Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Lion King

I had some trouble with my internet connection because I ran out of airtime (that's what they call prepaid usage here) and couldn't get wifi connection, so I haven't been able to update the blog. Now that I think about it, pretty much everything here is prepaid, even electricity is bought at local shops as units.

After the last blog update, we went to Soweto, which apparently is the biggest part of Joburg. We drove around with the guys and went to the biggest mall there. For some reason everyone always wants to show the malls, I guess they just want to show the fancier parts of their country.

Our car broke down that same day and we had to walk to the gas station because we thought it just ran out of gas. After filling the jerry can, a nice security guard gave us a ride, and once again I was on the back of a pickup truck. At least I got my exercise for the day when we tried to jump start the car by pushing it up and down the road.

Speaking of exercise, I've started jogging and made a mistake on the 2nd day when I woke up bit too late and went running at 10am when the sun starts getting really hot. I can't complain though, there hasn't been a single cloud besides couple odd days of rain during the 4 weeks I've been here.

Last week was 100% lazing off, we had no work besides Sydney helping one girl with her English because her report wasn't so good last semester. We also went around asking for funding for the centre since money is a problem right now, but it was just meeting new people and having coffee and then telling a bit about the centre and where the money would go. I got to know the amount of money what the children's event held back in Finland at my school generated, and I'm grateful of it. With that funding on the way, we hopefully can make some of the ideas happen that I've suggested to Sydney. We'd like to thank everyone who participated in making the event happen.

Back to my lazing off days, I've been hanging out with Rocko and the others, or how they like to call the group, the "broforce". We went to some local festival with fairground rides, stalls and other amusement park stuff. With them I eat way too much chips though, we always get chips and bread to eat. Oh yeah, that's the common way to eat chips here, you put them on slices of bread and it's called khotes, which is Zulu language.

Sydney and his family was invited to a birthday party on Saturday and I decided to stick around with them and go empty the party of their food supply. We drove some ways towards Pretoria and I slept most of the way but when I woke up I felt like I was in a different country. I've seen maybe 10 white people in total in Joburg and Lenasia but all the sudden we were surrounded by them on the freeway. Oh and once again I was in the back of a pickup truck.

On Sunday I finally reunited with the girls who also came to do their work practice here, but they're working on a different side of Johannesburg in Benoni. We went to Lion Park, which is exactly what you could guess by the name. There were other animals too, like giraffes, ostriches, mangusts, hyenas, cheetahs, african wild dogs, zebras and antelopes but the highlights were seeing the lions eat and getting to pet the lion cubs.

Even though the lions were in captivity, it felt like a mini safari. The enclosures were big and we drove around in big open safari trucks. You don't really realise how huge the lions are until they walk right next to the car, or how cute the cubs are until you get to pet them. We also went crazy with the girls in the gift shop, because they had everything that we'd planned to buy as souvenirs. I thought I need to get a second check-in bag for the flight home just to carry all the souvenirs back.

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