Getting to know the Mother land

Hi everyone! Ok, so yesterday we toured the whole city of Johannesburg and! It was a jam packed but very interesting day. We took a coach bus and had a South African Tour Guide give us very detailed information about her country. I had no idea how developed some parts may be and in other places, it is very undeveloped Soweto : / ... In some cases on the same street, we saw nice townhouse and subsidies and just a few hundred feet down people were living in shacks and in the dirt. Something that stood out to me though was that these people are not ashamed about what they have or don't have. When we passed by the shacks, their were children dancing for us with huge smiles on their faces. They were happy with where they were. At first I was sad just imagining what it would be like to live there, but after they danced and posed for pictures for us to take, it was clear that they had more joy and happiness than maybe the richest of people with the nicest house. This made my heart happy.

I had no idea South Africans would be so friendly and welcoming! They had the biggest smiles and always were waving at us. They made me want to be that welcoming to strangers/tourists in my own country. We ate at a restaurand (our tourguide's family restaurant) which was in the middle of a neighborhood and it was delicious. Because there were 53 of us, we pretty much took up the entire restaurant, and because of the money we spent at their restaurant, it enabled the family to buy books and supplies needed for their kids' education and necessities for the family. So both sides benefited. : ) After lunch a bunch of us went to play with the kids waiting outside the restaurant for us. They were so friendly and ended up dancing for all of us!

We went to the Apartheid museum as well, which was very interesting. It was a huge museum. By this time of day the jet lag was starting to set in (because we were supposed to be asleep with the rest of the U.S. at this time) so we headed back to the hotel to rest. We woke up early the next morning to catch a flight to Durban to start our academics in Pietermaritzburg!

We arrived at African Enterprise, or in other words, our campus in Pietermaritzburg! I had no idea the campus was going to be as beautiful as it is! Oh my gosh, I kid you not when I say that there is a waterfall outside our windows! There is tons of green everywhere and rivers. I have yet to discover and venture out to all the surroundings!! It is VERY HOT! Oh my goodness, we all were pretty much showering ourselves in sweat. Yes, very disgusting... haha. Good thing there is a watering hole for us to cool off in!! Yes, I said watering hole... like the LION KING! We have a huge place to swim to cool off! Ok, so in these next few journal entries I hear this is the "honeymoon" stage of it all. That means every little thing is going to be amazing to me... haha so just go with me k?

There are monkey's here! But they are kinda vicious.. and they tell us to not to feed them and to always lock our doors! If we corner them, they will poop! So that is not a good route to take! They have bb guns to shoot them! I thought that was pretty cool. Alright well I'm heading to bed cause we all are still exhausted... Classes start tomorrow so I am very anxious to see what they are like!

Tomorrow in the morning, a few of us are going on a run to the game reserve in hopes of seeing a zebra : ) Hopefully we'll see one! Goodnight!!