October 28, 2007

This morning I didn’t want to crawl out of bed…first of all, I was so sore and bruised on my backside and my shoulders were a tad tender from getting sunburned. I managed to crawl out of bed and made it to breakfast with everyone. It was so nice eating with everyone, it felt like we had known our “family” for much longer than three days. We would talk, laugh, banter, and tease each other! I would have loved to have stayed for a few more days, and it would be so nice to be able to go back to visit them! After breakfast was finished, Brian herded us into the buckey to go to Mine’s house to meet everyone. On the drive we saw a zebra in the field! We arrived at Mine’s and a few more people joined us in the buckey, then Brian took us on a game drive where we saw five different species of animals. We saw black wildebeest, springbok, blesbok, redharted beest, and one other type of deer. We returned to Brian and Colleen’s after an hour drive.

At Brian and Colleen’s we all walked to the dam and we were going to have a picnic lunch there. Nine of us climbed onto this floating raft (it resembled a diving platform that wasn’t anchored) and we started to paddle out around the dam. We didn’t get very far, but it ended up with us all jumping in with our clothes on and we went swimming! We treaded water for about twenty minutes and swam together! It was cold but a bunch of fun! We finally swam to shore and went to dry off in the sun. We ate our lunch of sandwiches and juice. Then around 12:30 we rode the buckeys back to Colleen and Brian’s to change and we took a few pictures with our host family then we drove back to Mine’s to go to the van to leave. It was bittersweet leaving the farm and waving bye to Robert, Colleen, and Brian with the dogs sitting by the fence as we drove away. I felt that I really got to know them and that we were saying goodbye to family.

We went to Adelaide to visit the hospital and take a tour. As we were walking through the general ward, we saw the young girl from Friday who was brought by ambulance for her burns. It was so nice seeing her there and knowing that she was being cared for. I saw her and waved, and she waved me into the room and I walked up to her and she pulled the blanket off of her legs to show me and Denise her dressings on her legs. She also had a maintenance IV running with antibiotics which was nice to see. She motioned that she was in very little pain. I was very relieved to see her in the hospital, because I thought of her often this weekend.

After the hospital visit, we left to go home to PE. We came home did the picture swapping, journal updating, and ordered pizza! It was a very fun weekend that was very relaxing and cured the homesick bug for the time being!