nickelback! celine dion! and more!

I was going to blog about my evangelizing experience today but I got distracted by Tim and Kyle’s conversation.
They have so far discussed: bicycle jousting; car jousting; other ridiculous made-up sports; Gabby’s English language issues; drive-by paintball; spying on friends; Nickelback = the worst band ever; awkward llama (pronounced by Tim as lamb-a); awkward turtle; Santana; Celine Dion, The Lord of the Rings, Dung Tran, and yearbook quotes (all of which are connected); getting chased by the police; and a number of other things that I cannot remember.
I am so glad that we are all getting more comfortable – not only here in South Africa, but with each other. Even though I always feel like I never ask the right questions, we actually are getting to know each other better every day. In Chicago we didn’t really get to know each other at all (instead, we got to know people who are now in Australia, Paraguay, and/or England), but we have slowly been learning to enjoy each other!
Pretty much every night, for instance, we stay up together and watch multiple episodes of either The Office (best show ever!) or Third Watch (also up there!). We eat dessert together! We even make dessert together!
Another example would be Kyle and Tim staying up till 11:30 to talk about a wide range of strange and wonderful things.
I often catch myself thinking “I can’t wait until I like this place so much that I could miss it when I leave.” I also can’t wait until I like Anna, Tim, Kyle and Gabby so much that I will really miss them when we part ways. I think that will happen sooner rather than later, and that makes me really happy.
Also: I evangelized today! Sort of. Anna and I went to a boarding house with Melaine, one of the youth pastors. I was not looking forward to it at all because it was my night to make dinner and going out meant I had to cut the bread rolls out of my meal, but it turned out to be really good (the evangelizing, that is, although the meal was not bad either). The girls at the boarding house were awesome! We talked to a group of girls from 13 to 18 who go to school in Pietermaritzburg but live all over, in KwaZulu Natal and even the Free State. We invited them to come to church and talked a bit about that, and then Anna and I answered a bunch of questions about America. These questions included:

· Do you have lockers in your school?
· Do you have cafeterias in your schools?
· What is the weather like?
· Are there different cultures there?
· How do schools work? (as in how are they split up for grades and all that jazz)

It was really fun! Melaine is really fun and laid back, and I enjoyed meeting the girls a lot. Not only were they super nice and funny, they were super interested in us (we couldn’t help but be flattered!). We prayed before we left, holding hands in a circle, and the girls actually fought about who got to hold our hands. Then they gave us hugs when we left. I felt like freaking Britney Spears or something. Oh my goodness!