Away on Saturdayyyyyyy

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Hey guuuuuuuuuys, we're either going to Grabouw or Potch on Saturday, to return on the 25th March (apparently) so this may be my last blog in a while!! As Outward Bound say though, "the only this certain at OB is that nothing is ever certain" so who knows? :p the reason that we may not be going to Grabouw is that there has been really bad fires up round that area near Cape Town - we've lost a couple of abseiling and rox sites, the one that I did site specifics on last time I was up has gone apparently :· I just hope that the community that live round there were ok!! Such a lovely area, the Hottentots Holland Nature Reserve, its such a shame. Its Nadia's birthday tomorrow, so we're going out for dinner then drinks probably, should be fun!! Tonight, we were given lots of meat and told to have a Braai, so that'll be awesome!! Training school is still fun, I didn't go on a long run for the first time in daaaaaaaays today!! We got to to interval training :D:D:D (sprints, with jogs in between) and I beasted everyone (apart from a guy called Themba, the one I was running with the other day) it felt soooooo good to run fast again!! :D:D:D

I should probably tell you a bit about the people I'm working with. There's me and Iona, my Lattitude partner, we're still getting on even though we're with each other 24/7, and Natasha, who I'm also with like all the time, who is from Project Trust. There's David and James, guys from Project Trust (James knows Euan and Sam!!) and various other instructors. Rose is lovely, she's our age and an instructor, actually, there's too many instructors to go through, and I've not met loads of them yet!! There are 5 trainees in training school - Nadia, our friend who we met on assessment and took us up and down from Cape Town, she's small and red-haied and in to Yoga; Chloe is a girl she knows who is really small and nice, but has managed to tear her calf in 2 places already!! There's Chris, a really big guy who's the same age as me and is absolutely lovely, and he's trying to hard to get fitter, and managing!! He'll make an awesome instructor. There's Pieter, a typical bloke-ish 18-year old guy, who is nice though, but sometimes has to be told what's appropriate!! And there's Themba, really nice guy from Jo'burg, who I run with sometimes and is very patient, will also make a great instructor. We all get on well, its awesome.

Got letters from Lorna , Roy's mum, and Gemma!! Was so nice to hear from them. Replies are in the mail!! Will hopefully get Granny's letter before I go to Grabouw/Potch. I love writing letters out here, its lucky that we have time this week to actually have free time in an actual town with facilities!! I like Sedgefield 😊 I've made a decision, that when I get home (completely off subject here) that I'm going to learn my national anthem!! So many people have asked me to sing it, and I only know snippets. I end up just singing the melody (as it is awesome) all the South Africans know theirs!!

So on Tue evening (3rd) I went and played pool at Filo's, nearly beat David again :D went with Iona to try and buy throat medicine, but ended up getting liquerice (sp?!) toffee, as apparently liquirice helps?!

On Wed, went for a morning run with Iona, my old run seems so easy now!! Then we all piled in to the back of the buckie (hellish, like 12 of us stuffed in there, its legal here!!) and went all the way to Camferskloof (near George) to look at the Rox set-up - but never actually did that in the end. Was such a funny day. Deon stopped at the George shopping mall, and told us to find volunteering jobs somewhere in the mall for the day, to see if we could do it!! I knew he was just playing with us, but we had no choice but to do it, so I went to the kool music store with awesome pianos and said a speil, and they gave me the area manager's phone number and told me to call her!! My next stop was going to be the legendary free fudge stall, but Deon came to find us all after that. The awesome thing was, some people actually did manage to get jobs!! Natasha was nearly a toilet cleaner :p then, the Project Trust people called Deon, as they had mucked up times with their meetings with him and David/James/Natasha, so we had to go back early!! So all we had time to do was go to the site, see it, and get shown important things, we didn't acutally do the set-up. Went back, did PT, I did that 3.something k run in just over 10mins, really pushed it!! Had a shower, then one of the guys from Project Trust who was visiting, John Fraser, came up and spoke to me becuase James told him I was from Stirling!! Was awesome so speak to someone else Scottish (again) - he knows Stirling well, taught in Wallace High for a while, and went to Stirling Uni (where James is going) - was great to chat to him!! Small world eh. Then, after dinner, I helped clean the kitchen (I'm so tidy out here btw) :p as I was on kitchen duty, then bought an A5 jotter from Spar to note things down - its so funny, I feel like I'm at primary school again!! Finally tried Caramilk chocolate also, its sooo sweet. Not a patch on Top Deck :p spoke to my Rooooooy, nice long chat 😊😊😊

Today, got up and did Group PT, ab-exercises, funny press-ups and the interval training :D we sang crazy Afrikans (sp?!) songs on the jogs, was fun!! Then had a dip (literally) in the river). Getting used to water now :p had brekkie, then went over abseil set-up, then we crammed in to the buckie again (hellish) to see the abseil site - we actually did the set-up today, and saw z-lock and emergency belaying techniques. Went for a dip in a nice lagoon, then me and Chris (I waited on him) got lost on the way back up, there was so many paths!! They found us eventually though, I ended up sitting on top of everyone :p and came back to Sedgefield, went over knots with Nomusa after a very late Spag-bol lunch, but we were all shattered and hot and full, so didn't take much in. I knew most of them already though - learned the Bowline and Alpine Butterfly, which was kool. I love learning stuff 😊 Then we went for a swim in the river (which I don't think they'd actually checked out properly for sharks etc, but there you go) :p and I found it easier today, possibly because we didn't have to wear water shoes today. Came back and showered (I find one shower a day is sufficient, the amount of time you get mingin and sweaty etc) and came here 😊

Gunna speak to maw tonight 😊 shall be good. Will speak to you all again on the 25th-ish, if not before!! xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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