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Published: July 21st 2010
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After driving through Swaziland, we still had a few hours to go before making it to our destination...Durban. Daddy was a little bummed he was not able to watch the USA v Algeria game and had to settle for listening to it on the radio. Just as he was saying it looks like the USA was going home, the best player, Donovan, scored a goal, with seconds remaining in extra time. Daddy screamed with excitement so I added in. He was very happy. The rest of the trip to Durban was not as happy as it was getting late and all of a sudden there was a big log in the road....daddy swerved and ran over it and we heard a big "thug" but the car continued to drive okay. About an hour later, at a toll booth, the person asked if we knew that we had a piece of wood sticking out of our tire. Daddy did not even look, as the car was driving fine, and continued his way to Durban.
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We arrived in Durban sometime around 8pm at our 1 and only couchsurfing place on the entire trip. We had
Couchsurfed at 5 places last summer during our trip to Northern Europe and had a great time, so we were up to doing it on this trip. Through the website daddy came into contact with a medical student named Adam, who hooked us up with staying at his sister (Sarah) and parents (Frank and Karyn) place. They were awesome hosts. First of all, as we arrived and we told the tire story, we finally looked at the tire.....It was completely flat with a large dent in the rim. Most likely the "piece of wood" was keeping the air in the tire, and it finally became dislodged most likely as we entered his driveway.....we got sooooo lucky, as it would not have been good if it happened on the road at night. Frank was so kind to help daddy change the tire then, and Karyn made some calls the next morning while daddy and I were doing a day trip to Lesotho (next post) to find out the best course of action, which ended up being buying a new rim. She took us to a tire place the following day. We most certainly would have not been able to do our day
Proud of winning my 2nd Zakumi
Sofia Mona Holzer - winner of the Celebration Competition trip to Lesotho if it had not been for the kindness of the entire family.
Besides helping us with the car, the cooked us a great dinner on arrival, and daddy shared some wine he picked up. They were really nice and I loved there 2 dogs, one big and one small, and 2 cats. They had a beautiful house. I had a lot of fun playing with Sarah.
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After the incredible day trip to Lesotho (in next blog) we came back and Daddy took them out to dinner. We had great Italian food.
The following day was the main reason we came to durban.....to watch Brasil play Portugal. This was supposed to be on of the best matches during the first round. Daddy was really excited, but I was a little bummed that my favorite player, Kaka', was not going to play because he was naughty the previous game and was in "time out" for the entire game. We left really early for the game as daddy wanted to get there 4 hours prior. It was a beautiful day in Durban, and unlike Johannesburg, we could wear shorts
and not have to dress in layers. I thought the stadium looked like a sailboat. (I called Soccer City, the bagel)
I had one of my best times during all the excitement before the game. Daddy never told me to go on stage, I always wanted to. Although I was always a little nervous, I had so much fun. I got up on stage and danced to Waka Waka with some locals and Brasilians. It was sooo much fun. I got my face painted (well actually just my nose since I already had the brasil flag tatoos on my cheeks).
However, the highlight was when I did the "celebration competition". I got on stage with about 8 other people and had to kick a goal and then do a celebration. I made my goal, and then shook my hips a little and blew my vuvuzela, which I had become an expert at by now. People loved me and cheered. After everyone did their thing, the audience voted for everybody by making noise. I received one of the loudest responses, so was in the finals with couple others. I kicked another goal did my thing of shaking my hips
Me and Zakumi
Waiting for the game to begin and blowing the vuvuzela and I ended up winning!!!! I won a HUGE zakumi. Daddy was very proud of me, not that I had won, but that I was brave enough to go up there in front of everyone, and being the only kid. I was so happy and showed off my Zakumi to everyone. Daddy was happy I won, but then thought about what we would do with it. We decided to ship it home after we were leaving Johannesburg, along with some other stuff. However, for now, Zakumi joined us for the game as we had to squeeze the "3" of us into 2 seats.
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The game ended up being not as exciting as all the other games we went to. No goals were scored........BORING. I ended up sleeping through some of it. Daddy would say that the hype up to the game and the few hours before the game were even better than the actual game. However, given we ended up going to 5 matches and 4 goals where scored in each of the other 4 matches, we could not complain.
While daddy wanted to go to the fan fest for
the late game, I was readdy to go home and see Karyn, Frank, Sarah and the dogs, so I talked daddy into going home (as if he was going to say no). We had a nice relaxing night with them and hope they come visit us in Miami. The next day we were off back to Johannusburg for some "Knockout" round matches, I knew I would miss the family...and the weather.
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thetravelbugtribe
The travel bug tribe
Loving reading your current blogs, very jealous that you got to see the games live whereas we had to get up at silly times during the night for them. Sorry we did so well against Italy (previous blog)! We're really looking forward to travelling with our child when they turn up in a few weeks, you are very inspirational! If you are ever travelling through NZ, come and couch surf with us!