ho hum, my week in Pretoria is coming to an end.
i've had a fabulous time learning more about this country, soaking up the sunshine, playing with adorable little kids, eating South African cuisine, and tons more!
how can i sum it all up...
-lectures at the University of Pretoria
-met some students from the school at my host family's church, who took us out on my birthday
-bowling, shopping, drinking amazing coffee
-discovered that the icecream here is 10x better than in Canada... true story
-bagged shampoos/soaps at an old folks home, where they fed us "fat cakes" for lunch (it's a lot like rollkuchen, for those of you who know what that is... haha)
-visited 2 nursery schools during recess and played with lots and lots of Black underpriveledged children
-visited a soup kitchen type place and played with kids there, also sang a few songs, and they sang for us too!
-went to Pilanesberg National Park, about 2hrs from Pretoria... and saw elephants, giraffes, zebras, impalas, rhinos, wildabeasts, hippos... and random cows!
-discovered what it's like to eat dinner at 8pm, take 2hrs to get through the MOUNTAINS of food we get, then go to bed!
-suntanned, swam, good conversation
-went on the Gospel Train at 6am (there's a Black United Church that hops on the fullest craziest train you've ever seen every morning while the Blacks are commuting to work, and they sing/preach/clap... it's a lot of energy for so early in the day, i tell ya!)
-saw the Voortrekker Monument (can't tell you much about this... should've paid closer attention i guess... but it was big! and beautiful!)
-went to the Pretoria National Botanical Gardens
-visited a retreat center on the outskirts of town where we played baseball with some kids randomly
man oh man... it doesn't end there, but my mind is drawing a blank...
overall it's been an eventful week, and i've already taken 350 pictures! AHH!
we're off to the Black township of Soweto this week where we'll be split up as a group into smaller service projects... should be quite different! we also visit the Apartheid museum.
after Soweto, we're driving the long 19hr stretch in our coach bus (which hopefully has the air conditioning fixed! eek) to Capetown... where we'll be for 2 weeks. hopefully i'll have some internet access there! if not, i'll talk to you all again as soon as possible!
miss you all alot!
GOD BLESS! :)
