A brief update on the past week

This past week was filled with lots of planning, stress, and work, but it ended so great.

Monday through Wednesday we had our community engagement class for 7 hours each day.

Thursday we finally started at our service sites.  We only had two days which wasn't quite enough to start a large project, so we pretty much just did yard work and manual labor type stuff.  Tomorrow we will start building a house, and we will begin to be more involved with the people in the township.  The first two days weren't very eventful, but I can tell the next three weeks will be awesome.

Earlier in the week i found out that I got an RA position in the upperclassmen apartments for next year.  I am very excited to room with my good friend, Dan.  I also figured out my schedule for next semester which is such a huge relief.

On Saturday and Sunday, almost all the guys and a few girls went to Durban.  Durban is such an awesome beach town, and it was so nice to be away from campus for two days.  We had all been getting cabin fever pretty badly, and a weekend away did us all well.  We spent lots of time at the beach, found a pretty good Mexican restaurant, bought some awesome stuff at a really cheap market, got stuck in possibly the biggest thunderstorm I have ever seen, and went to a sports bar to watch South Africa come back to upset India in a very exciting cricket game.

I feel so cultured and awesome...

I just watched so much cricket.  And better yet is that I now understand most of it.  The world cup is going on and South Africa is doing awesome.  My past two hours were spent with a bunch of guys watching the cricket world cup, eating food, playing pool, and watching youtube videos of people raising lions.  I'm feeling a very odd combination of sophisticated and manly.  I'm not sure if I want to charge at a castle with my chariot led by bears mounted with rocket launchers, or if I want to grab my pipe, scarf, peacoat, monocle, and a glass of wine and sit by the fire in a huge chair to read some Thoreau.

It's weird having to plan real world things here

At least I'm not having four skype interviews every week for summer jobs like a lot of other people here.
However, my summer job plans and such are indeed quite up in the air.

I find out if I get an RA position in 3 days!
Academic advising starts in 3 days as well and registration for next fall is at the end of the month.
The class times and professors for next semester are now posted so I looked through those and wrote down all my potential classes.  I still need one general education class (theology), two more youth ministries classes, and nine more english classes before graduation.
Some great news I figured out today:
If I don't add a screenwriting minor and if I CLEP out of Spanish, then I can study abroad again as long as I take at least 6 units of English abroad, and I could still graduate a semester early.

Gooo

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.