosaurs –, warthogs, ostriches, wildebeasts, etc (no lions, but that’s okay), and also to debrief after the weekend. And also to have a braai (aka a barbeque)!
Not only was it really cool to see all those animals, it was really nice to talk to Phil and Christine. Sometimes I forget that I am here not to judge (crazy, right?) but to learn. It’s so easy for me to close myself up to different things without thinking about reasons behind the differences or how they might actually *gasp!* be smart! Phil and Christine are very good at bringing me back to Planet Earth and reminding me to not be a snob, although not usually in so many words J.
Here are some other good things that have happened in the past couple of days:

• Basketball! I am no good at basketball and I don’t enjoy playing it because I suck so much. However, Tuesday night I got to play a little with Gabby and Christian (our insane yet great Congolese neighbor), and I found that it is quite fun! Maybe I’ll get back to the States a champion!


• Fake meat! Phil and Christine were kind enough to buy me some fake boervorst sausages for the braai, and they were SO GOOD. Oh. My.


• Cleaning windows! Just when I thought I was sick of manual labor, I did it and remembered that I love it. I’m almost at the point where I can accept doing odd jobs every day, without having one big world-changing focus. It helps that when I cleaned the windows my iPod was good with the shuffling. Sometimes my iPod refuses to play songs that I really like because it is too busy playing songs I only sorta like. But my iPod was good on Wednesday.


• “Third Watch.” We watch that TV show a lot, since Tim has Season One. It’s ridiculous and dramatic and totally awesome. By the way: if anyone has any of the other six seasons, please feel free to send them.


• Learning to drive, all over again. Phil kindly is teaching Kyle, Anna, and I how to drive the crazy South African way (ok, it’s not crazy, just hard). Most cars here are standard, and they drive on the left side of the road…so Wednesday I had my first lesson in our fussy little Honda Ballade. It was awesome, though I am not that great. Phil told me to have dreams about “giving it more gas” so I can be a better shifter. Oh, I’ll have all the dreams.


• We have money!!! Finally, we are no longer broke. Anna and I went grocery shopping yesterday; it was basically the best day of my young life.


• Beautiful weather! It’s been gorgeous since Monday, which was very welcome after a rainy weekend.


• Photo ops! We took a good many “jumping pictures” at the game reserve. We didn’t intend to take so many, but we failed so many times that we had to jump probably 10 or 15 times. Finally we got a good, in-the-air pic, but the failed ones are just as fun to look at. Also. For some reason there is a giant (like, six or seven feet high) KFC bucket sitting behind the children’s church building, so Anna, Gabby, and I went over there and took pictures on it and around it. Awesome.