Okay, so it was more like lions and tigers and cheetahs - Oh My! You all get the hint though. So last Sunday, Henrie (a contact I have here in South Africa) and his frined Wessel (pronounced Vessel, although we now call him Weasel because it is much more entertaining) picked the girls and I up for a safari adventure. We had a little bit of a late start, so we ended up going to a rhino and lion park near Joburg for the morning. There were many highlights on our little trip to the park, but getting a chance to play with the lion and tiger cubs was definitely the best! I played with the older ones (4-5 months) and the little ones (2-3 months). One of the little ones kept following me each time I walked away from him. My friends would call out to me to be careful and I would turn around and he would be on all fours, crouched down, and then pounce on my leg - it was the most adorable thing I have seen here since Gugu, lol. We made it in time for the cheetah feeding and I snapped some wonderful photos of them chowing down on a carcass of some sort. I have pics of springboks...I could make a list, but just think of every animal you saw in the Lion King, and that's what I saw in real life.
After the safari park, we expected the guys to drive us home as they did their good samaritain duties for the day which is drive foreigners around to get them out of the Village, but they surprised us and took us to a small village in the middle of the mountains. We first went to a little cafe to get some lunch and we sat on the balcony, overlooking a lake which is nestled in the valley of the mountains. The conversation was great as we listened to Wessel tell story after story of his crazy ex girlfriends and Henrie telling us about his erasing girls phone numbers from his phone when they make him mad, but he writes their number down first in a book, just in case, lol.
We then went to an African market and thank goodness I didn't have anymoney with me, otherwise I would have to ship a box home full of crafts and then settled into an outdoor cafe/bar where we listened to a live Afrikaans band for the next five hours. It was such a fantastic day and a much needed one at that. It is so easy to become bitter and forget there is quite a lot of beauty surrounding this place, so thank God for nice locals who didn't mind spoiling us for a day.
We had the scare of a lifetime two nights ago. Everyone was dead asleep and all we hear is Antonia screaming at the top of her lungs and screaming for Roman (the guy who lives with us) and then she yells and points "SNAAAAAKE!!!" I look on the floor and see what looks to be a snake and I am telling her to stop screaming as I am jumping from my bed to the chair to turn on the light and run out of the room. As I do this, it gets very quiet before everyone starts laughing and Antonia realizes the "snake" was a pair of Lisa's pants. I am cracking up as I write this. There was however, a cricket the size of a small mouse (no exaggeration) in our room, so calling for Roman wasn't a complete waste. Good times.
That's the fun news for now. I am headed to a homeless shelter for teen runaways with drug and alcohol addictions tomorrow with the doctor to help counsel some of them, so I am glad my sobriety and knowledge will be of some use here. Hope all is well back home. Miss and love you all.
Ubuntu.
