August 31, 2007

This morning I woke up exactly at 8:00am, I don’t know why, considering I could sleep until 9:00, but in any case, I couldn’t fall back asleep, so I went for a run down to the pier and back again. It was a gorgeous morning and by the time I was back home, a cool shower sounded refreshing. It was my first time out and about by myself, and I was surprised how comfortable I felt being out by myself. We don’t have class on Fridays, but we were invited by the private school Lestie (our music professor) also works for to attend a mass that was being hosted to celebrate 140 years of Dominican education in Port Elizabeth. The Cardinal of South Africa was there and it was a pretty big deal. So we all piled into a Kombi and went to the school to have an outdoor mass under a large white tent (it was the size of a circus tent!). The mass was very interesting, because there were songs done in Xhosa and it was cute watching the first grade students singing as well as listening to the music and instruments used by the orchestra. The Cardinal had a very funny sense of humor, as did the Bishop who also spoke. All in all, the service was a little over two hours long. Other than midnight mass at Christmas, it was the longest church service I have been to. By the time we came home to Langerry, we all were tired and just wanted to hang out in our rooms. The roommates and I went to the bakery to pick up a few groceries, and to go and get our laundry. I have never seen someone fold my laundry so nicely (sorry mom!) everything was fluffed and crisp! It was definitely worth paying someone to do it for me! The rest of the afternoon was spent on the internet, either uploading pictures, checking emails and overdue messages, and catching up on homework. It was so nice being about have internet access all day long, and I definitely got my fill of it! I was working on a website for uploading pictures, so a link to that site will be coming soon for you all to see my pictures! Dad and I finally were able to use our Skype today and it worked fairly well. There was a little bit of a delay, so we resorted to air traffic control lingo and when we were finished with our sentence or story we said, “over.” Then later Mom came on and she just laughed the whole time and would get very close to the microphone/webcam when she would talk! When I was talking to Mom and Dad I gave them the “tour” of my apartment. I walked around holding my computer up in the air for them to see all of the little spaces! I even brought them out to the balcony to see our amazing view of the ocean! Dad really liked it, from what he could see. He was laughing the whole time, because he would say, “I just saw a person walk by!” or “There goes a car!” Technology is quite incredible! Later in the day Marcus and Dane came on Skype and I got to see them for the first time in almost two weeks! Seeing them made me the happiest (not that I didn’t want to see Mom and Dad, but I talk to them every few days and I don’t with the boys) because they both were sitting next to each other and smiling and joking around like they would if I was at home! It made me miss them when I see both of my goofy little brothers smiling and waving at me…and then suddenly I changed my mind when they started bickering over the computer when it was acting up! Oh well, I guess some things never change!

The group all got ready and went out at 10:30ish to Toby Joe’s. Unfortunately it was not quite as fun as Wednesday night….I take that back, it wasn’t at all as fun as Wednesday! The music was crummy, the same techno stuff over and over and some of us just weren’t in the mood to be out doing the bar thing. After a drink and a few too many bad songs, Carrie, Katherine, and I came back home to go to bed! So I think that I am going to call it a night now. I wanted to post this, but the internet is a little touchy right now, hopefully it will be in ship-shape tomorrow! Goodnight!