The Purposed Trek

Things

• Driving on the left side of the road
• Running red lights legally (highly recommended at night to treat it like a stop sign for safety purposes)
• Having someone always pump your gas, clean your windscreen and check your tires and water
• Having people help you look for parking spots and carry your groceries
• Super duper cheap produce
• Cheap movie tickets and theater food
• Amazing filets for less than $10
• Ciao Baby's chicken & avo salad
• South African style Pizza
• The accents and learning the lingo of the country

Places

• Primi restuarants
• Movie theater in Soweto
• Fruit and veg markets
• Having a garage to park my car in
• Rosebank rooftop market
• Ciao Baby

People

• The Franzen Family (they deserve their own post - it will come soon)
• The Hartley Family - I will miss the random game nights, cooking fun meals together, Dan's car and computer advice, using each other as yellowbooks, holding and talking to Miesha, May I, Would You Rather?, Mexian food, finding random missed food products for each other, Survivor Nights, backing out of their driveway when it is raining at night, spending holidays together, movie nights and the list goes on.
• Angela - living 10 minutes from each other in another country, fun weekends together, trying new restaraunts, trying out new recipes, making SA Ice Cream taste good, making pig sounds to annoy craig, hugs, support, friendship, unconditional love, until our next time we can be neighbors.
• Craig - living 10 minutes from each other in another country, trying new restaurants together, picking me up from the airport, movie nights, hanging out at Ange's together, fun IM chats, giving each other advice, friendship and getting to know each other (2nd opporunity taken and cherished).
• Jean - introducing yourself in the squatter camp, including me in activities that allowed me to meet many of your friends, movie nights, coffee talk, Rugby World Cup, teaching me the little Afrikaans I know, Dankie, book reviews, showing me around SA, airport runs, Big Tony, comparing cultures and most of all laughing at our own cultural nuances. Thanks for your amazing friendship.
• Makhotso - including me in your outtings, introducing me to Soweto, taking me to movies in Maponya, a night of 1000 drawings, Survivor Nights, introducing me to many of your friends, hooking IA up with free yoghurt, and most of all for being a friend to me in a new land.
• Thom & Penny - fun movie and dinner nights, dinners at your house, getting stuck in your complex until the huge truck moved out of the driveway, treating me like a daugther, and most importantly being an example of an amazing marriage and showing me that 2 people can like each other after many years of marriage.

I have not fallen off the face of the earth, it has just been very busy and therefore not a lot of time to even think of what to post on a blog. We welcomed a team on the 3rd of July here in SA. The day after arrival was the 4th and we cooked up a very American meal and a rather large bonfire with S'African s'mores. See Michelle's blog for those pics. The team that came in had been in Zambia for a month so after a few days off rest we started things up this past Sunday. We joined up with a church in the squatter camp and we will be there this whole week. On Sunday, 5 little girls at the church decided that while there were no seats left and I sat outside on the stoop that I needed a new do.This new do hurt a bit as each of the girls were pulling in a different direction and one started to braid my hair so small and on top of that she started to dread it and I had to stop her. Thinking I was going to have to cut this one strand out because it was a mess, I asked one of the older (7 or so) girls to help get it out and she did just that. Amazing how watching their Mama's has such influence. Monday - I went around with my camera taking pics of each group of teens while with the Africans. I loved this because I was able to see each of them in action as well as meet a ton of people and was greeted with hugs and babies. I also got to hang out with my friend Jessica for a week as she stopped over on her way to India to teach English to a house of orphans.