Hoe gaan dit?

Goeie aand,

Hoe gaan dit met julle? Hier gaan alles baie goed. Verstaan julle myn Afrikaans? Ek is baie jammer dat myn Afrikaans so slegt is.Ek kan dit nog nie praat nie. Daarom sal ek in Engels praat.


That was a bit of Afrikaans and I am 100% sure that whoever speaks Dutch understood that! ;)


So, Aloha and welcome back!
It’s Sunday eve and I have had such a nice weekend! Hope this goes for u too of course…

Once again… It’s hard to recollect all my thoughts on the things that happened since the last time I blogged as I am experiencing a million things and every thing is new to me here! I have been here for 3 weeks only and on the one hand it feels as if I have been here for such a long time but on the other hand I feel as though time just flies here!

Not much happened at school because we only went there like 3 times this week as I was ill… Had to see the doctor and she prescribed like 4 different drugs… antibiotics to kill the virus, pills because I felt nauseous, pills for cramps and pills that would prevent me from having to go to the loo 10 times an hour! Quite a lot of pills if u ask me… I had to take the antibiotics only once a day but it was 5 pills at once, one after another which was pretty hard to do but apparently it worked because I feel fine now and I hope it’ll stay that way!

Last weekend we sold hugs in Greyton for charity and it was quite a lot of fun… it was to collect money for an old lady in a wheelchair called “Aunty Dory”.

Here’s what you need to know about Greyton: It is only five minutes away from Genadendal but it is the complete opposite of this place! It’s luxurious and most of the people who live there are white. For the record, when I say white, black or colored, I am not trying to be racist. It’s just the terms they use here. Genadendal for example is a “colored village” the original inhabitants were black but they mixed with whites (lotsa Dutch) so most people are colored. Anyway, as I was saying, lotsa white people in Greyton… Most of them are rich folks from Great Britain who stay here for only 6 months a year and as you can imagine, it is during the cold n wet seasons when they come here to sunny SA to spend some quality time. Greyton is also where we get our groceries (I even managed to find black bean sauce and oyster sauce there!!), where we hang out (we made friends with people who own properties with pools ;)) and go out for dinner since there is only one restaurant in Genadendal and you always need to book beforehand. So we spend a great deal of our time in Greyton…

After we sold hugs, we drove straight to Cape Town….. There we checked in at our hostel, went for a bite to eat, walked around, hung out at the hostel and went clubbing which was quite fun. Really looking forward to going out again but I also looking forward to really exploring Cape Town too since we got there pretty late last time! On Sunday we were all tired and some of us were slightly hung over so we decided it wasn’t a good idea to wander around down town and went to Gordon’s Bay instead, which was on the way home…. Such a lovely beach.. Enjoyed it hehe….So that was last weekend…

This weekend was very nice too… On Friday Margriet and I hosted a dinner for 13 people. It was pretty nice… Every week another group or pair of students have to host a dinner and cook something different. Last week we had South African food and this week we went for Chinese (shocker eh?).

On Saturday Margriet and I decided that we were going to do nothing but being lazy! It was time to get ourselves pampered for a bit and we went to the Caledon Spa. We went to the hot springs there, which was a bit too much for us as these were outdoor baths. The temperature went up to 44 degrees and the weather outside was 33 degrees! It was way too hot so we decided to hang out and wait until we could get our beauty treatments :). After that we had Italian food… it was just a lovely day of doing absolutely nothing but relaxing and it was all good until we decided to drive back…

We were on the highway and all of the sudden the car was making a ticking sound… After that, there was a weird smell… and then as we tried driving uphill I was stepping on the gas pedal as hard as I could but the car broke down : (. I tried to restart the car… but no luck! So, there we were, two girls standing in the middle of nowhere… We called the mechanic and he said he was going the be there in 2 hrs… -_-‘. Not to worry, Margriet and I laughed it off and did some funky dances on the side of the road while waiting as the radio was still working… Luckily a group of our fellow students were on their way back from the mall and were close by. They tried to start the car again but it still didn’t work so we decided to let the car roll back a little so it would be further away from the road, just to be safe and as she was doing that, she got the car to start again… during that trip the car was still making weird noises, broke down two more times but we got home, so that’s good! We called the mechanic again, complained about the car and asked for a new one but he told us we’d have to wait until Monday which means we are still carless and we will have to walk to work tomorrow…. It’s only about 15 to 20 minutes away but try doing that up and downhill, with 200 dogs around you, on gravel road and in the burning sun…. Not a nice combo -_-‘ damn I realize I must sound spoiled now… Oops! Oh well... enough about the car, or should I say, not having one!


Today we went on a field trip! Shaun a teacher at Emil Weder High school arranged that we could go along on a Safari Game Drive at the Fairy Glen with them and another group of pupils who came here from the Netherlands. The Fairy Glen is not like Paul Kruger with wild animals, these animals live in a farm.
We literally climbed into a HUGE 4x4 and we drove around in the park for like 2 hours. It was pretty cool, we almost saw all of “the Big 5”, the leopard was nowhere to be found (not sure if they keep leopards there anyhow) but the Ranger told us a heart breaking story about the two rhinos there, one male, one female.

I am sure you are aware of the fact that I am not some tree hugging animal lover but I do want to share this horrifying story with you… It is about Rhino poaching, we all know animals are being poached but to see these animals who survived without their horns…. It’s just so terrible.

So, obviously, we all know that rhinos have huge horns and unfortunately we also know that there are people out there who are after those horns since they are worth a lot of money. One morning the rangers found the rhinos lying on the ground with their horns hacked off… the rhinos were darted. The poachers used a drug called M99, which only paralyzes an animal completely…. They don’t shoot to make sure people won’t hear them. The female rhino was actually pregnant at the time and lost the baby because of an overdose of the drug that was used… Those horrible poachers used machetes to remove the horns and even damaged their nose bones in the process… Note that the drug only paralyzes so it means that the rhinos were able to see what happened to them! As if that wasn’t bad enough, the rhinos were lying on the ground with their eyes open for a few hours and unable to even to close their eyes and because of the bright sunshine, one of them lost complete sight and the other one lost vision in one eye (she was laying on her side). Last year 448 horns were taken from rhinos and the two rhinos in that park were the only 2 that survived. Isn’t that horrible? This happens because people believe that the horns have medicinal effects or because they want to make ornaments, cups and other stupid items of it. Nice huh? Okay that’s all I wanted to say about the rhinos…

Sorry if my stories depress you by the way. -_-“. What you really do need to know is that I am having an awesome time in SA. All the girls and the one guy who are here are so nice and we are all just having a great time. Very thankful for being here!

With that said, I think I am gonna call it a day because tomorrow morning it’s time for L.R. Schmidt : )

As a sneak peek for what my following blog might be about: I can already tell you that we are planning on going to Stellenbosch (vineyards) and Cape Town next weekend!

Sending you my love, a big hug and sunny greetings from the "Rainbow Nation"