october 8th

To be completely honest, its bee nso long since the last time i wrote i lost track of what i have bee ndoing! Lets see..OH we went to a town in south africa that nelson mandela was born and raised in, we stayed at the nelson mandela hostel..or something hah. he is the only live person to have a museam made for him! We walked literally about 5 miles through a field in the HOT part of the day to see a church that he grew up going to and his house! Mandela is Zulu. and in the zulu culture poligamy is common which is crazy! his father had 4 wives! Xhosa is the language he speaks, as well as others, but it is hands down the coolest language i have ever heard with clicks! there are 3 kinsd of clicks yuo make itis crazy! We also went on a backpacking trip. The hiking was soo hard! The first day was easy we only hiked about 6 miles, an dthen camped out it was beautiful. we got to swim in a pong that funneled into a waterfal it was amazing. Then the second day we hiked 12 miles to our next cabin, where we all told scary stories and ate marshmellows. it was a great bonding experience for everyone and i feel like i have known these girls my entire life. the third day was a 9 mile hike back to our safari truck, and it poured down rain! We were soaked but it was awesome and reffreshing. every week or so, we do these thigns called "circle " where there is a topic like..."what is your biggest struggle being here" and evertyone goes around and talks about it adn revieves support from the rest of the group its a great way to let everything go s owe can all be present mentally and phyisically every day. I heard a word the first day of the trip taht i encrouage everyone to look up! i dont' have time to explain it now but it holds great meaning for everything on our trip and reflects on soutth africa as a while. The word is "ubuntu" look it up! We are in durban now after 15 hours of driving and go 2 joburg. we are learning about the worl dcups effect on SA's economy and it is SOOOOO interesting . tomorrwo ew tour one o fthe TTENNN statdiums that are here. did yuo know south a frica spend 3.2 BILLIONdollars on the world cup and only expewtced to pay 300,000? And there is so much corruption with jacob zuma (SA's presiednt) so much i wish i could talk about but people are waiting for my computer, I have been really homesick these last few days which is hard but i know ill pull through, we go to zambia on monday and start our service project! i m really excited, i probably wont have internet until we come back into SA in late november, so until then i love you all and can't wait to see everyone. thanks for all the comments its so comforting to read things you guys write. <3