Home Sweet Home

We are home! Here is an update about our last week in South Africa.

 This is our team about to leave Pilanesburg with our two safari guides, Marone and Scott.

Saying goodbye to Samantha and Rodney!

 When we returned from our safari trip, we did a couple of days of "debriefing" to prepare to come back to the states.  We spent one day at the Botanical Gardens just outside the city to reflect on all we learned throughout our time in SA.  It was so beautiful and such a relaxing day.

 There was even a "children's garden" with tunnels underground to run 

through and a really neat playground!

 That night we all got dressed up and went out to a nice restaurant called The Meat Co.  

The kids were a little crazy since it was late and not very kid friendly, so Chad and I enjoyed our food but were a little stressed out! ;)

The students and Chad had the opportunity to spend some time serving in the slums the day before we flew home.  They helped run a day camp for children ages 2-10.  Their eyes were opened to the needs of the world as they saw some of the most impoverished places in South Africa.  Their hearts were broken as they saw 500 children attend this camp, many whom are without parents due to the AIDS epedemic. They had the opportunity to share the gospel, play soccer, and feed them a good meal.

Our last group picture in the Atlanta airport about to board the plane for Indy!  

The flight back was one hour and 45 min. longer than on the way there (so 16 hours and 15 min from Joburg-Atlanta!), but thankfully a much better trip!  I took Dramamine so I didn't get sick at all and the kids didn't seem as restless.  God was gracious and we all got a little bit of rest on the flight!

I can't believe our Cross Cultural experience is over!  I am so thankful for such an amazing trip and am going to miss our 11 other "kids"!

Safari!

Our goal was to find the "Big Five" (Lion, Elephant, Leopard, Water Buffalo, and Rhino). We arrived at the Ivory Tree Lodge in awe at how beautiful the place was! After a delicious lunch we were told tea time was at 3:30pm and our evening game drive departed at 4:00pm.  Thankfully the Lodge had babysitting services, so the kids hung with Alice in our room while we went out for an amazing adventure.

Pilanesburg National Park was beautiful! Just driving around in our jeep soaking up the beautiful scenery was enjoyable in itself.  We saw impala, kudu, springbok, steenbok, hippos, guinea fowl, wart hogs, giraffes, zebras, wildebeests, and more. (Many of these animals we had eaten at Carnivore a few weeks before!) But it was most exciting to look for the Big Five.  There were lots of elephants and a few times, we had one extremely close to our jeep so we were nervous and had to remain very quiet!  It was amazing to watch the elephants and we especially loved seeing the one month old babies.  Giraffes were my favorite since they are so tall and incredible to look at!  We would see large groups of giraffes very close to our jeep.  We saw a few rhinos, but not too close to us. Water buffalo and leopards are very difficult to find in this park.  Our guide said he had only seen each of them once before, so we doubted whether we would be able to spot any, but we did!  The buffalo were too far away to get any good pictures and we only saw the leopard for about 20 seconds and I wanted to soak it in, so no picture of him either.  But he was right by the road, amazing to look at, and looked right at our face!

Everyone had their own cottage!

 Kudu

 Me with a zebra in the road

 At the watering hole viewing hippos and monkeys!  Our guides also set up snacks (dried mango and biltong, which is dried meat) for us during this stop as we waited for it to turn dark.  After dark, he used a spot light to see the night animals. When we returned from our safari, we were greeted at the lodge with warm drinks and a fire as we waited for our dinner.  

 The next morning, we were awoken at 5:30am to catch our 6:00am game drive.  I loved getting up early and watching the sun rise as we drove through the park.  These pictures were taken during our morning stop where we had gorgeous views of the mountains.  The guides set up hot tea and rusks for our snack.

 Wildebeests

 Zebra

 Wildebeests

 Warthogs

 Chad and the warthogs

 Chad and the kids playing outside at the lodge

 Evie and I at our lodge

At 11:00am the kids were able to participate in a bush bumble with us, which ended up being a game drive just like ours, only a little shorter and later in the day so it was much warmer. They LOVED it and did a great job remaining very quiet when the elephant herd passed right in front of our car! Every other time William saw animals he said "Look"! So I was so relieved he stayed quiet for the elephants.

 Giraffe

 Mama elephant and her baby!

 More elephants

 Marone, our safari guide

Rhino

 Lion family eating a giraffe

 Giraffe

 Sweet siblings...Evie has one hand holding her brother's and the other hand holding binoculars!

I also really loved the three hour drive to and from Pilanesburg.  It was so interesting to see the African landscape and people in their villages as we drove.  It is so completely different than the way we live, so it was amazing to see the variety of people and places that God has created.  And of course, driving through the park and seeing all the various kinds of incredible animals was very worshipful as well. Chad and I would agree that this safari was one of our most favorite experiences we have ever had!

Magaliesburg and goodbyes

The past two weeks have been full of lots of neat things, so I am going to post a little now and more hopefully tomorrow.  I can't believe we leave South Africa in two days (Tuesday)! I will be sad to leave but I feel very ready to return home.  Last week students finished up finals so it was our last time on campus.  I was able to go twice- once to attend HD, the weekly meeting on Wednesday nights on campus.  I brought both kids with me and they did great staying in their seats and being relatively quiet!  (pizza and coloring books helped) :)  I also went all day on Friday while Chad stayed back with the kids.  We bought cake for the student leaders and surprised them with it in the Matrix (campus center) to say thank you for spending their semester with us and to say our goodbyes. Here are some pictures!

Here are the girls posing for a "last day of school" pic.

This is the view form our bedroom window of the sunrise.  We get to see this every morning since the kids have woken up so early here.

 Evie and William playing in front of our house.

 This is a picture of several of the Wits guys at the Joint Winter Conference in Magaliesburg.  It was about an hour and a half from Joburg and we went Saturday-Monday. There were students from Wits, University of Joburg, and Tuks (University of Pretoria). This camp was an interesting experience for me! I didn't know what to expect, the only thing I had heard was that it was cold so dress warm.  They were right about that, but we brought heaters and coats so we were fine.  It was a beautiful place to be but hard to figure out how to be a part of the camp with the kids.  After the first day, we started to enjoy ourselves, especially when everyone else was in a meeting and we spotted monkeys! There were about 20 of them climbing all over the place and were about the size of William.  Evie, William, and I had so much fun!  The kids did great being quiet so they wouldn't run off.  We told everyone else about them and brought out our camera the next day at the same time, but they didn't return, so we didn't get pics.

The camp was great for the students.  Nine Wits students committed their lives to Christ and in their free time, they did bridge jumping, zip lines (foofie slide), and soccer.  

The kids goofing off at the JWC

After the camp, we got a date night with Zwai and Zee Zulu.  We loved getting to spend an evening with them! We went to a place called Duke's Burgers and I got an Ostrich Burger- it was delicious! It even came with a chicken wing skewered through the top! 

(I gave the chicken wing to Zwai, it was too much food!)

 Here is a picture of William and the Zulu's adorable daughter, Zoe, from when we went to Carnivore.

Well, I thought Bambanani's was the coolest place on earth to take kids, but we discovered another place that may be even better!  It's called Papachinnos and we have already had three family dinners there.  As you can see here they have a little place for the kids to make their own pizzas and then put them in a brick oven to bake!  The playground is a little huge and the drive is pretty far, so I will remain faithful to Bambanani for now!

 These are pics of a recent trip to Bambanani where we usually all three get rooibos tea to drink.  This day the kids decided to try babychinnos (basically foam in little tiny cups).  They loved them!

After the camp, we not only had to say goodbye to the Wits students, but also to the staff team here (Samantha, Rodney, the Zulu's, and the Byrd's).  We will miss them all so much and are so thankful for all they did to love and serve us these seven weeks!  It was also sad seeing Evie and William say their goodbyes to Thandi!