Blogs from Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, Africa - page 22

Hey everyone, This is just a quick little update for all of you. Brad and I have about 2 weeks until we leave to climb kilimanjaro and we're super pumped. We were fortunate enough to hook up with an mountaineering outfitters in Seattle that has agreed to donate some of the more specific gear to us since we're climbing for charity, so thats awesome and will save us some money. Otherwise,we're gathering all of our stuff together, training our butts off, and trying to convince ourselves we'll definitely make it to the top. Please try to check out the website if you haven't yet. www.masakhane.org/centennialtrek.htm and think about donating! You can send me a pledge form by email, or direct deposit or even a check. If you're interested in sending a check, shoot me an email ... read more

Despite the recent concerns expressed to us by our various hosts about the inherent dangers of hitch hiking in South Africa we had no choice today and set out from Inkosana in the Central Berg with the ambition of getting to the small town of Winterton where we would hopefully find the first of what would likely be several mini bus legs to Durban. No more than two minutes were we on the road when an elderly couple stopped to give us a ride. It turned out they were only going a few km in our direction, but we were inclined to agree with them that every little bit helps. They had just enough time before reaching their turn off to give us the usual story about not picking up hitchers, but then seeing us and ... read more

Hey all of you. I hope everyone on this blog watched US v Czech Republic last night and cheered their little hearts out, even though we got killed. If not, I may have to remove you from my list for being a traitor. This is your first warning :) So in bigger news, I spent this past weekend volunteering up near St. Lucia in a place called Kula Village. We went up for the weekend to rebuild a creche ( preschoold) in the area that was really run down. They take care of 66 children in two little buildings, with almost no help from parents or any outside sources, it is crazy. So we went up there to do some painting, gardening, build some playground equipment and just do whatever a group of 20 can get ... read more

And I've been meaning to get on here and thank all of you for the wonderful warm wishes and cards, and little ways of making the day wonderful! Sorry it has taken so long, but thank you to all of you. I was given a wonderful birthday breakfast, had a great birthday celebration at Rotary, and went out to dinner with a group of friends at night. Pics included. It turned out that one of the other girls in my program has the same birthday as me, so we had a little shindig together. Great time. Birthday's definitely make me miss home, and I don't know that any birthday can compare to Sarah and I's drum circle concoction, but this one did just fine. Since then I've been decently busy with school, and trying to get ... read more

Easter weekend which was the weekend before we were coming back to Pretoria to go to Mozambique, was the craziest weekend of my life...i kd you not! We were camping with Andrew, Dierdre and their family and about 5 other families and their kids. It all began when some of h kids decided it would be a good idea to pull out tent down when Kelly and i were stil in it. this started a war! Anyway soon after that Dierdre got a call from Sharon saying that she'd flipped her truck and could we come now! Sharon was on her way to fetch some horses for our outride on the Monday and was going rounds a coirner too fast and flipped her momma-honker (kelly's word!!) of a truck. Fortunatly she wasn't hurt but it was ... read more