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!