Hard Day

I was so excited for the opportunity to sleep in! I have rarely gotten to do so here, plus I had such a late night last night that I wanted all the sleep I could get. Whenever you want to sleep something always wakes you up early, so of course, Joan called super early in the morning (the house phone is right next to my bed) to let us know that she was on her way home to make us a big breakfast. That part was nice, but dang it about her waking me up! Lauren crawled out of bed soon after I did, and Joan arrived shortly after that, and started on her cooking. She is so cute. Miles came over in pajamas (he wasn’t feeling the morning time as much as I wasn’t) She made us a big South African breakfast and we all got to talking and lost track of time. When I decided I would check the time, we needed to leave in forty minutes for the airport, so we all scrambled to get ready. I pulled on my lulu lemon sweats and Miles’ UW sweatshirt, Miles threw some jeans on, Lauren grabbed her bags, and out we went (:

Lauren drove for the last time on the left side of the road in South Africa to the airport, but that’s so grim. She drove HERSELF to the airport; what a lovely goodbye. Miles and I are driving ourselves to the airport as well, and it just seems so wrong and incomplete. Anyways, we returned our rental and went through to check-in with Lauren, and then said our goodbyes right before she went through security. We stayed to watch as she walked through security and into the terminal area, and boy, that was probably the worst feeling I have felt in a long time. It was horrible to watch her leave knowing I still have to stay for another week. She will be reunited with her friends and family and I will be waiting for my turn thinking about it. Auh!!

As we walked away, I thought about my departure. I am thrilled to come home; it’s been so long and I miss everyone terribly, but at the same time, I will have such mixed emotions, just as I did when I was preparing to come here. I will be so excited and happy and anxious, but then sad to leave this amazing place that I will likely not return to for a long time, not to mention all of the great people I met along the way that I may never see again. And the adjustment was quite difficult for me, yet I’m comfortable with most things now and have to come back. I don’t know. Saturday is going to be an interesting day; I will probably be just as much a disaster as the day I left for my journey, the day I’m departing my journey. I have never experienced so many emotions at one time as I have these past 11 weeks. I hope people understand, because if not they probably think I’m bipolar and crazy.

When Miles and I returned back to Joan’s, we were kind of down from experiencing all of those emotions at once as well as from saying goodbye to our month-long friend. We went to Lauren and my room; I laid on my bed, and Miles laid on Laurens and we sat and just talked for a while, still pretty down at this point. Joan came in soon after and told us that we were going to have a braii that night with her daughter Renee and her husband Ronnie. We couldn’t believe it because Lauren never had a braii and wanted to before she left. How convenient for us to have one the afternoon she leaves. Miles and I went to the grocery store to get some things for Joan, and it was packed!! There were SO many people in there. They were like vultures over the recently restocked items and I won’t even discuss the lines for the bakery and checkout. It’s nothing like you can even imagine in the States. I will never complain about the grocery store being packed back home ever again.

While Joan was seasoning the meat, Ronnie turned on the rugby game. Rugby is one of the most popular sports in South Africa, and it was a final between two rival South African teams; the Bulls and the Stormers. Miles and I were pretty much quarantined to the living room to watch it as well. Before it was halftime, the power suddenly went out in the whole house, and Ronnie went ballistic because that meant it shut his game off too. He ran to the kitchen to check the box, but it wasn’t the house, it was actually the whole Vanguard Estates area, including the huge mall across the street. This apparently happens A LOT in South Africa randomly for a few hours here and there. It stayed out for three hours this time, so it was good that we were having a braii because we wouldn’t have had anything to eat if we were planning on cooking.

We all huddled outside by the barbeque thing because when it gets dark in Cape Town, the temperature drops dramatically and very quickly. It gets FREEZING at night, and with the power out, it was even more noticeable. The meat took a while to cook, and just as it finished and we were sitting down to eat, the power came back on! How crazy is that. While I was waiting for the food to cook, I was in bed trying to keep warm, plus I was so tired from not getting much sleep. After I ate, I went back to bed because I was still pretty cold (I am forever cold) and still tired. Miles came into the room and was doing something that I don’t remember haha and I apparently fell asleep at 8:30! This wasn’t really a good thing because we had plans for the night! A very famous music artist in South Africa named J.R. was coming to a club called Galaxy, which is just down the road from us that we were going to attend. He is famous for creating a song that has basically become the World Cup anthem. It’s just really fun and everyone goes crazy when it comes on; we thought this would be super entertaining. After the J.R. event, we were supposed to go with Gregg to a yacht party. Well…..

I suddenly woke up at midnight because I heard a noise that I thought was somebody breaking into the house via my bedroom window (the crazy things your mind concocts when you are half asleep), but was actually Miles taking his clothes off of the hanger in my closet. He was getting into his pajamas to climb into Laurens bed; he had fallen asleep while trying to write his thesis, so gave in and got ready to sleep for the night at my house. I’m not sure why we never went out—he could have easily waked me up and we could have gone, but it just never happened. I went back to sleep pretty much immediately, and slept for a full twelve hours in total. I bet you believe I was exhausted now.