One of the girls had some hair dye left over, so now my beard is an exquisite shade of auburn.

32 days without shaving and 8 days without showering

Durban

Yesterday was awesome.

We were in Durban all day.  First we went to a water park, then the beach, then a professional rugby game.  It was awesome to finally do something purely for fun.  Most of our trips are educational things that are interesting, but I really needed a day of fun for the sake of fun.

I'm getting pretty tired of classes.  On most days, nothing too special happens.  I usually go from class to class to reading books to writing papers to sleeping.  All the days blend together.  I wanted something beautiful today, but I couldn't quite find it.  Today was a day in which I wanted to tell, and play a role in, a story that's meaningful, but I couldn't find the time before my 5 hour class that took me right to bedtime.

I'm telling myself that it will get better, and I know it will.  In just two weeks I'll be doing something meaningful––building houses and playing with children and visiting homes.  Then the stories will begin, beautiful and terrible, about laughter and sweat and AIDS and poverty and hope.

Today we hiked in the Drakensburg Mountains

In case you're a little rusty on your Afrikaans, Drakensburg means dragon mountains.  If that's not awesome enough, half of the hike looked like Braveheart and half looked like Lord of the Rings (Apparently, they actually did some set modeling for Lord of the Rings in those mountains).  It was so unreal.  We hiked up to some Bushmen cave drawings that were pretty rad.  Of course, we did a little humming of some songs from Lord of the Rings along the way.  On our way back, we were pretty tired from killing orcs and stealing treasure from Smaug, so we decided to stop and chill in the river for a while.


When we got back to campus we had dinner and 7 of the guys watched the Patriot on a projector.  It was awesome.  We need to do man things more often.  All this estrogen has seriously been wearing on all of us (not a joke).  In case you didn't know, our group is made up of 11 guys and 44 girls.  So seriously, we're all pretty drained and irritable.  I love several of the girls here, but I wouldn't mind a couple weeks without seeing a single female.  So, rant over.  We need to do man things more.  Here's some pictures!

Sometimes people think I'm ridiculous when I tell them about the Lord of the Rings stuff I want at my wedding

But yesterday, my art teacher said "Logan, I think those are really cool ideas.  My wedding dress was custom made, based on Eowyn's dress that she wears when the fellowship first goes to Rohan."

A quick little Zulu lesson

Awuzungidlula means 'you shall not pass.'  We specifically asked our teacher how to say this.

Musani ukuchita izingane means don't spill babies.  We learned some nouns and verbs and I figured this out all on my own.  Then I drew a fun picture.  Sometimes I forget how funny I am, but I always remember.

Things to be excited about...

My beard is coming in nice, my hair can kinda be put in a ponytail, I have a V-neck tan line

More Pictures

If you look closely between Paul's legs you may be able to spot the baby's head

Slip N Slide!

The guys!

Sophia got a great picture of Mr. Blue Balls

Solid Day

I went from one thing to the next all day. Today I:

went to two classes, bought some honey rum pipe tobacco, finally skyped with my parents, took a shower for the first time in 5 days and conditioned my beard, watched a bit of Lord of the Rings, read a little of The Old Man and the Sea, and now I'm going to bed at 9:30.  Tomorrow we are going to one of the top 5 beaches in the world!

We just ate mopane worms

Living with a fairly small group of people, many of whom I don't know extremely well, has been interesting.  Apparently I'm pretty sarcastic.