I'm still here!

First of all, let me apologize for dropping off the face of the earth this last month.  But I AM in Africa, so I’ve been out doing things I can now write about.  Good internet access continues to be a precious commodity, but I will try to be better about sending out quick updates more often. 

Now that I have your attention (and you have mine), I don’t even know where to begin to recap the last month.  Still loving Memel.  Still meeting great people.  Starting to feel like I know how to put together a successful soccer practice.  Struggling at times with the language barrier, especially when trying to implement some sort of discipline to get through the drills we have planned, but also recognizing that the structure of having practice itself is a big positive for the girls and some giggly chaos in the middle is inevitable and always fun.  The girls are so great.  They love just hanging out and talking, finding out about America and teaching us bits of Zulu.  I’ve learned enough basic greeting vocabulary to get some big smiles (and hopefully respect) from people my age and older that I meet in town or at the mens soccer games. 

A couple of weeks ago the five of us from the yellow house rented a car and went to Durban for the weekend.  We got some good beach time on the Indian Ocean, went to the Victorian St. Market and bartered for some gifts and souvenirs, and stayed at a nice hostel.  Before leaving on Sunday, we went to one of the World Cup stadiums.  We got tickets for a monorail ride which I thought was going to take us up into the stadium, but it was actually on top.  Amazing views of the city and the ocean, but unfortunately I never even got a glimpse of the field.  Oh well.

This past Sunday Hannah and I went to Pretoria with Steven and Cindy.  They have a beautiful house there in a suburb that overlooks the city from a hill.  It was an amazing and well-timed vacation from small town life and we were completely pampered.  They dropped Hannah and me off in the city to explore during the day and then we met up at night for dinner and a movie at the theater.   Steven left from Pretoria to go to Zimbabwe and we left Tuesday morning to make it back for our afternoon soccer, but on the highway about half way between Pretoria and Johannesburg the clutch on their huge Land Cruiser went out and the car completely died before we could make it back to the house (or to a safe spot on the high way).  We got stuck in the break down lane about 100 yards from an on ramp and Cindy had Hannah and me get out of the car and indicate to cars coming on the highway that they had to merge immediately so as not to hit the car.  Eventually a tow truck came by, had to call a bigger one because of how heavy our car was, towed us up to a safer spot in the road and finally brought a bigger truck with a trailer to put the car on.  After lots of hanging out on the high way and the car shop, we rented a car and headed back to Pretoria for the night.  In the end, I was pretty excited to have one more night of luxury.

            Annie, Keiko, Garrett, and Aleta head back to the States on Wednesday to finish their masters program.  It will be so quite without them in the house, but Cindy and Steven are already planning some trips for us and we will probably have the soccer girls over to the house more often.  Last Saturday we had about 12 girls from grade 4 over for the afternoon.  We got some snacks and ice cream and tried to watch a movie with them, but ended up just going outside and running around/playing.  They are so easy to please and it’s such a fun way to spend what could otherwise be a long, boring day. 

I uploaded a ton of photos to facebook.  I tried to do a picassa album as well for people without facebook, but had trouble with the upload.  I will try to do that as soon as I can.

Thanks to everyone who has commented on here or sent me emails!  I hope you all know how much it means to hear from you and I am so sorry if it takes me a long time to respond.  Love to everyone!!