South Africa 4 - the weekend.....here comes an epic!

Saturday 26th
Was sooo nice not to be woken up by an alarm - for anyone who knows me, you will know early mornings simply are not my thing so even after two weeks I begin to need a decent lie-in....i hope the rest of the team will be able to cope with that! :-P


So the day started at me for 1100 - which really isn't the start of a day at all but the start of an afternoon - so yea.....
the rest of the team was out sunbathing, reading and Phil was watching some brilliant SA rugby (yea, yea i know.....but these guys know how to play a decent game.....unlike some of the international British games I've watched recently!)


We basically mooched round and chilled out all day - not much was done. nice showers had, much sunbathing by our resident sun-worshippers (jenny and abby!), reading, eating, sleeping.
All those good things!
Oh and of course I did have the first phone conversation with home - which was really nice -especially knowing that it was relatively inexpensive because of the genius who invented Skype!

At around 7 we all went out to Nando's with Kylie(who is also from the UK and working in the Karen Millen Fashion School onsite...) had a very nice meal which reminded me of many good times sat in Nando's in Britain with different groups of very lovely ppl! :D
I managed to set the alarm on the house off as we were leaving because the keypad is a long way from the door (relatively speaking) and I wasn't quite quick enough in the locking up! Luckily the large barrage of info i had been given on Friday helped out and after a quick phone call reassuring the security company that I was not a burglar(!) we were good to go.

So when we got back from Nando's to have a marathon game of MoPo (slang for Monopoly) with Kylie and I was so relieved not to have set off the alarm when we got back that I completely forgot to close the gate at the end of the drive! About 4hrs and a game later (me and Izzy won!!) we went to say goodbye to Kylie and realised that the gate was open and that Buzz (the older one who normally doesn't run away wasn't there!
Cue worry, driving around in the dark, very, very apologetic phone call to owners (who kindly told us not to worry and to stop driving around at 0100 as it wasn't particularly safe) and eventual strongly worded argument to stop the dog lovers from roaming the streets.

No-one really slept, lots of silence and prayer. At 2ish Jonno remembered he hadn't put the gear lock on the car (added security measure) and walked out to find Buzz running past the gate.
Much celebration and all-round relief!

Sunday 27th
Sunday morning a couple of people went out to PCF really early (well they left at 0845....) considering we hadn't been in bed till about 3 in the morning...
I got up around 11 again
swimming was attempted - but the water was freezing - so that didn't last long!
Another day of mooching around and not doing very much :D
Had a pretty amazing BBQ(or braai) meal and then went to NCF
Fairly uneventful except Jenny got food poisoning from the chicken she cooked and I was woken at 0430 by the biggest clap of thunder i have ever heard in my life - and lay there for an hour jst listening to it - and watching the flashes of lightning - triple flashes at times - trying not to be blinded by the light!

Monday 28th
Yesterday was wierd, packed up and left the house as tidy as poss. Came back, found that 60 eggs have been donated to us (which makes a grand total of 72 as we had already bought 12!) we have managed to eat 20-odd already!!
Lots of reading and quietness. I think its fair to say that everyone sort of wishes we were able to start work properly this week - to stop drifting around the site. but at the same time it gives us more time to adapt into our changing team dynamic as we shift from being on our "best behaviour" to being more normal - which is good but inevitably leads to some tensions; nothing abnormal just one of those things to be aware of and sensitive towards as we do life together, I'm hoping it won't last too long!

In the evening we had a good session of Monopoly which I lost pretty badly due to leaving the game to talk to Dad who was bored while doing the VAT return(! second to a VAT return - I don't know!) therefore I was not the one rolling the dice - and i had the mishap of being more or less bankrupted by the time I got back!
This unfortunate incident was unfortunately overshadowed by Abby telling us at the end of the game that "I don't know why I'm laughing but I think I've broken my ankle"

Basically she had fallen down a couple of stairs in between our room and the seminar room (one of many oddly shaped and uneven set of stairs onsite) before we had started playing monopoly.
The lump(s) on her foot were now rather large so we got some frozen peas(these later turned out to be open but no-one noticed/cared at the time) and got her foot elevated.

And then the fun really began. (It was 2330 our time)

We phoned our Team Co-ordinator (phone off), our cell group leader (no answer), our UK Oasis contact (no answer and no response whatsoever on the emergency number). Finally we got directions to the nearest private hospital from Di - who is on the South Coast at the moment!
Jonno, Hannah, Phil and Abby all went to the Hospital (on Payne Street!!) and Jenny went to bed as she was still recovering from the chicken incident.

Abby was seen very promptly and was discharged home with crutches, strong painkillers, a bandaged foot and instructions to come back tomorrow morning for an X-Ray (this has now been done and there is no break. Brilliant stuff!)

I guess Monday and Tuesday have sort of blurred into one - but at the moment nothing that exciting has happened yet, please don't let this be famous last words!
We have a cell group bonfire night 2nite (plenty of marshmallows :D) so we might need to take extra special care that nothing unpleasant happens.....gas masks anyone?
and have a large packed lunch to prepare for the trip to the water park 2moro.
Bring on the supermarket....I am continually surprised by how much food seven of us manage to eat!

There isn't much to say to end this except - we promise to be careful the next time we crack open the Monopoly....

PS - We did eventually get hold of our Oasis Uk contact(Lisa) and she is going to try and find out why we couldnt get through on the emergency phone as it was on all of last night.....so don't panic!!

Peace out x