Today was the longest day ever. Or at least the longest day of service sites. By far.
Last night, 8 of the guys went out to eat at Mug & Bean. It was a delicious dinner, and seeing as I had 2 enchiladas before my glorious (and cheap) dagwood burger, I haven’t been that full these last two months. Topped that off with an ice cream cone (with real ice cream, not froyo!) and made it the best food-related evening up to date in South Africa. And it was great to just get to the mall and hang out with the guys for an evening again. We met a guy named Josh who worked at a Christian bookstore who knew we were American and guessed we were with APU. He was fun, and it was nice to talk to him for a little bit. After that meal, I was exhausted so I came back to read and sleep by 10.
I woke up at 2:15 in the morning to register for classes, because they didn’t take into account my time difference. Fortunately, I got all the classes I wanted to register for, so I tried to fall back to sleep. It took about an hour, but I was out and woke up at 7 for breakfast like I do every day.
After breakfast (which they had the wonderful salsa I love so much with my egg and sausage sandwich I make – this sounds much better than it tastes), we headed to work sites, loaded up some rocks in the truck and headed down to the house. Our goal for the day was to place the rocks in the wall of the house (which consists of an outer and inner layer of mesh fence the cement blocks fit inside), in between the branches that are holding the wire in place. There will be pictures soon enough so you can see how far we’ve come, but for now you’ll have to make believe.
So that was the goal for the day; unfortunately, it is very time consuming while allowing very few people to actually work on it. So I didn’t work on the house once. In the morning, we only had about 12 of our 20 people, so most of us worked on the house. Being one of the others, I leveled the garden area again, filled tires with dirt (they had been filled quickly before, so I made them more stable to stand on for the porch), cleared out the dead grass from the garden, and fixed the gate. The gate was my pet project, and I spent plenty of time on that (before it was permanently open, so it wouldn’t keep goats out of her garden. Now it will.) before I finally finished. We went to lunch in between, and right after lunch I had a delicious fried Zulu bread meal that was so damn good! We had different plans for the day than normal, 10 of us returned to work on the house. This is the time I used to finish the gate and spend some time just sitting around enjoying the afternoon Haniville environment. We finished all of our work by around 4:30, so we headed up to a dinner that some of the other students and the go-gos had cooked together!
We enjoyed the dinner with the go-gos, the senior youth, and each other. The sticky rice, grits, chicken, and Zulu bread were all remarkable. The ox guts were not in the least bit delicious. I mean, the taste wasn’t too bad. It was very salty, but not bad. The smell was terrible, and the texture made me want to throw up. The stomach was interesting, but the intestine part tasted like pure fat. It’s still not sitting too well with me, 2 hours later. It tasted what I imagine calamari tastes like, but I don’t remember what it tastes like so I’m not sure. The go-gos left right after dinner, and we just hung out with the senior youth for some time. We danced and sang and played games. I taught some of them the Macarena and they taught me another dance that has no name but involves quite a bit of kicking. I’ll probably forget it by the time I return to America, but for now, I know it! We left after the games and returned to AE over 11 hours after we left, for the most exhausting service site day so far.
Tonight will probably be a movie and poker, and tomorrow we get to sleep in! I’ll probably be sleeping until 8, which will be a welcomed break and rest. Tomorrow morning will be paintballing until around 2, then afternoon fun and games including a giant slip-n-slide and soccer. The evening will be night games, and Sunday will be church in the morning, followed by a nice lake day for lunch. We’ll leave around 5:30 and go to a church where Reg is speaking about the problem of evil and what it means, and after that we’ll be back at AE for dinner and for bed before a final 4 day push to finish the house. Should be a busy, yet also relaxing, weekend.
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