endings.

my time in south africa has ended... so now i will continue blogging from my regular blog -
http://www.aprilcoffman.blogspot.com

thanks for reading!!

Last days..... good bye lefika!

LOVE LOVE LOVE these ladies!!

aaaaaaaand finally all my reports are typed and the hardcopies can now stay organized and happy in the filing cabinent
Amy, Nick, and me

kylie, me and ruth

Me, ed, and kate

Goodbye lefika!!!!!!!!!!

the cape...day3 (mostly in pictures)

then we drove to Simons town - where you can see penguins!!!!!!!! Then we climbed around on the boulders and chatted or just listened to the ocean. AFterwards we checked under our car for penguins and headed to lunch. After lunch was Table mountain!

so we hiked around for a long while and discussed truth vs happiness.....

we headed back to michaels for a Brie (sp?) ... ( a Barbeque )

The cape... Day 2

Sunday i spent the day with Amy's extended family.

Her aunt took us to a great place near the beach for lunch. The shark flag was out - meaning there had been a shark sighting. but apparently that didn't phase too many people who were floating like appetizers in the water...

The Cape.... DAY one: Stellenbosch...getting lost...then the play.

my pampered weekend began upon arrival to the airport as Michael (Amy's friend we were staying with) sent his personal driver, Howard, to pick me up. Howard tried to show me the sights on the way but being as it was midnight and pitch black outside did not allow him much of a role to play as the tour guide.

Many sentences began "and to the left, if you could see in the dark you would see...." I met michael and amy at the house and then we all crashed. The next day Michael took us on a roadtrip in his convertable BMW and whisked us up the Stellenbosch wine routes where we met several of his friends and had lunch. (our waitor enjoyed changing his accents to which we found out later he had actually lived in texas and had visited tyler, texas.

we were instant friends.)

more touring of the countryside..... and more touring and mooore driving to which about ten minutes past driving past here we realized we were lost... great view to see if you had to be lost though i must say!
A couple petrol stations and slight back tracking later we were on our way and made it back just in the nick of time! Michael had bought us tickets to see Sir Ian Mckellen (aka Gandalf ) play in "waiting for Godot" - He was brilliant.

From wikkipedia....
Waiting for Godot (pronounced /ˈɡɒdoʊ/) is an absurdist play by Samuel Beckett, in which two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait for someone named Godot. Godot's absence, as well as numerous other aspects of the play, have led to many different interpretations since the play's premiere. The play is considered by some critics to be one of the most prominent works of the "Theatre of the Absurd".
All of which led to several evening challenges including the milk challenge and the banana eating contest - good job michael! 2 bananas in 1 minute.

Farm Fun with a Durban Excursion

Friday finally came and i said Sinara! to good ole Joburg! Kate picked me up and we headed off to fetch Ed from work and hit the road. We were just driving along when this odd looking building popped into view so we made a quick exit to check it out.... yup those are emus made out of metal and those are tire chairs not to mention the chickens pecking around while inside it sold jams and jellies, random souvenirs and also had a butchery. The first 200 kilometers were flat and lets just say...borrrring. But don't worry we had Shakira to keep us in the proper south African spirit. And then the landscape started to change... we arrived a little later than amy had anticipated..haha but we made it!! Met amy's mom and dad and made homemade pizza from scratch - bekah you will be proud. We left after dinner to check out the local hangout with AMy's brother and his mates, then came back and crashed. Day 2:

We got up in the morning had coffee and headed off for breakfast at the farmer's market and met Amy's old hockey coach. We got a tour of howick which of course includes Howick Falls. there were some crazy boys trying to rock climb up the rock face....

they maaaaaay be there all day. We continued on to see the area of a thousand hills with little lookout areas here and there... Kate reenacted some bollywood for us haha. Then made a few more stops and kept on until Durban which was about an hour away. Durban....hmmm. Let's say this place is Africa with Indian flare. There is this whooole HUGE indian market with all things indian and i made lots of friends!!

they were mostly from south india which was still fun to chat about.

There was an endless supply of interesting items to see and buy and well try on of course!

Amz - i found our new profile pic...handsdown.

After the market we headed to the beach for our picnic lunch and here's the urban scene from the beach - to the far right is the durban stadium where all the world cup matches were played here..then we challenged some kids to a soccer match - we lost 2 -nil.
THEN we walked about and took pictures and relaxed before heading off to catch a movie. This was also the Durban International Film Festival weekend so we went to see "A woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop" ---- ummm liked it a lot! so funny!
See the Trailer with reviews

after the movie we grabbed dinner - A famous Durban meal - Bunny chow. Its an indian curry inside a bread loaf. you can get chicken or mutton curry and order a quarter/half/or full loaf of bread for it to come in. We headed back to the farm.

In the morning we got a tour of the farm which was breathtaking! We came back and had breakfast then tried out our riding skills....

for the record english saddles are trickier than western saddles. Just sayin. =)
We then went on the Midlands Meander and checked out a lot of fun little shops and then said goodbye to amz and headed off into the sunset back to Joburg.

Tembisa

quick trip to Tembisa, one of the townships outside of joburg, where one of our holiday programmes ran for 4 weeks.....

Needed to document some images from the programme

and chatted with the social worker there. Sweet sweet dear woman with the biggest heart i have ever seen. She must be one of the strongest women ever in order to deal with the issues these kids are forced to face.

that is a lot to carry and hold.

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