Don Arcadia 1 Pretoria

... alarms in ev**y room, a keep door upstairs with 3 locks, and lock in my own room with direct int**com to guards. It cant really get bett** than that...and even whilst bird spotting I was chatting to the friendly cop wh**e my room ov**looks. Might as well be my own private body guard as noone elses house is next to his car. I ov**look the road leading upto the 'estate'<br><br>Social calendar is full already. Already had a dinn** party within a day of arriving. Tomorrow I am ...

The next morning when Katie and I woke up, Riaan was at church. We read magazines waiting for him to get back and when he did, he brought us the English version of the Sunday Times (Cape Times)...he had the Afrikaans version for himself. Such a nice host (and all we'd given him was a bottle of wine we picked up at the airport...). So Riaan put on some Coldplay and we all read the paper. Hah. The rest of the day was dedicated to seeing Pretoria. We met up with ...

... number indicates that it was registered in Gauteng Province. By the way I never did think to memorize the license plate number and more than once I had to have someone call it out to me when filling out paperwork to enter a park. I'm sure that was a definite sign that I was a tourist. As Jim was leaving at the end of the week I needed to get used to driving quickly so Wednesday morning I drove to work with Jim coaching me. The other three rode in the other car. All and all ...

So, life in Pretoria has been going well. I still haven't ventured too far from Pretoria very often, there's always some reason to stick around. Today, though, I will be driving south to the Drakensberg mountain range, and possibly into Lesotho (a tiny mountainous country entirely contained within South Africa). The city life is wearing me out a bit, I need to get out into the sticks for a couple days. I have been doing some indoor ...

... that service! As the night progressed, someone asked about a certain tribe that identify's themselves as certain animals. Our guide Sylvester promptly informs us that it is indeed his tribe, and that he is also an elephant! If I'd have known that he thought he was an elephant earlier, I am not sure how I would have viewed the incident with the elephants! Lets just say I wasn't exactly reassured by this new information. All I can say is that the 4 days on Safari were ...

... skin was already rotting and filled with puss. He put in the tongs and prised apart my skin. I felt him hit the bone as he dug to get all of the poison out. Then he rolled up the gauze and shoved it in to the hole; packing it tightly to keep my finger from collapsing. Blood and puss and brown antispectic oozed everywhere. As I watched, I realised that I was as far away from feeling 'at-one' with my little finger as I had ever felt in my life. It ...

... peering in. At the end Gail thanked everyone for everything and explained how they were able to provide the donation. The Outreach was an amazing experience because with really, such a small donation this school will be able to provide their students with healthly food in their stomachs, a program whcih in this area is essentail to help them learn, but also because of the great poverty of the area will more than likely be their only mean. Back at the Haven, Gail has ...

... her house! She was conspicuous by virtue of her big black shiny car (how the hell would I know the make - it was big and shiny and obviously out of the ordinary for Soweto). She of course, was delighted to see us, grinning from ear to ear as she waved back to us and smiled in a most friendly fashion. Actually, she looked like she was comatose in the back seat, her chin on her chest. We moved right along to have a look at her house. Disturbingly ...

... die schlabberigen Meeresbewohner zu schluerfen. Sie sind ja nicht Jedermanns Sache, aber ich koennte mich reinlegen, yammi!! Die letzten Tage hob ich mir fuer Kapstadt auf. Im Bus traf ich auf eine Deutsche, mit der ich mich sehr gut verstand und die letzten Tage verbrachte. Die erste Nacht in Kapstadt kamen wir bei einem Mitglied aus dem HC unter. Die Familie war zwar ueberaus aufmerksam und gastfreundlich, jedoch war das winzige Haus von den Familienangehoeren bereits ...

... as old as newgrange. Once he opened his mouth our enthusiasm basically extinguished. His name was Gerrit Van Der something or other. I missed his surname in a tidal wave of saliva as he spoke his first name. O yes, I got the weather and not the news. Its not prounonced how it's spelt. It's Ghhheeeeerrrrrit so of course after a couple of tries he was christened "hey". We had a bit of a trip to the first destination so we had a bit of a chat and he openly admitted that ...