First Winter Birthday

Sooo...

Over a week and a half done in Durbs, and not a blog to show for it. There is simply too much to absorb here - much less regurgitate in any meaningful format for you all... But, I will do my best for a few minutes, as I wait for a meeting on New Members to start. Thank God for new members of the body of Christ in all corners of the globe.

A few thoughts...

on what it's like to turn 25 on the other side of the globe. It was kind of a funny feeling to have my birthday start a full 6 hours earlier than it would have, were I at home. It felt a little like I was cheating, jumping the gun on June 1, when everyone I know was still stuck in May. As I'm getting used to (because it seems I'm rarely home for my birthday), it was a tad strange to be among a lot of people I barely know to celebrate such a day. But, as I have quickly learned, the people I've met here are more hospitable than a Southerner. They gave me flowers and a cake with a candle that sang "happy birthday," Janice, my host-mom, took me to lunch in the hills beyond Durban, along with my friend Audrey from Duke, who is stationed about twenty minutes away. It was absolutely beautiful with very rolling hills (which I am getting much better at mastering with my gear shift clutch control plus hand brake), and humid, cool air. It was, however, a tad sobering to be eating an enormous meal of Chicken Mushroom Pie, while asking Janice what all the buildings were a hill over - only to be told that they are settlements - settlements being areas mostly housing very, very poor black South Africans who have been displaced through Apartheid and any number of other economic injustices. We didn't have dessert.


That night, I went with a bunch of the young adults to see a movie at the theater a block away from our house. Everyone agreed that Freedom Writers was the best option, and it was a great movie - except for the fact that it was also quite sobering to watch a movie about high school gangs in California while being in South Africa, which also has an enormous gang problem - much of it, ironically, copied from their observation of American gangs... By the end of the movie, I have to say though, that I wasn't sure I wanted to move back to the United States. And so what did we do? We went to get coffee, which is, I am told by South Africans, what all Americans do. I, much to their amazement, do not drink coffee, so I had Horlicks - a fabulous hot British malt beverage that is far superior to coffee in every way.

More later on learning and teaching in South Africa...