The Great Trek

While I thought my name was quite witty (and I assure you it is) you will probably not understand my title (unless you have recently brushed up on your South African history). It's a ZA thing. Anyways, this week was TRAVEL WEEK (aka the most fun week ever). While most people were very sad about leaving PMB, I was ready to leave just because I understood the promise of Cape Town where the smell of the sea and the sound of the crashing waves are just a few yards from our home. The trip down to Cape Town is quite a long one, though, so we split it up into many days. We took the Garden Route which is a beautiful drive along the coast.
The first day was the longest driving day and we drove from PMB to East London.
When we got there, I was greeted by the salt in the air and it reminded me of home. We stayed in a fantastic flat that was literally on the beach. I would love to live in a place like that one day… Anyways, we left the following morning, so we made use of what was left of the night. We took along walk on the beach and even got in a little bit. The tide was really far in, so there was ankle deep water for a long ways. I woke up at 5:30 the next morning because it was a beautiful sunny and warm day and I went to the sea for time with Jesus. Absolutely beautiful. In the morning, we got up and got back on the bus. We drove to Port Elizabeth. It was again raining when we arrived, but that doesn't stop our fun. We got there relatively early, so we walked around, went to lunch, played cards, chatted, went to a lovely dinner at the boardwalk, watched a light show in the fountain, and just enjoyed one another's company.
It is days like this that make good friendships. And good friendships were made :) I love these people so much and it is so much fun to just spend time with them. We woke up early the next morning and headed off to Carmel by the Sea. Before that, though, we stopped for the infamous bungee jumping, where 45/54 people from our group jumped off of the highest commercial bungee bridge in the world. Insane. So fun to watch!
We had the largest group that had ever jumped - by 1! When we got to our destination, we were amazed at the beauty. It was a conference center in the cliffs/mountains that overlooked the sea. It was about a 45 minute walk to the beach from where we were staying. The first night we tried to take that walk, but couldn't find the path, so we star gazed instead. The stars are so beautiful here and the sky so clear!! The next day we woke up to have an adventure day! First we went to Cango caves which are these amazing underground caves that have been explored and built up for tourism.
We did the "adventure" tour in which we went through small spaces! It was very fun. Definitely not as exciting for me as it was for people with claustrophobia, but still fun. We left there to go to a wildlife ranch which was way cooler than I anticipated! It was like the Jungle Cruise meets Indiana Jones meets the San Diego Zoo. They had platforms over all of the animals and we saw lions, tigers, cheetahs, leopards, snakes, crocodiles, hippos, and many more animals. You could pay to pet any of the cats, but I didn't. Cool concept, but I don't feel like I missed out on anything. We came back to Carmel by the Sea and spent the night again. We did make it down to the beach this night and had an absolute ball there. It is a semi-private beach with beautiful sand and waves. The next day we made our final trip to Cape Town where we will stay until we leave to go home.
We are staying at a B&B that is literally 3 blocks from the sea in a quaint town outside Cape Town called Fish Hoek. When we got here, we took a walk on the beach, ate dinner, and went back to the beach for a night worship time. This is my kind of place - going to the beach twice in an afternoon! I am so excited for my time here and can not wait to see what is in store for the next three weeks!

The Final Hooray

The week and a half between safari and when we left Pietermaritzburg was such a weird time. All of the other students were at service sites all day (community service), and the nurses either had no class or just half days sometimes. This lead to a weird mix of no-homework-at-all days and homework-all-day days. In class, we had many different presentations about all sorts of different ethically debatable topics, had to plan and execute a community health project, and were assigned the task of picking and writing our senior seminar papers. While these things were time consuming, our time was not filled with these things and so we found other ways to spend our time. Very fun ways to spend our time. The first thing we did (as nurses) was encourage the other students. We set up a slip-n-slide for them one day when they got home from service sites, set up "service site olympics" (which actually went MUCH better than expected and everyone had so much fun), made welcome home signs for them on their last day of service and cheered them home, and made a final video of different pictures from the trip (as well as an extra bit of "what the nurses really do when everyone is gone all day"). It was so much fun to be able to encourage our brothers and sisters during this time when they were so emotionally involved and try to celebrate their time there.
One thing that continually surprises me about South Africans are their hospitality. I have been so blessed by the way that people are so open to welcoming us into their homes. I went with a group of us to a braai that we had been invited to where we just hung out and watched their beloved rugby and got a sense of what it would be like to be 20 something and living in PMB. We also were invited to the home of one of the doctors that we had worked with. Her and her husband were the sweetest and cutest couple ever and were more than generous to us during our time.
We did many more fun things this week and a half. I went to the airport to pick up the president of APU who blessed us so much by coming to South Africa to spend about a week with us just to hang out. He is loved by all of APU and it was such a treat to have him with us. We were also joined by many other APU faculty and staff who wanted to check out our campus and life in South Africa. It was nice to have a little bit of home so far away. We also filled our time with bonfires, trips to the tattoo parlor (don't worry - I didn't get any tattoos), cliff jumping, sushi and night hikes. Because we all knew that we were leaving so soon, it was like a mad rush to do anything and everything we could so we would not miss out on anything in PMB!
If there is anything that I will remember from this week and a half, it will be how much I bonded with so many people. Out of any of my time here, this week was the time when I built the closes relationships with people. I think it was a mixture of having more time because we weren't in class all day and realizing that I will never be in this same circumstance with these same people and therefore I need to make all I can of my present circumstance. That has hit hard and I think that it has impacted the way that I am living. So many serendipitous encounters and deep conversations that lead to deeper friendships and new bonds. My last few weeks in Pietermaritzburg were fantastic and I am looking forward to Cape Town!!
(I didn't take any pictures this week - sorry!! I was too busy having fun :) There will be some on the next blog, though!!)

Lions, tigers, and bears. Oh my!

This past week was our first week without clinicals. But I didn't like that, so I went to a clinic in a rural area on Thursday and went with the regular students to their service site on Tuesday. This put me behind school-wise, but hey, I'm only in Africa for 3.5 months. And it was totally worth it. I love being able to interact and serve with the people of South Africa! Although class time decreased this week, homework increased.

On Friday we went on Safari. I am not sure that I have the words to write about my experience, but I will try. We went to two combined parks called Hluhluwe-Imfolozi. We were out all day exploring in these cool Indiana Jones looking vehicles. We had awesome guides that knew so much about the animals there - it was like real life National Geographic. I really like facts, so this was idea. We spend Friday afternoon, all day Saturday, and Sunday morning there. We saw impala (like deer), kudu (look like 1/2 deer, 1/2 camel), dung beetle (actually fascinating animals - ask me about them), baboons, warthogs, giraffe, rhino (white and black), buffalo, wildebeests, all types of animals, elephants, and seven lions.
There are animals called "The Big Five" which were originally named this because they were the five most dangerous animals to hunt and they are the elephant, buffalo, black rhino, lion, and leopard. We were very very fortunate to see four out of the five of "The Big Five"! Other than one black rhino and the seven lions (6 lionesses and one lion), the rest of the animals we saw innumerable times. Honestly, though, the trip would have been amazing if there were no animals. Just the experience was worth it. The cars were so cool, the guides were so knowledgable, and the accommodations incredible. We stayed on big tents that were on wood platforms. We slept under mosquito nets and the bathroom was made of bamboo.
Literally, beautiful, beautiful accommodations. We were dropped off and picked up from our tents because there was no barrier between the camp and the reserve, so animals could come and go as they pleased (except for elephants). We would frequently see hyenas and impala near our tents or running around while we were sleeping. We had a braai one night and many hyenas came to see what was cooking (terrifying animals - but I believe we only hate them because of The Lion King). At one point we were five feet away from an elephant bathing in the road. We then got word that there was a lion sighting, but we were far away. Our guide told us to buckle up and then proceeded to RACE to the lions. There was such an anticipation to get to the lions - the excitement was almost too much! And I was already stoked about the elephant that we were just close enough to touch (but we didn't - that would be bad). The lions were cool, but not my fave. My favorite moment of the trip was after we left the lions. Everyone in the car was ecstatic because of the lions, elephant, and everything else we had seen that day. We were driving back around sunset and the sky literally looked like the children's literature books when Jesus resurrected.
It was incredibly beautiful. And as far as the eye could see it was rolling grasslands. We were all praising God for his creation, thanking him, and eagerly anticipating his return. All of this emotion plus the fact that we all got up at 5AM made for an emotional car ride home. It was fantastic, though. I will never forget that moment, this place, or the creativity of God. He is good!