American Tourists Do South Africa

*** the internet is being a beast right now so we are having a hard time loading pics. but we will try to add more tomorro

Holy bajesus. We have been here a month. It feels like way longer than that. So quick update on what’s happened lately:

Our Faculty Liaison from UT (Tammy) came for a week visit (but, unfortunately her flight was cancelled back in the States due to all of the snow…phew, we’re glad it’s summer here!), so her visit was cut short. No matter…we packed in the days with tons of activities! We love Botshabelo, but we’re not going to lie, it felt really good to be a tourist.

First we started off her visit with a trip to the Elephant Sanctuary where we met 4 elephants and learned all about their anatomy, personality, and culture. Then we got to pet them…they were far from soft & fuzzy! The back of their ears did feel like leather, though. But the rest of them were covered in thick, wiry hairs. Ilene even got a big, fat, dirty, elephant kiss on the cheek! MUAH! And we ended off with a hand-in-trunk walk around the area.




Next, we stopped at a cheese factory. Yummy…cheese! Too bad we missed the tour, but we did see the most hideous looking chickens we’ve ever seen. Bare necks and all.

To top off the day, we planned a spur-of-the-moment trip to Sun City for a luxurious overnight stay. Sun City = the Las Vegas of South Africa. All we wanted was a 2 ½ star accommodation, but alas, 4 stars is what we got. Yay for stand-up showers!!! We even played with the idea of showering twice in a 16 hour span, just so we could bask in the glory of the stand-up shower. When you think of Las Vegas, gambling immediately comes to mind, neh? Well, Sun City is just the same. Ayla even gambled for the first time…ostentatiously betting a whapping $3.

4:50 am the next day was wake-up call. And by 6:00 am we were on our first Safari. What a peaceful way to begin the day! The sun was rising, and the animals were just beginning to wake up…and although we were freezing our you-know-what-off, we did get to enjoy seeing some animals in the wild: waterbok, wildebeest, warthog, pride of lions, zebra, giraffe, monkey, impala, rhino, and about a bagillion different types of birds. Some of these we saw up close and personal, and some were specks on the horizon (yay for high powered cameras with their intense zoom-in abilities).

After the stuffing our faces at the Cabana’s breakfast buffet, we started the journey home. We stopped over at the mall to (of course) pee….or “wee” to the locals. And, we made a new friend. A bird. First, he came out of nowhere and landed right on Ayla’s shoulder, then moved to Ilene’s head, before landing lovingly on Tammy’s head and then repeated the process. We haven’t laughed that hard in a while! Having to pee and laughing that hard = not a good combination.

That night we treated the Cloete Family and upper management team with the joys of a TexMex dinner. Tammy brought tortillas and we fixed ‘em up with beef tacos! What a treat! (For us as well). Please, don’t take your delicious TexMex for granted. We were sad to see Tammy (and her rented car AKA freedom for us to come & go whenever we wanted) go, but happy to be back in the routine of life at Botshabelo—if such thing exists. We’ve spent the last two days recovering from her trip and finishing up our group paper for our online class. Thank the lord that’s done!

Now all we have to worry about is the black cobra they found living about 20 feet from our front door.

Boo to the internet that kicks us off every 5 minutes.

Ayla and Ilene

(I heard there were some brasilians reading the blog- hi brasilians! i would speak some of my amazing portuguese, but unfortunately most of the words i learned are from my dad shouting at the ref in the soccer match on tv... so you can guess what kinds of words those are)