Greetings from South Africa!

Hello from South Africa!!

I arrived at 10pm on Wednesday, Feb 14th (2pm Iowa time!) after flying for about 24 hours, 36 hours with the time change! I had only short layovers in Detroit and Amsterdam. My luggage, however, did not arrive. Apparently the plane was too full coming from Amsterdam so they had to leave some for the next flight, so about 12 of us did not get our luggage. I finally received it Friday morning and it made me soooo happy! I immediately opened them and changed clothes! It was so comforting to get all my stuff!! =:)

It is so beautiful here! The first morning when I woke up I looked out the window and the volunteer house is only a block from the ocean!! We are in a suburb of Cape Town called Bloubergstrand and has awesome views looking back at Cape Town and Table Mountain. If you get on the internet and see pictures that look like they are taken from a boat looking at the city and Table Mountain, they are not, they are taken from Bloubergstrand and thats the exact view we have from our living room window!!

Yesterday Denzel, the International Volunteer Program Manager, took me and Sarah and Jen (from Canada) on a short tour of some of Cape Town's sights. We drove through a little bit of a township, it was pretty sad the conditions they live in. Denzel said crime is very high there so we didn't stay long, but he wanted us to see how many of the children we serve live. We then went up Signal Hill and snapped some pics. Then went to downtown Cape Town and took in a couple of markets with hundreds of people selling all kinds of hand-made goods; African masks, beautiful wooden carvings, paintings, gorgeous stuff! We were just looking this time, but I can't wait to go back and buy some items, though I don't know how to decide what to buy, it was all so beautiful! We had a fish and chips gatsby at a fast food place downtown. A gatsby is basically like a hoagie sandwich, but they put the chips (fries) right on the sandwich. It was very good! We also checked out a library, the train station and a taxi rank, where the taxis (vans) are lined up by areas of town they will take you to.

Last night we went to a rugby match, my first! The match was between the Cape Town team of the Vodacom Stormers vs. the Chiefs (Denzel wasn't sure where they were from, "up country" in South Africa was all he knew). It was pretty fun, though I didn't understand some of what was going on. Denzel and Johnny tried to explain some of it, but I think it will take watching it many more times to get a better grasp of it.

The team I'm working and living with is great! There are 7 other women and 1 man; Denzel also stays at the guest house during the week, so there are 10 of us in the 5 bedroom house! Here is the breakdown:
Sarah, Jodi and Jen from Canada
Tina and Hanna from Germany
Kate and Johnny from England
Sarah from the US (Indiana)

They are all short term volunteers, with terms varying from 3 months to a year. Most of them will be leaving in the next few months. I think by July only Johnny will remain, but I believe there are others scheduled to arrive in the meantime. They are all either on break from college or just finished, so sometimes I feel rather old, but they are a lot of fun! I'll try to get some pics posted that I've taken already so you have some visuals of what I'm writing about....hope all is well with everyone back in the States....I don't miss the snow!!

Later, Bobbi