I'm not getting better at this

Life has been busy, and I haven't been blogging. I'm sorry, I owe you one. So much has happened!
I don't recall plenty from last week, just because it was so long ago. What I do recall is Thursday we went on a field trip to a wetland and a mangrove sanctuary. The tide was down, so we got to walk through the sand bank that was covered with an inch or two of water. It was pretty great, and we made a plan to have a soccer game there at some point.
Saturday was a ridiculous thing. It was a long day that started out with uShaka Marine World. It's a solid sized waterpark. I would compare it to Waterworld, except without the lifeguards. There were lifeguards, but they really didn't care what you did. For example, one conversation:

Me: Are you allowed to go down headfirst?
Lifeguard: You go so fast if you do!
Me: Sweet! So we can?
Lifeguard: No, you're not allowed to.
Me: Damn.
Lifeguard: But if you do, I won't tell anyone. And there's no one at the bottom watching. So no one would know.

Musa and Me

And that's essentially the way it went. So much fun! Pretty much no rules. There was one ride that was a giant slide, and a raft of up to 8 people would go down the slide and it would be great. There were 12 guys in the group, and a girl tagged along as well, so we decided to get a little creative. They wouldn't let us all go on a raft, so we decided to bend the rules. First raft: 6 guys. Second raft: other 7 people. The first raft got off halfway through the slide and tried to stay in place. They then jumped on the second raft as it came down. The first raft popped out at the bottom with no one on it. The second had 13. It was great.
After that little excursion was lunch, and 2 hours on the beach. I had a nice little mudfight with Musa, and the water was so warm! Like, the warmest ocean water I have ever been in by far. Thank the Lord for the Agulhas!

This wonderful afternoon was capped off with Rugby. Have you ever been to a rugby game? I hadn't. So, to make an event of the first one, most of the guys decided we would really show our support for the Sharks. They're really good, they won the Currie Cup last year, so we had reason to cheer.

The Sharks won 24-9 over the Free State Cheetahs. I got on the jumbotron on a nationally televised game, and started the "Mexican Wave" in a crowd that was very unmotivated (1. I would think if I loved a team and went to a rugby game, I would be going crazy. 2. Mexican Wave? I'm pretty sure that's from the US guys.). It was an all-around enlightening experience. That day was so ridiculous, and probably the most fun I've had since I've been here. I only lost my voice a little bit, and it only took a week to get the paint off my chest! So much fun. And I must go now, because I am going on a canopy tour of a forest by zip lining. I'll be sure to let you know how it goes, and fill you in on this last week soon enough.
Happy Birthday Dad!

It's been a week

I must apologize. Things were hectic all week last week with a massive workload, and this weekend was constant busyness. Fortunately for me, I got all my work done and in on time, and made it through the weekend without missing out on anything. Things here should slow down a little for the week, which is great and will finally give me a chance to focus on the people here for a little bit.
Last week was filled with work. I spent most of my time working on an exegesis of John 15, where Jesus claims to be the vine. I honestly have never spent that much effort working on a paper, and I feel like it turned out great. I also got a solid grade on it. I'm pretty proud of that paper, and it's the first time in recent history that I spent a couple of hours in preparation before I wrote one word of the paper.
Nothing too significant happened last week. All my free time was spent in the dining hall working on one of my papers, which meant I had a lot of community time with some of the other people from my classes.
For Biology on Friday, we went and investigated some areas that have streams running through them, and measured the effect people have on the environment. After that, we went for a fun walk in a nature reserve nearby and saw giraffes. They were pretty cool, and the looked very goofy, and ran in what looked like was slow motion. I wasn't as impressed as everyone else though.
I'm learning something about myself on this trip. I've always admired nature and loved to be in it to a degree. But I'm realizing I don't appreciate it as much as some other people do. Not that I don't love it - I value every moment I get to spend in the wilderness out here, and am taken aback by every breathtaking view I witness. I see God in all these things, and the cool animals I have never seen in person so close before. But when I look at some other people I know, who can go out and climb rocks for 5 days straight and admire the awesome views, that's just not me. I get my rush and my closeness to God from interacting with other people. This makes me so confident and reassured of "my" career choice. I'm pumped to someday, for a living, get to interact with people. It's definitely more of my field of knowledge.
This Saturday, we went on a hike through the Drakensberg mountains. If that doesn't sound manly enough for you, Drakensberg is Afrikaans for "Dragon's Back." So we went to the Dragon's Back mountains to see paintings from bushmen tribes and that stuff, which was alright. The great stuff was the 45 minute hike back through a "half-Braveheart, half-Lord of the Rings" world. There's a rumor going around that they did set modeling for LOTR less than 50 miles from where we were at, and if this is true, it definitely showed. It was gorgeous. The other awesome part was the fact that many of us took the opportunity to spend about an hour wading in a stream that was pretty fun. Some of us fell in when no one was looking, but pretended that they were just planning on getting wet the whole time so no one could tell (that was me). It was a three hour drive each way, so that was most of the day. The evening was spent with 7 of the 11 guys watching The Patriot from a Heath Ledger variety pack on a projector screen, and one of the first times that I really got away from girls on this trip. I didn't realize how overwhelmed I was by the estrogen, but I'm definitely planning on more "guys only" events in the future, so I don't get as irritated with the girls when I do spend time with them.
Speaking of girls, and keeping in mind that I was very irritated with a large quantity of the girls on this trip, I am very pleased with the girls that are here. Part of it is spending more time with the girls I like, part of it is spending less time with the girls I find annoying, and part of it is realizing that no matter what, 99% of the people will be irritating at one point on this trip (including the girls). It may have been the man night, or the acceptance of stupid things most people will say, or understanding the closeness of living situations will bring more conflict, but I definitely have felt closer to a lot of the people here lately.
Sunday was great. Church in the morning was great as always, and lunch was fun. After lunch was an event where all 50+ of us played drums together, making awesome beats and sounds and such. After this was a campus-wide game of Capture the Flag, and it was intense and great. After that was dinner, which was a nice, dress-up dinner followed by a dance party that lasted for two hours. It was great to just be goofy and dance and mess around for a while.
Today (Monday) was great. Despite a 45 minute Bio presentation I had yet to look at this morning, the responsibility of putting my groups slides together, receiving 3 of the group members slides with less than 15 minutes until class, and a miscommunication about who was doing which sections, I finished the project and we presented it without any mistakes. I also got a test back I though I had done incredibly poorly on, but I apparently got an A on it. I'm not complaining.
Tonight, for Valentine's Day, all the guys who didn't have previous engagement decided to have a Valentine's Night guys hang-out time, where we talked about cool things like Biblical friendship, and what real friendship is with God's role in that friendship. By the end of it, the study had become story-telling about ridiculous friends from home. It was great because it was spontaneous and fun, and I asked about 3 questions the whole 45 minutes to spark discussion. Definitely on of the best Valentine's Days ever. No doubt about it.
So that's been the week. This next week should be a relatively light workload, so hopefully I'll be able to finish 1984 finally. It will hopefully be a relaxing week to get ahead on homework and reload for the hectic pre-finals and finals week. With that being said, I'm over halfway through my classes already. I have less than 3 weeks left. This semester is ridiculous!

Just some more pictures...

 Last Saturday at the Birds of Prey exhibit. Dr Reg Codrington is at the top left, the awesome Bible teacher!

All the men of the trip over Pietermaritzburg

I own Pietermaritzburg!

Affectionately titled "Shit Spit 2011", we took dried impala poop and tried to spit it farthest. After Paul (on my left) and I tied the first spit, we also tied the second time, and after a poor spit the third attempt on Paul's part, the wind picked up in my face and he was victorious. 

Pre-Mophane (Mo-Pahn-ee) worm eating faces

Post-Mophane worm eating

Pre-Burial

11 men buried in the South African sand off the Indian Ocean

I was encouraging Baba Philip with his cooking!

Soccer game! After I scored the first goal of the game, of course.

The weekend was beyond belief.

As if Thursday's awesome nature walk wasn't enough, the weekend topped it off nicely. Friday I played soccer, like always, but I hurt my pinky toe and now it's a little swollen because I don't take time to let it heal.
Saturday, we woke up nice and early (I haven't slept past 7:45 yet this semester) and took off to Umzinto. It's a town that's just south of Durban, about an hour and a half away. When we arrived, we visited a hindu temple and spent a little time there. It was really cool and interesting to go inside and get a feel for it, but I definitely got a little weirded out after a couple minutes and was one of the first people to step outside. It was cool to talk to a Hindu priest for a little and hear her story though! After that, we spent a good hour and a half walking around a market that many of the people from the rural areas shopped at. The town was an Indian majority, but there were plenty of Blacks in the area on the streets. Walking around gave me mixed feelings, and I definitely got some different vibes than everyone else.
Some girls are idiots. Actually, a lot of girls are idiots, and there are a couple who aren't very good at listening. Our teacher clearly said the day before the trip that all the girls should make sure to cover their shoulders, because they will draw some weird looks from the locals. I distinctly remember this announcement. But when we got their and they found out they were underdressed, they got pissed at our incredible teacher and have been talking bad about him behind his back to other teachers. I'm pissed about that.
I walked around with Logan most of the time, and it was awesome because we were more like foreigners than tourists. There were definitely tourists in our group: underdressed girls, guys walking around in brand name shirts, people with big cameras snapping pictures constantly, and people just generally unsure of themselves. We looked like we knew what we were doing, we were secure, we didn't have any possessions other than our watches and one plastic water bottle, and we acknowledged people with "how's it" as we walked by. It felt so great! There was definitely some poverty in the area, but they were getting by just fine, to where my feeling towards them was more admiration than pity. It was incredible.
We went to the beach that afternoon, and apart from the digging a hole for 11 guys to be buried in and take pictures before busting out, we also played soccer with a bunch of South African indians from a native youth group. After impressing them with my skills, we ate dinner together at the brai, and then had a sick dance party which consisted of a circle of probably 10 guys doing awkward dance moves, half Indian and half White. Our teacher stepped in and busted some dance moves, which was incredible, and I now have a newfound respect for Clive Lawler.
Sunday morning began with me finding a church. After visiting two that were interesting but not incredibly appealing to me, I went to an all Indian church that can't have more than 150 people at a service. It was great, and the people were so incredibly friendly. The service was two hours long, but it was split up very nicely into different speakers. The main message was one that I needed to hear so incredibly bad about forgiveness. That much was awesome. It was really cool to sit among a group of people that I would classify as so different from me, but share something so intimate with them. I'll be at that church for the next 7 weeks!
After church was the Interchalet soccer game, which didn't turn out quite as planned. There are 2 "chalets" full of guys, 6 in Chalet 7 and 5 in Chalet 8, and we played a soccer game that was supposed to be 6 on 6 (Chalet 8 had Reagan, basically the guys RA). Chalet 7 had two defectors, while Chalet 8 only had one, so Chalet 8 won the first Interchalet matchup. It was great, starting out warm but ending up raining and beautiful.
Sunday night was marked by a meeting for the Chapel productions team, which I seem to have become the leader of. In our deliberations, we planned out the Chapels for the next 3 weeks (We plan one of the two each week), and we organized a nice little communion night on Friday, with time for testimonies thrown in the middle of worship time. We're going to run it very similarly to the Holy Ground events done at La Casa, with everyone kinda doing their own thing to worship, but engaging in worship as a community activity anyways. After the incredibly productive meeting, I finished Fahrenheit 451, which I was almost finished with, and took a nice, 2 hour nap before waking up for Super Bowl Monday.
Mixed reviews for the Super Bowl. The Packers won, which was great because they're not the Steelers. The snacks were below average at best, with the bags only served in small portions, and even the Lays didn't taste all the familiar. The Oreos were gone in the first quarter, and the 15 people that started dwindled to about 10 by halftime, with one sleeping in the room. 8 people made it to the end of the game, and 4 people watched the awards ceremony to see the MVP. At that point, I watched a little of the sunrise and slept for 2 more hours. The game was intense, but it was tempered by the fact that everyone was exhausted, and the only person ecstatically cheering for a team was moderately obnoxious. All in all, it was an awesome experience, and I felt accomplished after staying up through it all.
My consequential weekend came to a close, but after I had to wake up at 7:30 this morning for breakfast (and that was cutting it real close) I had chapel which went better than we planned! I elected to take an invigorating walk instead of taking a nap, and spent an hour in the game reserve talking to God. I started working on a 7 page paper due Wednesday and am already 5 pages through it! I've got plenty of homework coming though. After that paper, I have a 7 page mini term paper for Friday, a page long reflection for Intercultural Communication along with a Biology 45 minute group report for Monday. All the while trying to juggle other events such as leading a D Group, planning Chapel committee things, and the fact that we're going through a semester of schooling in 6 weeks complete with multiple "field trips" each week and me being behind on sleep from the Super Bowl means I may have a difficult coming week. Regardless, I'll get through just fine, and I love it here so much! Hope everything is going well at home! :)

Yesterday was nature walk day in Biology.

It was incredible. We sat in a canyon by a waterfall where a pond was for lunch, then walked along a cliff edge and saw a giant plain and a valley that rose into a mountain. It was just incredible. Unbelievable.

Today was a nice little mall run to pick up chocolate and treats and chips for Super Bowl Monday. Life and Teachings of Jesus in the morning, Soccer after lunch, and just friendship all evening long. Now the Lord of the Rings Finale for the week! What else could you need. Tomorrow is a field trip to Durban where we will be interacting with the local people to get a better feel for the culture here, and spending time at the beach! Which, by the way, Durban has one of the top 5 surf spots in the world, and the Indian Ocean is flowing towards the beach from the equator, meaning warm water. Going to be wonderful.

I'm doing better with the culture shock thing, just needed to spend more time out of my room. I got Oreos and Cadbury chocolate today, so I should be just fine with that food thing. I have two 7 page papers due this week, but it will be easy. Classes here are a joke, despite the fact that they're crunched into 6 weeks. I am excited for work projects in 4 weeks, and I want to know if I'm RA. That's all I got on my mind right now. I'll be speaking at chapel sometime this semester, just not sure when. I'm actually on my way to a chapel production meeting right now! So long friends.

I think it's finally here.

It's been a long time coming, and sort of a drawn out process, and the last thing I ever could have suspected set it off, but I couldn't get away from it. I didn't think it was going to happen to me, as I'm way too... fill in the blank. Cultured, independent, disconnected, emotionless, fantastic, extroverted, introverted, friendly, comfortable, all reasons I wasn't going to feel culture shock. But I'm here and now, it is too.
It's reasonable, of course. Being the type of person that denies things unless I can reasonably justify them, I can't deny this. I'm 10,000 miles away from home. The farthest I've ever been from home for more than a week was 400 miles, and I felt culture shock there until it became a home for me too. But now, surrounded by the same 55 people, I realize how few people really know me. Only one person I hang out with regularly BA (Before Africa). I would always talk to a couple of them, but despite the fact that I "knew" over half the people coming here, I didn't really know more than 5, including at least one who I haven't been so close with for a while. This environment is foreign to me, and while I love playing soccer all the time or hiking, it gets to me after a while. Jet lag is horrible enough of a thing when you get a chance to sleep it off for a couple of days, but when you're thrown into waking up at 6:45 ever single morning, it gets to you. Eating a foreign meal is fun once in a while, but when every time you eat the home cooked lamb it glues you to the toilet, you stop eating that lamb, and I only eat meat at some meals now. The breakfast was fine for the first week, but I finally caught on that it's the same damn thing every day. Every day.
I'm just complaining because I don't get to aloud because I know everyone is dealing with the same thing, and negativity added to negativity never ever equals a positive for anyone. This whole "getting to know you" stage is fun with some people, but with 30 it becomes overwhelming, and I don't really want to get to know some of these people too badly. I'm realizing how badly I crave community, but at the same time, I feel at a loss to approach people and I don't know why. I'm just feeling overwhelmed, all compounded by the fact that I just finished a book series that is magnifying the millions of emotions racing inside me to ridiculous degrees.
I was contemplating not posting this, because I know my parents will be freaking out about this. Mom and Dad, I am fine. This culture shock, this homesickness, is nothing worse than what I was expecting, and I am going to be over it real soon. I just wasn't expecting it, so it's slightly surprising to me.
It was all set off with a Mcflurry the other night, but now all I can think of is American food. Federico's and Alberto's, Outback, Panda Express, Hungry Howie's, Little Caesar's, Subway, and any of the other million of establishments I've become dependent on. It's really humbling actually. I had no idea I was so dependent on anything, let alone food that tastes a certain way. I'm learning a lot about myself, and slowly falling in love with the continent of Africa in the process. "Once you taste the waters of Africa, you will be thirsty until you drink from them once more." That's Reg, our program director, and his favorite slogan. Great man, great slogan. Despite all the little irritations here, I'm falling in love with it more and more every day.