(good shirt right?)
Miss you oodles.
Love you to the moon and back.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Friday, February 11, 2011
Bio Safari Take Two.
WE SAW GIRAFFES!!!!
Oh my word they were so insanely cool and beautiful in real life. On Thursday we had our second Biology safari / field trip / excursion. We went to five different river sights to view the polluted water and calculate some things and then we studied regular savannah land vs. savannah that had been burned recently. But that's not really important. What's important is that WE SAW GIRAFFES!!! And we got pretty darn close to them too!
Just as a little disclaimer: I understand that I put a ridiculous amount of giraffe pictures up here but I seriously could not leave any of them out. I just had to share everything :) So sorry if you get bored!
For starters, this is one of the coolest buildings I have ever seen and would LOVE if my future home looked like this..
These little hanging guys are bird nests. And these birds have a fun little story. The males will work super hard to build one of these beautiful little nests to woo the female. And if the female likes the nest then she will accept him. But if she does not like the nest then she will snip the top of it with her beak causing it to fall to it's destruction. Apparently birds play hard to get too.
And now for the good stuff...
Oh, there were zebra there also.
In Africa it's pronounced zeh-bra.
Aren't they just so precious and cuddly?!
Look at the little baby!!!
My lovely friend Lindsay..
Kim Dotts and a giraffe outta my head!
Giraffe outta Destiny's head!
And the beautiful savannah that our afternoon concluded in..
This counts as a lab? BEST BIOLOGY CLASS EVER.
Deciding to come to South Africa this semester has honestly been one of the best decisions of my life. I am seeing and experiencing so many things that most people only read about and see pictures of. I do miss all you people in the states but I would not give this up for a second.
In other news, this week slapped me with schoolwork. In one of my classes we had to write an exegetical paper (a fancy word for a long Bible paper) and I wrote it on the passage Matthew 7:24-29 and you should probably look it up and read it because I've spent countless hours researching and pondering it and have become quite fond of it as of late.
So long friends :)
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Send Me Lovin'.
API Educational Foundation
PO Box #13870 Cascades 3202
Pietermaritzburg, Kzn, South Africa
PO Box #13870 Cascades 3202
Pietermaritzburg, Kzn, South Africa
LA PLAYA!!!
1st Indian Ocean Encounter:
On Saturday, we went to Durban and in the morning we went to a mosque and then walked around a little town type thing. I don't really know how to describe the town other than the fact that it was maybe the first time I really felt like I was in another country. We were literally the only white people there so we got lots of stares. It also kinda felt like we were living in a movie. Like I was half waiting for Julie Roberts to ride by on a bike while Florence + The Machine was playing.
This picture was taken on a rooftop by the lovely little fairy, Deborah!
On Saturday, we went to Durban and in the morning we went to a mosque and then walked around a little town type thing. I don't really know how to describe the town other than the fact that it was maybe the first time I really felt like I was in another country. We were literally the only white people there so we got lots of stares. It also kinda felt like we were living in a movie. Like I was half waiting for Julie Roberts to ride by on a bike while Florence + The Machine was playing.
This picture was taken on a rooftop by the lovely little fairy, Deborah!
After walking around for awhile we loaded up and headed to the beach.
The Indian Ocean was great and perfect temperature. It wasnt freezing like Santa Cruz (holler at my pieces for playing there so much this summer) but it wasn't freakishly hot like a bath like Galveston either.
The boys in all their glory.
If only they could stay like that. Kidding.
The beach was great as always. Gotta love driving back feeling all worn out from the sun with tangly hair and salty skin.
Brooke, Rachelle, and Alyssa, I miss those perfect santa cruz days with you all :)
Let's Spit Poop.
Bio Safari 1:
On Thursday, we had our first biology safari! Well, it wasn't really a safari... more like hanging out in one of the prettiest places I have EVER been to. (Sorry that there's so many landscape type pictures, this place was just way to great to not put them in. But I promise that doesn't mean I dont have friends.)
Look how freaking sicky this place was.
And this is where I had the best picnic of my life.
If you were wondering what "Let's Spit Poop." means, then you are in luck because I'm about to give you an explanation. So our biology prof, Karen (you can see like half of her in her kick-a safari attire below), has a very dry sense of humor and we can never really tell if she was joking or serious. But while we were here she asked us if we wanted to play a traditional South African game and obviously we all said yes. So she told us to go find the driest little pellet of poop we could and then stand in a line. And if you haven't figured it out yet, we then were told to put the poop in our mouths and see who could spit the furthest. Yes mom, I spit poop from my mouth. And lost. Oh and we ate dried worms two nights before this. [And for all of you on facebook, I'm tagged in a lovely video that shows the whole deal and im second from last.]
The lovely Kim Dotts with a smile on her back.
After exploring this place and eating some lunch, we were given our own spot to have a quiet time.
This was the view from my own little spot.
I can already tell this is going to be a great start to the upcoming weeks of Thursday safaris. I also love how Karen always tells us so nonchalantly to go climb a tree or find a piece of grass to rest on.
F.R.I.E.N.D.S.
I have a confession to make. I couldn't do the whole 'open one a day' thing.
I got too antsy.
But now I can look at them all the time and feel the happiness coming off my wall! Yay :)
ANYWAYZ- you're all great and wonderful and pretty and funny and awesome and every other positive adjective you can think of. THANKS A MILLION. :)))
I got too antsy.
But now I can look at them all the time and feel the happiness coming off my wall! Yay :)
If you didn’t catch on, my wonderful friends made me a little somthin something for everyday while I’m here.
A very special shoutout to: emma, molly mac, aims, j sime, allie, kari, emily, and anyone else who was involved (possible mckinzey, k bunx, and j pain?!)
ANYWAYZ- you're all great and wonderful and pretty and funny and awesome and every other positive adjective you can think of. THANKS A MILLION. :)))
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Theological Banter.
This is my first serious-ish post so sorry if its a bit weird... I'll go back to pretty pictures next time.
This morning after breakfast and class me and my friend Liana decided to go on a run. And all of you reading this should know well enough how deeply I despise running yet I still do it on occasion. So we're both running and feeling pretty good and we just decided to keep going as long as we could basically because we didn't have class for quite a while.
About three miles later we call it quits. Keep in mind how much I hate running yet for some reason this run was great and I felt like I had to reach this certain stoplight (which happen to be called robots in SA). Like I was determined. So once we get there we stop and start walking back.
Pretty early on during our walk back we ran into a very sweet elderly man with two younger women accompanying him. He says hello and that we looked tired. We explained that we just had a nice long run and it was also pretty hot out by this point. He noticed our accents and it started the whole "where are you from, what are you doing here, how long are you staying" conversation. It was all pretty friendly stuff.
Then he hits us with Jehovah's Witness' things.
Oh shoot.
We politely explain that we are Christians, which apparently is an invite for a thirty minute theological debate midmorning.
Okay so first off, we're like physically exhausted from this run and we're sweating up a storm but this cute little old man gets real intense real fast.
He starts with asking us what our name for God was and about the Lord's Prayer and different little things. Basically, he was testing our knowledge of our faith and such.
So he whips out his Bible and starts hitting us with all these different passages and verses that apparently back up Jehovah's Witnesses or something.
Probably about ten-ish minutes in he realized he was not about to get two converts out of this talk so instead we debated about our religious differences.
Actually I dont even wanna call it a debate. He basically attacked us. The whole time Im like saying this little prayers asking for strength and kept repeating the passage about the shield of righteousness and sword of truth over and over again.
This was my first actual encounter of someone testing my faith so upfront and matter-of-factly.
We were both pretty taken aback by the whole ordeal but we definitely stood our ground. We kind of turned the tables and started asking about the origins of the religion and about the 144,000 and such.
The older man answered everything by the book. But when we tried to ask the girls things they were more shy and had a hard time standing up to us.
After about thirty minutes when all of us realized that we were at the point in conversation where neither group was going to back down from their beliefs, we politely split ways. While leaving, the man asked my friend Liana if she was open-minded enough to take a book. She said she would and I chimed in and said since we're taking your book will you let me pray for you.
He refused me.
Afterward I decided that that was literally the devil trying to get us while we were down. We were physically exhausted from this run and unprepared for this type of thing. This guy had all these pamphlets and the Bible and all this different stuff. He was prepared to go out and 'witness' to people. And I just wasnt. Obviously the big guy upstairs is trying to tell me to have my game face on all the time.
Important little extras:
-seriously, thank God for that cult class second semester senior year at good ol MC, without that I woud not have known a good background of Jehovah's Witnesses
-randomly last semester I had to pick a passage of scripture to memorize and write a paper on. I happen to chose Matthew 6:5-15 which is the intro to and Lord's Prayer. This is significant because the Lord's Prayer was one of the first things he asked us about / tested us on. Craaazzzzyyyyy.
-This type of thing could happen any given day in America; yet it happened on the other side of the world where we were expecting such different and other things.
-I think there was a reason I had to finish running to the stoplight; otherwise this debate never would have happened.
-God is good.
This morning after breakfast and class me and my friend Liana decided to go on a run. And all of you reading this should know well enough how deeply I despise running yet I still do it on occasion. So we're both running and feeling pretty good and we just decided to keep going as long as we could basically because we didn't have class for quite a while.
About three miles later we call it quits. Keep in mind how much I hate running yet for some reason this run was great and I felt like I had to reach this certain stoplight (which happen to be called robots in SA). Like I was determined. So once we get there we stop and start walking back.
Pretty early on during our walk back we ran into a very sweet elderly man with two younger women accompanying him. He says hello and that we looked tired. We explained that we just had a nice long run and it was also pretty hot out by this point. He noticed our accents and it started the whole "where are you from, what are you doing here, how long are you staying" conversation. It was all pretty friendly stuff.
Then he hits us with Jehovah's Witness' things.
Oh shoot.
We politely explain that we are Christians, which apparently is an invite for a thirty minute theological debate midmorning.
Okay so first off, we're like physically exhausted from this run and we're sweating up a storm but this cute little old man gets real intense real fast.
He starts with asking us what our name for God was and about the Lord's Prayer and different little things. Basically, he was testing our knowledge of our faith and such.
So he whips out his Bible and starts hitting us with all these different passages and verses that apparently back up Jehovah's Witnesses or something.
Probably about ten-ish minutes in he realized he was not about to get two converts out of this talk so instead we debated about our religious differences.
Actually I dont even wanna call it a debate. He basically attacked us. The whole time Im like saying this little prayers asking for strength and kept repeating the passage about the shield of righteousness and sword of truth over and over again.
This was my first actual encounter of someone testing my faith so upfront and matter-of-factly.
We were both pretty taken aback by the whole ordeal but we definitely stood our ground. We kind of turned the tables and started asking about the origins of the religion and about the 144,000 and such.
The older man answered everything by the book. But when we tried to ask the girls things they were more shy and had a hard time standing up to us.
After about thirty minutes when all of us realized that we were at the point in conversation where neither group was going to back down from their beliefs, we politely split ways. While leaving, the man asked my friend Liana if she was open-minded enough to take a book. She said she would and I chimed in and said since we're taking your book will you let me pray for you.
He refused me.
Afterward I decided that that was literally the devil trying to get us while we were down. We were physically exhausted from this run and unprepared for this type of thing. This guy had all these pamphlets and the Bible and all this different stuff. He was prepared to go out and 'witness' to people. And I just wasnt. Obviously the big guy upstairs is trying to tell me to have my game face on all the time.
Important little extras:
-seriously, thank God for that cult class second semester senior year at good ol MC, without that I woud not have known a good background of Jehovah's Witnesses
-randomly last semester I had to pick a passage of scripture to memorize and write a paper on. I happen to chose Matthew 6:5-15 which is the intro to and Lord's Prayer. This is significant because the Lord's Prayer was one of the first things he asked us about / tested us on. Craaazzzzyyyyy.
-This type of thing could happen any given day in America; yet it happened on the other side of the world where we were expecting such different and other things.
-I think there was a reason I had to finish running to the stoplight; otherwise this debate never would have happened.
-God is good.
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