Oh the Things You Can Do

Thursday was the last day of finals and it was a relief to finally be done. Thursday night felt like a Friday night because everyone was planning fun things to do. I went with a group to Mugg and Bean to eat dinner/have amazing desert and coffee. After an interesting conversation filled with stories about embarrassing moments involving peeing your pants, adrenaline rushes in sports competitions and giving each other details about our lives before South Africa, Leslie and I decided we're related. We're not really related, but we know the same places in San Francisco because she used to live there too, we know people from each others' churches, and I really look like her cousin. It's amazing how I can meet someone on the other side of the world that went to high school 20 minutes down from my house a couple of years ago. After coming back home, we had a huge tournament of the card game called Nerds. It's a really intense and confusing game if you don't know what you're doing, but it's really fun to have two tables going at once and to keep track of points. People were sweating, throwing cards across the table, and Kohei was screaming in what I thought was Japanese, but later found out was just gibberish.

Friday morning we got on a really fancy and comfortable bus that even had a fridge in the back and we drove to a battlefield memorial. The bus driver mentioned that he was fully booked for the World Cup because his job is going to be to drive the Brazilian team to different stadiums! After that, it felt like we were sitting and sleeping on holy ground, well not really, but it was super cool and we took pictures on the same seats that the Brazilian team will sit on.

We drove to different battlefield tours that were sort of interesting, but they really just made me fell sad about how humans are constantly looking for ways to kill themselves and how we constantly let ourselves be driven by greed to the point where we almost lose our humanity and take the lives of someones' brother, father, or son. It was helpful in that I was able to see how respectful the African culture is because they honor both sides of the battle, even though the enemies were trying to steal their land. It was also cool to see how smart the tribes were and how well they knew the land and planned out tactics using natural facts that the foreigners would never know about.

Friday night we stayed in a legit hotel that's more than 100 years old. It's been reconstructed so that it looks like a first class hotel, but has also maintained it's antique look. The dinner was delicious and afterward Reg sat in the lounge and told us we could ask him anything we wanted. Most of the 53 of us gathered around him on couches in this cozy little lounge as he answered our questions about the bible, the culture of South Africa, and many other random topics. It felt like grandchildren were sitting around their grandfather listening to words of wisdom and it alleviated a lot of frustrations I had about certain issues.

Saturday was a good day, but not the best. We came back and then just hung out for a bit. We also watched the movie Slumdog Millionare.

Sunday was amazing because I went to God's Life Family Center, which is the church I've been attending lately, and afterward I went with a group of people to the pastor's house for a Braai. A Braai is the Afrikaans word for BBQ and it's the word everyone here uses. We went swimming, played cricket, and had an awesome meal. There were a couple of young people from the church there and we got to know them more. I've noticed that South Africans love meat because there were only 3 side dishes, but there were 4 different kinds of meat that we could choose from. Half of my plate was meat, but it was delicious.

It's Sunday night and we have once again started a Nerds tournament. We also played volleyball earlier and had Sunday Fun Day to start off a tournament that we're going to have among chalets. Each chalet has a name and a color and we're going to have random games to score points and fight for the ultimate prize. It's all in fun competition, but we're encouraging each other to have a lot of chalet spirit and it'll be fun to compete with the people we live in because it's a way to bond more. Overall, it was a good weekend and I'm feeling ready for this new week.