The Longest Post EVER

I know we’re still pitifully behind in our posting, but this enormously long and Erika like post will catch us up to being only ONE WEEK behind. First of all, one thing I noticed after my first week. We eat supper really late here, so when it finally comes to eat, I’m always STARVING. I like pretty much everything we’ve eaten here. The only complaint is that there is very little food with processed sugar, which is probably good, but, even though I don’t eat that much of that sort of thing, I still miss it. We drink a lot of juice and Sprite, rather than milk, which means I’m prolly gonna get osteoporosis while I’m hereJ They also don’t serve bread with every meal like we do at home, and since I’m a MAJOR bread person, I miss that even more than sugar, though not more than milk.

Next, we never talked about our first Sunday here, so here’s what I had written on that. Scarlett had warned me that church was going to be cold, and she was NOT joking. The church is held in a hall that is part of a much larger Afrikaans church, so think high ceilings, brick walls, and NO heat. I had major goose-bumps. It kind of reminded me of being at home, when the air-conditioning vent blows on Hannah and I, so I suppose it wasn’t so bad. We sat in the second row, where Mr. Miskin welcomed us by name. We even made it into the bulletin. The sermon was on the first part of the Beatitudes. The service was only about an hour long, and they had tea and snacks afterwards. Also, they don’t wear hats, but other than those things, it was very similar to our services at home.

The kids drove separate, so we left before Mr. and Mrs. Miskin did. We started dinner and just hung around until they got home, bringing two guests. Dinner was amazing, ham and mushroom risotto similar to something my Dad makes, among other things. I did still miss rolls and milk, though. After dinner we chatted for awhile, and then took Sunday naps until shortly after five. My nap was amazing. When I woke up, I was starving, so I made a piece of toast (yes, BREAD!), which helped.

Mr. and Mrs. Miskin had been out visiting someone, but they returned around 6:30. There isn’t an evening service here. We had talked about going to an Afrikaans service, but Gordon decreed it to be useless, since John and I couldn’t understand it anyway. Instead, we all sang for awhile, and then listened to a short sermon on tape, and had a discussion about both sermons of the day. This all lasted until about 8:30, by which time I was about to eat off my arm. Mrs. Miskin made us some French toast, and it turned out to be the most amazing French toast I’ve had in ages and ages. I ate two pieces, but probably could have happily had about five. We all pitched in to clean up the kitchen, and then went off to talk and hang out for awhile longer. I got on the internet again, and John and Scarlett played about 50 games of California speed. John literally lost every single one, it was hilarious.

John has already written about the first part of the next week, the week of the 21st, so I’ll start on Thursday of that week, the 24th. Since we had spent so much time out at the mission in the first part of the week, Mrs. Miskin decided that we should do some other things over the next few days. We slept in on Thursday, and worked on our blog posts that, obviously, are just now getting posted. Gordon picked us up around 2 and drove us to the mall in Pretoria. The Menlyn Mall is apparently the biggest mall in the Southern Hemisphere, according to Gordon. It really was eNORmous. There were four floors, each with a center circle of stores, and then four “wings” with even MORE stores. Scarlett and Morgy cracked up at the look on my face when we walked out of Woolworth’s, our first stop, and into the big part of the mall. I’m pretty sure that it would take a WEEK to go through every single store, it was crazy.

Gordon and John separated from the girls and me, declaring our shopping to be boring, and that they would go check out the “guy stores”. Scarlett and Morgan took me to their favorite stores, most of which were similar to ones at home. I got a really cool heart-shaped rock/broken mirror/newspaper print thingie that I suppose one would have to see to understand, since “thingie” probably doesn’t really do it justice. While we were wandering, the guys were looking for black church pants for John, who needs them for his brother Ben’s wedding which is the day after we get back, but were unfortunately unsuccessful. John did, however, manage to find the candy store and bought several KitKats and Nerd Ropes to satisfy his ravenous sweet tooth. I’m not gonna lie, the KitKats were amazing. John also found a sweet brown t-shirt that reminded me of something from the Buckle.

We didn’t shop a whole lot, but instead ended up at a little coffee shop on the top level of the mall. Most of the 4th floor walls were made of glass, and they provided a gorgeous view of the city, with its red roofed residential areas and white sky-scrapers. Gordon even pointed out some University of Pretoria buildings, where he attends college. Gordon and John beat us to the café, but when we arrived, only Gordon was at the table. We kept sending our poor waiter away, telling him we were waiting for one more person. John had apparently gone in search of a bathroom, but after a good ten minutes of waiting, we sent Gordon to find him. In the mean time, about three more waiters came over to try to take our orders. John reappeared a few minutes later, without Gordon. This led to a whole new round of discussion over whether we should go find Gordon, along with at least one more offer to take our order. Gordon finally came back, and we all decided what we wanted to order, but alas, now there was no waiter to be found. You can’t win.

On Friday, we got to sleep in again, and Scarlett made us an amazing breakfast of toast and boiled eggs, except that I don’t like boiled eggs, so I helpfully ate all the toast, and John ate about 10 eggs. Scarlett, who is very motherly, was scandalized at his voracious appetite. We had initially planned to go to university with Gordon, but that ended up not working out…supposedly something about there not being parking, but in reality, I’m pretty sure Gordon just didn’t want to haul the infamous “awkward American tourists” around campus where all the hot chicks would laugh at him. Instead, we went to pick up Morgy at school, because they get out at one on Fridays (LUCKY!! I would have killed to get out early on Fridays in high school.).

We wandered around Queenswood Christian School with Scarlett acting as our tour guide. Their school is really different than our schools at home. Rather than a typical classroom setting, the kids do a more independent study, and then the teachers, who they call Auntie and Uncle, float around helping as needed. It’s quite small, about 120 students K-12. Also, they go to school year around here, with shortish breaks four times a year. Everyone was really nice, and we met several of Morgan and Scarlett’s friends.

We arrived home, ate lunch, and played some SERIOUSLY competitive badminton. When I say play, I mean they played and I cheered from the sides. Anyone who knows me and my athletic prowess knows how typical a scenario this is, lol. I’m an amazing cheerleader, though. The five of us went out for supper to a place called Brewers, where I had an AMAZING bacon cheeseburger. We decided to rent a movie to watch when we got home. Gordon warned us to pick one out before we got to the movie store, but alas, we ignored his sage counsel, assuring him we could easily find one when we got there. This did, of course, result in our spending about an hour wandering around before choosing one. We stayed up late, and it began to occur to me how much I’m going to miss being here.

On Saturday, the five of us went to the Voortrekker monument. The monument commemorates the Boers, who went trekking off northward to escape the British rule in the Cape. The monument has a museum in the basement that I found super interesting, because South Africa was the last country I learned about in my Africa class at Grand Valley, so I had learned a lot about the things I was seeing. A huge winding staircase leads up to the top, which was open and had a beautiful view of Pretoria. It turns out that the Miskin’s fear of heights was not at all exaggerated; they are terrified of them. John and I had a hard time not laughing at the fact that poor Scarlett refused to let go of the wall, and Gordon and Morgy almost had heart failure when John sat on the edge with only air between him and certain death.

We stopped at a gift shop, and I got a bunch of stuff for everyone at home. Apparently I’m a slow shopper, much to the dismay of the other four. Gordon managed to insult the size of some poor woman while they waited, and I tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to use my Spanish to interpret what a family of Spanish tourists was saying. After the monument, we visited a fort nearby that was going to be used to fight off invaders, of an origin which I am unsure, but was never actually needed. We had the place to ourselves, and on the way down, we had our first wildlife sighting, ZEBRAS!! John got a couple schweet pictures of it that maybe someday I’ll post.

On Sunday, we went to church in the morning, and I brought a blanket to ward of the winterish chill. We had the Kuivenhovens, a couple and their little girl, over for Sunday dinner. Mr. Kuivenhoven is doing a pastoral internship here, and they stay out at the farm where we had visited. I took an amazing nap in the afternoon, and was awoken very abruptly by Gordon, who thought it would be a good idea to come and turn off my sound machine, and scaring the crap out of me when I rolled over and saw him looming over me. We went to an Afrikaans church at night, which was quite an experience for John and me. It was really strange not to have a CLUE what was going on, but we survived in the end.

We left for Nakekela at 7:30 on Monday morning. We helped out there by making amazing peanut butter sandwhiches, and washing dishes. The thing about doing dishes at Nakekela is that its very unrewarding, due to the extreme hospitality of the kitchen ladies there. As soon as you walk in the door, they’re handing out tea and coffee. So as not to be rude, we drank it, and by we I mean Scarlett and I, since John doesn’t like coffee. We finished the dishes, and about 10 minutes later, were offered MORE coffee on the dishes we had JUST washed. Luckily, John, Scarlett and I have a very good dishwashing system that enabled us to rewash quickly.

Scarlett and I were then called on to clean the bathrooms. We did so a bit dubiously, with the nice powdery doctor gloves provided for our quest. When we had finished, surprise, it was time for more tea. We meandered out to the garden to get some onions, which Scarlett and I were put in charge of cutting up, along with peeling potatoes. John and Johann, a friend of Gordon and Scarlett’s whose family is living in GR right now while his dad studies to be a minister and who was visiting his brothers here in Pretoria, were assigned to garbage detail. For reasons that they never actually figured out, they were given the lovely job of scooping garbage from one hole to another less than a foot away. They were pretty excited when Scarlett and I called them in for sandwhiches and coffee.

We left the clinic early that day, because Mrs. Miskin had a meeting in Pretoria. Johann came home with us, and we all sat around talking about good ole Plymouth for quite awhile. Mrs. Miskin had booked our tickets to Capetown on Saturday night, and John and I owed her money for them, so she took us to an ATM machine to get the necessary cash. We were planning on going in the Condor, until we started backing out of the garage only to discover a completely flat tire. We switched to another of the Miskin’s vehicles and completed the transaction without incident.

When we got back to the house, Nathan was dropping off Morgy from school. Mrs. Miskin told him of the tire dilemma, and her worry that we wouldn’t be able to fix it. John had informed her that he was very unmechanical, and Gordon was at school, so our options were bleak. Nathan, however, gallantly stepped in and saved the day, changing the tire under Mrs. Miskin’s watchful eye. We rewarded him with a grilled cheese for lunch.

All the excitement had tired me out, so when the kids went to play some badminton, I grabbed a chair and a book and read for quite awhile in the afternoon sun. It felt AMAZING out, and I think I even got a little tan. Gordon came home awhile later, and we talked for quite awhile about life and its mysteries, and then went to Spar, the grocery store, to get stuff for supper. The rest of the evening passed quickly, with John, Scarlett, Morgy and I packing for Capetown.
We were flying out of Pretoria to Capetown at 3:30 on Tuesday, and since we had packed the night before, Scarlett, John and I went out to KwaMhlanga with Mrs. Miskin in the morning. We stopped at the clinic to pick up two careworkers who helped to translate, and then went out with Mrs. Miskin to do several home visits. We met an older couple and their son, who had AIDS. He had been sick for quite some time, and was completely bedridden. He was lying on a mattress in the corner of the cold house, and was so stiff that he couldn’t even lie flat. The family was extremely poor, and was having a hard time caring for the son. Mrs. Miskin talked with them through the care workers, and offered the services of the hospice to help stabilize him a bit. He refused to talk to her about how he was or about coming to Nakekela, and Mrs. Miskin said he seemed a bit confused. She told them all to think about what she had offered, and promised to come back in a few days with someone to at least take him to a clinic to get medicine. We made one or two more stops before heading back into Pretoria to get Morgan from school, grab some lunch, and head to the airport to catch our flight to Cape Town.

Whew, that was a lot. If you’re still reading, you deserve a medal or something. A big one. That catches us up to last week Tuesday night, and I’ll work on a Cape Town post ASAP, I promise.