21 More Days!!!!

Ok!! So you know when you think about something for so long and then when it approaches you just want to run the other way. I mean ugh I really can't even imagine leaving here right now...I just really cant. I mean I want to go home please believe but I just can not imagine how "going home" is going to feel, how it will work, how I will handle it. This may sound wierd but I know at least Lexi Gorshe and Aleschia Johnson understands me lol. You start to feel like everything is life now, its not you in Africa anymore...its just life. So I cant fathom anything different. I love it here. But I cant wait to see my family.

Robben Island

We had to ride the ferry over to Robben Island

Nelson Mandela's Jail Cell!!!! YEA WOW!

 



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This is the bed that many of the prisoners had to sleep on.



 Visiting Nelson Mandela's jail cell was absolutely the most purposeful part of the Capetown roadtrip.

 I had always dreamed of going and experiencing it and it was so special to actually get a chance to do so. I learned so much during the tour of Robben Island: 

The island was beautiful!

This is the ferry we took over to the island!



Knysna Township

On the way to Capetown we visited local townships in Knysna. Townships are settlements that are separated from the rest of society, not necessarily by distance because there are may townships very close to richer communities. But they are set apart financially. The townships are broken down into two types. Informal townships and formal townships. The formal townships are the townships where you are responsible for the producing of your own home and paying for your land. In the Informal townships the citizens are given homes and given land they simply have to buy prepaid water and electricity. Some areas have water in their homes while others have electricity, and of course some have neither.

Its always refreshing and eye opening to get our of the rich town that I currently live in. The people for the most part were very welcoming and the children couldnt have been more fun.

 

Capetown experience coming soon.........

Area Map

This is the South Africa and the surrounding countries. This is to give you an idea of where I am the next few weeks I will be traveling a lot. Im here right at the tip PORT ELIZABETH!

Road Trip to Tsisikamma

 

The road trip was so much fun. We stayed in a hostel which is like a dorm. Its a room with lots of beds and you could sleep there with anyone else who is staying there that night. Whether you know them or not. And you all share a bathroom. But fortunately we didn't have any strangers join us. We stayed at a place called Tube n Axe. It was a very cute set up.We had a night around a camp fire and all. We stayed in Tsisikamma for two nights just exploring around, anything but being back in Annie's Cove.

Tube n Axe Cabin

Lexi,Neelu,Aleschia....forever travel buddies.lol

Bungee Jumping

 Bungee jumping was the most liberating experience of my life. I can't even start to describe the feeling and be able to do it justice. The is the highest bungee jump in the world! Even now I can't believe I actually did it. I didn't stop smiling that entire day. It makes you feel limitless and that's a very very exciting feeling. I have never been one to exercise a spirit of fear...I'm sure my mom doesn't find that to be a good thing. But fear can hold you back from way too much in life...you have to be fearless to actually live!

5,4,3,2,1 BUNGEE



This is when I started to regret jumping.

hunting..and climbing mountains.

We were in the desert!  A real cactus.

Besbok we hunted for...one of the guys actually shot it.

Lord Jesus I climbed this thing!

Saturday with the Afrikaners

holding up the net to catch the bushbok as they rammed into us

wrestling the animal we caught with the net

loading the rifle getting ready to shoot.

I was number eight! And this was very far away.

Weekend with Afrikaners-Friday!

So Friday we started off for the mountains to live a weekend with the Afrikaans! For all of you that don’t know Afrikaners are an Afrikaans-speaking ethnic group in Southern Africa. They are mainly of Dutch descent augmented with French and German ancestry, and their native tongue is Afrikaans, a Germanic language which derives from Dutch. Nevertheless we went to a frontier farm about 2 hours outside of Port Elizabeth. This area was surrounded by the Winterburg mountains.  It was beautiful and a great experience…just the for weekend.

I caught this sheep!

We castrated male sheep...and then ate them.(please no judging)

Feeding some kind of wild animal...sorry they are start to sound the same.

We had to drink straight from the utter...yea I dont have good aim.

That face is me afraid the one in front was going to kick me in the face.

Feelings of HOMESICKNESS

I thought that maybe this feeling would never come seeing how I did not experience this at the beginning of my journey here. However it is now, now that I am almost 75% completed with it that I am feeling the desire to just be at home more than ever. My God how I long to just be at home, I don’t care if that means being cramped in a room with my little sister. I don’t care if that means I wont have my own “SPACE”. I’m telling you that is the least of my worries from now on. It almost seems petty that I even dwelled on that for so long. I mean being here has given me a new perspective on it all and I no longer have to have things my way to be happy. I will be happy just be know that I have atleast one reason to be. That’s beautiful right? Happiness because you can name at least one thing to be happy about. That’s what it is all about right? Who says that you deserve to be allocated a certain amount of happiness before you can indeed express it? That’s complete crap. God didn’t promise us that we would get what we thought we deserved..or even get ANYTHING but eternal life right? Besided happiness is relative. I see that now. What I thought didn’t affect me at all ,now would give me immense happiness just to think about it. hmmm missing home but staying positive bc I cant wait to feel that happiness!


-This is an old blog that just now decided to load. Im behind a few days.

You won't believe this. Sex and Aids.

Warning:This may not be child appropriate.

I was class and the students started to discuss aids and sex because we were discussing health psychology.
This is what stuck out to me:

• Condoms give you maggets
• If you have sex once with a condom it will push the aids away
• Its ok to put a condom on before you leave home for the day
• Sex with a virgin cures aids. (which is the cause of many rapes)
• Condoms are deliberatly infected by foreigners
• Only drug users and homesexuals get aids.

This really really concerned me so these are some interesting facts.

• The World Health Organization claims that 10 million HIV- positive Africans are responsible for 300,000 cases of AIDS reported since 1981.
•  Rwanda, Uganda, Zaire and Kenya -- the so-called “AIDS belt”
• HIV tests are notoriously unreliable in Africa. A 1994 study in the Journal of Infectious Diseases concluded that HIV tests were useless in central Africa, where the microbes responsible for tuberculosis, malaria and leprosy were so prevalent that they registered over 70 percent false positive results.

EDUCATION EDUCATION EDUCATION!!

Highlight of the RED LOCATION

Steve Biko's mission.

An innocent child shot during apartheid.

Stephen Biko and a depiction of his death.

Nelson Mandela's Day Planer