Crocodile Hunter...

Please excuse me for not blogging for a while. So much has happened since last weekend’s rugby game. I did successfully install all 24 heaters into the school in Katlehong. If you would like to see the school, Jesse Rodriguez of Calvary Bible Church in Burbank, made a presentation with footage that Beth Mack has given to him. You can see that video on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNe_yszulrs, this is a very good picture of what is happening at the school. I did get a library card and I have used it! I am starting research for my last paper that needs to be written. And they say that here in South Africa that if you need to get something done, then expect to make at least three trips to the place that you need to go. And I have been actually lucky to not have to make many trips to the places that I needed. But I guess all that time that I have saved in the past was building up for this past week. I believe that it took six trips to the library to actually get the library card that I needed to actually check books out. So that is one thing that I will be doing in this next week.
On Thursday, my sister, Tiffany, and Melissa Briganti (sp?) made it safely to South Africa. After a long flight and many airplane meals, they were ready to jump into things. So I took them for a tour of the Lambano homes, and took them to the worksite to see the work of the Conrad (the mason from Canada). After trying to keep Tiffany awake, we rented a movie and then they crashed. On Friday I took the girls to Katlehong to show them what the situation is there and I think that it was very eye-opening.
I guess there is a tradition here in South Africa at Grace Christian Church, every intern has finished “THE AMERICAN DREAM”. There is a restaurant here named Pano’s and all of the sizes of burgers are named after the comic strip characters from Archie. And the biggest of all is the “Jughead”. This is a 450g piece of meat. And the American Dream is two patties. So we are talking almost 1kg of meat (for those of you who don’t do metric… that’s almost 2.2 lbs of meat!!!). If you eat it in a half hour of less then you can put your name up onto the “Wall of Fame”. Unfortunately, I broke the tradition and surrendered to the American Dream about halfway through. I couldn’t finish it. It was bigger than my face. Sorry to let you down.




But we bounced back wonderfully the next morning after eating all that beef. We went up to Irene craft market, where it is basically a flea market, where you can buy anything you could imagine. Contrary to how Brian describes it as a “chick” market, it wasn’t half bad. It was a nice relaxing walk around with friends and family. The place did have excellent food.
After going to the flea market, Tiffany and I decided to go to Croc City Crocodile Farm. I was on a mission because a close friend, who supported me on both of my trips here to South Africa, wanted a crocodile skull or teeth. So I google searched and found this crocodile farm not to far from where we are staying. So we went on the tour and I got to hold a baby croc. We were also successful in getting the skulls. But one funny thing did happen to us while we were there. I didn’t take out my camera right at the beginning of the tour for whatever reason. So I told Tiffany that when the tour finishes, I’ll get my camera out and go back to the ponds and take pictures. So, standing on this bridge I get my camera out of Tiff’s backpack. As I am holding the camera with my right hand, I take off the lens cap with my left hand. And right at that moment my head started itching, so I reach up with my left hand to adjust my cap, and what do you know, my lens cap falls out of my hand to land only a few feet away from this huge crocodile. It seemed like everything went in slow motion right when I dropped it. And of course there is no getting near that thing to get it. So, someone will have a nice lens cap to a Nikkon camera, if they don’t get eaten trying to get to it.
I hope to finish my paper by next Friday before we leave to Pilansburg, the game park, with friends. And a week from this Wednesday I’ll be boarding the plane to come home! Cant wait to see all of you!