I've been terrible at blogging lately. Oops. And actually I am trying to make this blog have at least 100 posts so I need to shake off this bad habit or not blogging and well, just sit down and write even if it is about nothing in particular. So this morning I decided to fill you in on some RJ happenings that haven't made the blog yet.
1. Two Mondays ago we decided to take off to the Drakensberg (this mountain range in SA). Mondays, as you may know, are our days off and usually we're so exhausted that we generally do nothing. However, since I am trying to use my time wisely here and not do awesome stuff due to lack of motivation, I suggested we go. And it was great. Actually, it was about a two hour car drive there but we picked up Spar's donuts on the way out of the city (our RJ "family tradition") and relaxed in the car as Kyle, the driver, pointed out all the signs that said "Berg" on them. [Berg is his surname]. Even though the drive was long, it was just nice to relax with everyone in the car. Our radio magically works (it hasn't this entire time we've been using the Ballade) but we don't have an antenna, so we sang along to whatever we could get to come through as it faded in and out.
We got to this place called Monks Craw close to noon, paid, and spent the rest of the afternoon hiking. Okay, so I love the idea of hiking. It's really nice. But in reality, I hate it. I am trying to get over this though because it is really a nice idea – you get exercise and you get to see cool places. However, I am super out of shape and although we got to do cool things like see a waterfall and dip our feet in this freezing stream, we were all wiped out at the end. Connie and I actually made "Goodbye parents" videos on my camera because we were so dehydrated that "we didn't think we were going to make it out of there alive." (The videos are really funny and I'll post them as soon as I get back to the States). Overall though, South Africa is beautiful and it was a great "Family forced fun" time for all of us – even if we almost died. Ha.
2. This past Sunday, Kyle, Gabby, Christian, and I caravanned with the LDs (Phil and Christine) to watch the Comrades Marathon – an 89K race that starts in PMB and ends in Durban. 89K!! That roughly translates into 55.5 miles!!! I didn't even know that was humanly possible. A solid time for this race is like 10 hours or so. It takes us an hour to drive from PMB to Durban, going up and down all these rolling hills. Yeah. South African runners are insane. Wow. I am actually not sure why more people don't die during this thing. (I don't think anyone did die this year). I know I wouldn't even make it out of the city – that's for sure. Anyway, we stopped several places along the way to cheer for the LDs friend, which, of course, resulted in us cheering for complete strangers. And although Kyle and Christian did strange things (i.e. cheered for each other or Gabby and myself as if we were running), it was really fun. A lot of the people got excited when they saw this crazy bunch of North Americans/Africans cheering very loudly for them. People's names were written on their number so if they were close enough to us we could cheer for them by name. If not, I tended to look for people with specific things on their shirt – this resulted in us cheering for a lot of Canadians, Americans – including a guy from Wisconsin, Japanese, Australians, the University of KwaZulu Natal, an Athletic club called "Florida" who all had neon pink shirts, "Blood donor guy" who had a giant stuffed "blood donor awareness creature strapped to his back, Hawaiian shirt guy, and people who did strange things with their hair/wore funny hats. And there was even some guy who dressed up like a rhino to "save the rhinos" and run a marathon at the same time. Insanity. And since we were "following Joe" (the LDs friend) we saw a lot of the same people over and over again – so that was really fun.
3. I might have blogged about this before but going to the movies at the mall in PMB on Tuesdays is super cheep. And awhile ago Connie and I realized that it is a complete waste of our time here if we aren't going to the movies every single Tuesday. In fact, we have failed because this whole time we've been here (well prior to this realization) we had only gone like 4 times. What have we been doing? Seriously? Especially since when we first got here movies were only R10 on Tuesday – and even now they are R16 (which is about $2.something), it still is a waste not to go. So we go. This past Tuesday was our forth week in a row of movie watching. So far so good. On Tuesday, we took Yonela with us and Pastor Irvin (who is here for the week from Bloemfontein) tagged along as well. We ended up going to two fairly mediocre movies, but that's fine. It's still fun to go every week, to sit by Constance in order so we can share commentary the entire way through (yep, we're those people), and watch movies. It's great.
Well this is long. But that's what we have been up to lately.
No comments:
Post a Comment