Indigenous Games

I wasn’t planning on posting again today, but yesterday was just so exciting that I couldn’t resist (plus I’m in a class right now where I can “double-task”).

So I’ll just give a play-by-play of the past twenty four hours:

I went home to my wonderful family and the power was back! I was so excited because it has been a few days since I took a warm bath. My mama was extremely excited to cook on the stove and watch her favorite soap operas. Before dinner I went to the park to play some lacrosse with Ben. One of my neighbors, Thando, who took us to the park, convinced us to play an indigenous South African game with him and some other locals. This game was incredibly awesome! It was a combination of all of the greatest playground games: kickball, soccer, dodgeball, and ultimate Frisbee. If I must say so myself, I wasn’t too bad of a player. I think being a professional indigenous game player is in my near future.

So after an hour or so of learning and playing an awesome game, I returned a DARK house…the power was out again! My mama had to cook dinner again on a camping stove while I held up my “torch” (aka flashlight). I took a cold bath in the dark then went to bed. Then the excitement began. The electricity came back on around 10 pm and all was good until my brother found a fire in the kitchen! Apparently my mama accidentally left some newspaper on the stovetop when the power was off, and when the power was switched back on the paper caught on fire. Luckily they were able to stop the fire before it became too big. All the while I was sleeping. I am a very deep sleeper and none of the houses have smoke alarms, so I was literally left in the dark until this morning when I saw the black walls and stovetop.

Now I’m at school slightly disheveled because I haven’t had a good shower in a while, I have been doing homework via flashlight, and I just read that the Ducks lost yesterday. But all is still good. I’m preparing to go play in the Indian Ocean this weekend. No big deal.

SHOUT OUT TO MY FELLOW LAXERS: There is a HUGE mall here called “The Pavilion” that EVERYONE goes to/talks about/worships. However, all of the locals call it “The Pav.” Every time I hear it I literally turn around because I think someone is calling me. No one else here really understands the significance of the nickname Pav, but it still gets me every time :)