1st Night in Port Elizabeth

In no great order, the pictures are:

1. warthogs drinking and eating outside their house

2. the view from the upper deck of the house

3. our first braii (barbeque). we got to eat warthog and kudu. it was really great. there was also steak and chicken, so a really manly meal!

4. me in close proximity to a giraffe

5. rory sitting on the "tracker's seat" of the game drive vehicle

6. me before i flew to atlanta

7. an awesome pic of a springbok

I'm also going to try to post another video on you tube, so go to youtube.com and search lauren in south africa! you should all be really mad that i couldn't get the first one to upload. It was Mac and I, the night before I left singing an old Companeros favorite with different words. If the idea of me singing doesn't make you laugh, the Companeros song would. I'll still try and get that one up!

So sorry I haven't written in about a week, I really mean to keep up on this. It was just hard to find time to hop on the internet when we were at Kate's house because we were pretty busy. But now I am in Port Elizabeth (PE) and have limited acess to the internet. Hopefully the problem will be resolved, but right now we're paying per minute.

Anyway, here's what's happened since the Friday night in the bush. As I said we went on game drives, which is when you drive around looking for animals. The Kearneys have a game drive vehicle (large jeep, 5 rows of almost stadium like seating) so we went out in that. I don't remember how many game drives we went on but it was a lot. Each time we saw a ton of animals, I have lots of great pictures and some animals got really close too. My favorite were the zebra. Rory liked all of the bucks (springbok, blisbok, I don't remember more names but there are like 10 kinds). And I know you've all been patiently waiting to find out which of South Africa's Big 5 I saw. So they are cape buffalo, elephant, leopard, lion and rhino. Of those, I actually only saw the lion. But I also saw babboon,s vivart (sp?) monkeys, warthogs, zebra, wildebeest, giraffe, all those kinds of bucks. I can't even remember what all we saw, I'll have to look through the pictures again. And I saw the lions in a special enclosure.

The rest of the time in the bush, we sat around had good food, took naps (because we were still recovering from the time difference and because it was like a cabin and thats just what you do), and played Farkle (I brought the game and got everyone hooked). It was so great to stay in this house and I am so lucky to have gone!! When I got to PE everyone here was very impressed by how much I already knew about SA, they thought I had been here before or something.

We went back to Johannesburg with Kate and her brother, John, on Monday. The rest of this week was spent touring around Jo-burg with John. He dropped his mountain bike on his achilles tendon and is unable to drive. So Rory drove us around and John just guided. Driving on the left side of the road was an adventure, but it definitely helped to have John there. He took us to the Lion Park where we got to drive around lion enclosures. Lions seriously came right up to the car. And cars don't seem that safe when you have a full grown male lion looking at you through your window! Here we also got to play with 4 month old lion cubs. You know me though, I didn't play that much with the kittys but Rory and John did. The cubs would "friendly" bite and scratch you, it was a play at your own risk sort of deal. We would have spent more time playing with the cubs if it wasn't for SA's annual summer 7 day of rain stretch!

We also went on a World of Beer tour and tried some good South African beers (Castle Lager is the most prevalent) but they also have Miller Genuine Draft, called "Millas" because they don't pronounce the "r." That deal was 2 1/2 beers, the tour and a beer glass for $2.50 American! Not everything is that cheap here, but most things are a little cheaper than back home.

Kate's 25th birthday was on Tuesday and we went out for a seafood dinner. It was great and fun to go. Friday was her birthday party, she rented out a section of an upscale bar near her house and invited 40 of her closest friends. It was great though, I met a lot of people. Including Grahm Smith, captain of the SA Cricket team. He was very friendly and glad to take a pic with the Americans.

Then Saturday morning Gary, Kate's boyfriend, and Rory dropped me off at the airport. It was very sad to leave. I had so much fun staying at Kate and Gary's and felt used to being there. Saying goodbye to Rory was also a little sad.

Got to PE yesterday, I'm the only one in my apartment so far. The other 4 Bennies leave MN today and will be here tomorrow I think. But there are other CSB/SJU students in the building that I've been hanging out with. Yesterday we went to the beach and out for dinner. It's very beautiful here. I've got an ocean view from my bedroom, a balcony and the biggest apartment. We're right across the street from the beach so it's very cool. But the street is very noisy all the time. And they don't do daylight savings time here so in the summer it gets light at like 5:30am and dark around 7:00 or something.

Anyway that's enough posting for now, hopefully not tooooo long! But I'll write more again soon! Give me some updates of back home, I heard there is a warm spell??

Love, Lauren