The girls’ weekend

I blog about enough "depressing" stuff that I figured it was time for another "good things" blog. This past weekend definitely fits into that category, although saying that makes me feel a little bit guilty since the boys did not have a good weekend at all. BCI has a lot of "encounter camps" which basically everyone who wants to be a part of BCI has to attend. Ever since the disaster that was Kids Encounter Camp, the five of us (well probably only four) of us have been dreading camp with everything we have in us. The boys decided to rip it off like a band-aid and get it over with right away. (The women's encounter camp was the previous weekend, but we females decided that we were not ready for all that wailing and opted to go sometime next year since they have these camps about 2-4 times a year).

This past weekend was the men's encounter camp, meaning that the boys had to stay at the camp for two days (despite the fact that the camp building – or 44 as it is called – is probably only 50 yards away from the manse). Even though we knew the boys, especially Kyle, were not going to be having a good weekend, the girls were still pretty excited about having the manse to ourselves so we could do lots of "girly" things – you know, eating chocolate, talking about Zac Efron, etc.

The official girls' weekend kick off didn't exactly go as planned. Friday night was also the Mission team's love meal that we hold once a month for the foreigners in the church. Since we are included in that bunch (and the fact that I am "on" the missions team), we had to go. By the time it was over, it was already pretty late and since Gabby didn't feel well, Connie and I had to kick off the weekend ourselves by watching old episodes of the office, eating ice cream, and straightening my hair.

On Saturday, we headed uptown to this beautiful café called "The Essence Café." *sigh* It was so lovely and probably the closest thing to an "American coffee house" that we've seen yet. The whole time the three of us were sitting there, drinking our coffees, and eating delightful breakfast, and finally being convinced that Pietermaritzburg wasn't so bad after all. There are actually nice places in this city! We are so excited to go back to this place and try out their lunch menu. (Oh, side note – I drove the car uptown for the first time. I kind of freaked out and almost ran a red "robot" since I was concentrating so hard on shifting. But I survived. I am actually surprised at how smooth my shifting can be. Needless to say, I was proud of myself).

It was a great day thus far, until we locked ourselves out of the manse. Okay, so we seemed to do this at least once every week or so. Usually when this happens we go around to Martine's side of the manse and go through the joining door. Only this time, no one was home and no was at the church to unlock the office that has the spare key in it. Opps. We had been outside enjoying the weather when we came back to the house to find that we were stuck. We actually had to wait an hour before someone showed up at the church and unlocked the keys for us. I guess it could've been a lot worse and in hindsight, it's pretty funny. Actually, it worked out fairly well since we killed time but taking random pictures – so not a bad way to spend the afternoon.

Around 4 o'clock that day, Christine came and picked us up to take us up to Hilton for the night. If you have been following my blog you know how much we love Hilton. Great things always happen when we are there and indeed they did. We spend the rest of the day copying down Christine's fabulous recipes (well Connie and I did), eating tacos, watching High School Musical 3 (yes, don't judge us), and painting our nails black. (Yep, I tried to quit – but they are black once again).

The next day, we all headed to the Midmar Dam, which is this beautiful lake (well dam) that host the "midmar mile" every year. Christine's youngest, Lydia, decided that she wanted to do the 1k race for her age group. So we spend Sunday morning sprawled out on a blanket, enjoying the sunshine and watching the races. We also had a picnic for both breakfast and lunch. It was awesome and so much more restful for my soul than going to church that morning.

Those were pretty much the main events. It was such a good weekend – one that left me with red shoulders and High School Musical songs stuck in my head. Yes, good weekend, indeed.