In South Africa

Hey, everyone! Just a quick update to tell what I'm up to.... These couple of weeks are 'vacation' weeks for me (which is great!) until I head up to Tanzania on Sunday, August 8th (and I cannot wait to get there!!). I've been staying with my brother in Johannesburg since getting back from Zimbabwe last week, and my mom just flew out here on Saturday. The 3 of us went on safari on Sunday and came back yesterday (Tuesday)- we did 4 game drives and saw lots of animals, it was really cool! Hippos, Rhinos, Lions, Elephants, Zebras, Giraffes, Impalas..... I'll tell a couple stories later but the coolest (and scariest!) was following a huge male lion for about 30 minutes within about 10 feet of it (and at times much closer) in our open-air vehicle. Supposedly it's totally safe and the lions don't care about the safari trucks but after several minutes it sure seemed like we were pushing our luck and that it might get annoyed by us! Luckily that never happened. :)

My mom and I are going to Capetown today for a week (Wed. to Wed.) and my brother's going to join us for the weekend. I'll try to update with more details and some pics soon. Johannesburg is cool- it's pretty much just a big city- has lots of good restaurants and shopping (and is very developed, doesn't feel very much like Africa!).... it's a great place to be but not really a tourist destination. I went to the Apartheid museum last week (which was good, very educational) and also on a tour of the township Soweto- townships are areas of town (with very, very intense poverty- like 'slums') where the black people were forcibly removed during apartheid (apartheid is segregation, to Americans who don't know the term). Soweto has the really bad slums but also some nicer parts and Nelson Mandela lived here (got to see his house), on the same block as Archbishop Desmond Tutu (who still lives there and got to see his house, too).

I'll try and post some pics soon and tell a little more about some of these things. Thanks again so much for your prayers!! I'm loving being in South Africa but am really anxious to get up to Tanzania, too! Can't wait to start my job and my life there.... :)