Top five things I had done in the past 5 days

Top five things I have done in the past 5 days...

5. Watched the Lion King

4. Found a bat in our toilet

3. Went two hours away to attend a boys choir concert

2. Attended a church picnic

1. Ziplined on a canopy tour in South Africa’s 2nd largest indigenous forest

On Wednesday instead of going to my favorite class ever, a.k.a. intercultural communications, for 5 hours straight, I got to go on a field trip! We traveled a total of 4 to see the Drakensburg Boys Choir perform. The boys were about 7-16 years old and they were incredible! They sang some classical songs, a couple of American songs including Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror” and “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” by Queen. They then sang and danced to some traditional Zulu and Xhosa songs. It was especially exciting when we could pick out a couple of the Zulu words and understand what they meant. It was really fun seeing the Zulu dancing too! 

On Thursday night my friend and I came back to our chalet to find a bat in our toilet. Since this is not a common occurrence in America, we weren’t exactly sure what to do. So being the considerate girls we are, we closed the door and left a note for the other girls we live with (who all were sleeping) informing them that there was a bat in the toilet and to proceed with caution. 

Saturday morning I woke up at the lovely hour of 6am to go on a canopy tour! I had no idea what to expect, but I can assure you that it is one of the coolest things I have had the opportunity to do yet. Once we drove to the site of the canopy tour, we put on our harnesses, helmets, and gloves and then took pictures in our harnesses, helmets, and gloves. Then, we got in the back of a pick-up truck and drove up the mountain. What a bumpy and fun ride it was, especially for

those of us who stood up! There was a total of 8 slides we got to zip line down. We were in charge of our own breaking, which was slightly scary at first but it was easy to get the hang of it and in no time we were dodging trees and zip lining like pros! It was so much fun and I had a great time with our group of ten! Halfway through we even got a piece of chocolate and juice as a snack. Of course, it was absolutely beautiful zip lining through all these trees and we all laughed at our great and sometimes not so great zip lining skills. All this had happened before 10am. How’s that for a start to a great day? 

When I think about Saturday night, it’s kind of a funny picture... twenty-ish 19-21 year olds sitting around watching the Lion King. We might have sung along with all the songs and some of us might have gotten excited when we saw the zebra in the movie (since we have now seen them in real life).  

On Sunday I went to church at God’s Family Life Church and after the service there was a church picnic. Everybody loves a church picnic! It was by this dam and there was swimming and soccer playing and all kinds of fun to be had. When we got there this family invited us to sit on their blanket with them. This was really nice of them and nice for us because it greatly reduced our amount of bug bites. It was great to talk with this family and with others from the church. Everyone was so friendly and even though we had already eaten our McDonald’s at the picnic, we were offered food and soda and muffins. One of the ladies I rode to the picnic with told us that “South Africans are always thinking of others besides themselves and their families.” I have found this to be very true. The church picnic was like a big family gathering full of fellowship and laughter. I definitely enjoyed it.