These are the Days....

Hello yet again everyone! It has been about 3 weeks since I have written, and it has been a busy time. There were some packed weeks of classes, papers, and preparing for finals, but thankfully the hard work is over and I have finished up with my two elective classes, Art and Life & Teachings of Jesus. For the rest of my time here I will only have to worry about History, Intercultural Communication, and Community Engagement. This week my community engagement class is starting, and on Thursday I will be starting work at my service site, called “Riv’ Life.” I and several others were assigned to this site, and we will be caring for children, doing community food drives, working with support groups for people with Aids, and many other things I am not quite sure of yet. We will be at these sites 4 times a week for the next 4 weeks, and I am excited to meet the local people in the community, build relationships, and learn more about the culture.
Despite the busy weeks full of work, all of us here have found the time to have a lot of fun. We have found some delicious coffee places, and spent a few nights out at the movies, since they are only 2 dollars here! I am also newly addicted to a card game called “nerts” which is a weird mix of solitaire and speed. We also celebrated finals and classes being over with dinner out to Thai food, dessert, a dance party, and a movie. Besides that, we spent our free time building bonfires, chasing zebras and basking in the African sun. The last few weekends I have also been very busy traveling. A few weeks back, we went to see the San Bushman paintings in Drakensburg, and spent the day hiking up the mountain and swimming in the river. The next weekend we went to a zip-line course, where we spent the day working our way down a mountain using 8 different zip-lines, and now Tarzan has nothing on me. Flying through the jungle definitely met some of my South Africa expectations. This past weekend we went to 4 different battlefields, where we were able to get tours and accounts of the past wars that had taken place at each. It actually wasn’t all that exciting, but we were able to stay at a fancy hotel and eat a delicious fancy dinner. Good food is amazing and rare here, since the campus’ only food groups seem to be meat, rice, and PB&J. We also spent over 10 hours in the bus that weekend, but at least caught up on sleep and road trip games. We also had a “Sunday Funday” just this past week, where we had a slip-n-slide, and played some pretty intense relay race games with our chalet team mates.
It came across my mind that my time here in this country is about ½ way over at this point, which is a crazy realization. It has been such a fun, amazing, and different experience, and I know the next two months will be full of many more experiences. I am thankful for the friendships I have made and for the amazing life I have been given and am living out here each day.