Back in Cape Town!

Happy to be back safe and sound in Cape Town!

Way too much to write about from my spring break adventures so please please bear with me and I will try my best to write some posts recapping the trip asap!

Here are some pics to hold you over in the meantime!!

Highest Bungee Jumping bridge in the world! I didn't jump but I walked on it!

The beautiful Western Cape! Saw views like this while we drove 8 hours a day!

Coffee Bay-my FAVORITE stop of the whole trip! SO beautiful.

YES, that is a leopard. Rarest of the Big Five to see and we saw two...WIN!

And a giraffe!

Stories to follow! 

Apologies for the long hiatus!!!

I'm really sorry to those of you who try to check/read my blog regularly! As much as I want and have been meaning to blog, I have been so busy and last week was such a stressful week that I really didnt wan't to retell of relive it!

Here are some updates/highlights:

I will be landing in the U.S. three months from yesterday, which is as exciting as it is devastatingly sad and scary! I am so torn between missing home and everyone there and feeling the need to stay here forever. I'm not sure that I could, but I also don't know how in the world I am going to leave these children.

I can now say that someone has written a song about me...a rap song that is. It is appropriately titled "White Chick", with my name in one of the verses and lyrics that allegedly say "She do things that nobody do". I have yet to hear the song, however, I hope to sometime soon and I hope to make it available to all of you. How and why did this happen you ask? Well, I met and talked to a young man when I was visiting the township Lotus Park (which I think I blogged about previously) and apparently he fell in love with me and wrote a song about it. So there's that.

Tomorrow morning at 5am I leave the Kimberley House and Cape Town to head off on our spring break adventure! 16 of us are headed up the Garden Route and will be traveling in a van for the next 10 days to Coffee Bay, Durban, Kruger Park and Johannesburg, which is where we will fly back from on March 25th! I am super excited/nervous for the trip, staying in hostels and such and pretty much living in a van for 10 days, but I can't wait to explore parts of the country that I have never seen and I am beyond excited for my second safari experience! I will be sure to post pictures and update my blog as soon as I return. I haven't had much exciting stuff going on lately, South African living, however awesome, has become my lifestyle now, and therefore way less fun to blog about. But after this trip I can only expect I will have much to say and share!

Hermanus – Volmoed - Reconciliation

This weekend was about reconciliation. The past three days were spent in Volmoed, a beautiful retreat center in Hermanus where I stayed in an adorable little cottage. We met and spoke with John De Gruchy, author of Reconciliation: Restoring Justice, a book which everyone on our program read. The book is about the role of Reconciliation and religion in the TRC (Truth and Reconciliation Commission) in South Africa. The TRC took place after the apartheid to deal with the injustices of the apartheid era and allow all ethnic groups to reconcile with one another and with the country’s past in order to progress into it’s future. It was lead by Desmond Tutu in his philosophy that there can be “No future without forgiveness”. However, that was not the only type of reconciliation that I experienced and explored this weekend. In addition to understanding a bit better the reconciliation of groups and individuals in South Africa, I also did a bit of self-exploration and reconciling with myself. So often I am easily caught up in worrying about the future, always wanting and needing to have a plan, to have everything figured out. The more time I am here, spending time in beautiful natural places like Volmoed, I begin to reconcile a little bit more with that which is unknown.  I begin to realize that all I really need to know is that I am here, living out my dream and doing what I love and that all I need to be concerned with is continuing to live in this moment, in the here and now. Unfortunately it is so much easier said that done and I must constantly fight the urge to always anticipate what is next and to know the ending and control the outcome, but I am making steady progress.

In the meantime I am learning more about South Africa and the TRC, which I find to be the most fascinating aspect of South African history, and I am enjoying hikes and waterfalls and baboon sightings (okay not always-but we did this weekend at least!) Now that we are back in the K house in Obz I am about to embark on my busiest week yet in terms of class work! I have to say I have been quite lucky to not have had too much thus far, but not it seems that it has all come at once! So while I have three papers and two exams this week, I am trying not to stress and to still just be here, now, enjoying this. After all, I am only receiving pass-fail credits this semester and which one of my aunts was it that said “When in Africa-get C’s”? I think I’ll take that advice! I can’t believe I am saying this, but there are more important things!