Home Sweet Home

 When you walk in, you walk into the lounge area.  It is small but comfy.

 This is the lounge area from the other side of the room.  To the right is a stand with a small tv.

From the lounge you walk into a hallway where you can go right into the kitchen or left down a hallway to the bedrooms and bathrooms. It's

kinda like a triangle.  This is the kitchen, small but comfy with a nice oven and a new microwave.

So down the hallway the bathroom is on the right.  The toilet has it's own little room then the sink and tub are right next to it.  Every morning I take a bucket bath in the tub.  There is no shower so we just put some water in a big bucket and use a large cup to pour water on ourselves.  It works quite well.  In the corner of the bathroom there is a very nice washer for doing laundry.  Driers are not very common since it is sunny during the day pretty much every day so there is no need for a drier.  (the rain comes in the afternoon)

Right next to the room with the toilet is my room.  I have a very big bed (twin bed) and a sewing machine with some bags of cloth next to it (sewing machine is covered).  The room is spacious and comfy. Strait out from my window, over the neighbors house, and across the road is an

informal settlement.  It spreads across a big hill and at night I can usually hear bunches of dogs barking, if i keep the window closed they aren't very loud though.

So far it has been nice and relaxing.  Uncle Mark (host dad) usually takes me and shows me around somewhere once a day.  He took me on the Kumbi (taxi) to show me the rout I will be taking every day to work.  I'm not sure when I start work Monday. I will be learning some Zulu and getting to know how CLP works.  Thursday the 2nd I will be doing a 'meet and greet.' We have gone to the mall, the market (several times for groceries), and he showed me a nice route to run.  I'm not sure how far one lap is, but my guess is around .8 miles.  The first day I only made it two laps... kind of disappointing, but the hills are massive and constant.  There is one huge hill and another large hill (all of the hills are bigger than the ones in Indiana), so it will take some getting used to.  The next morning I ran with Justin (host brother) and we did 2 slow laps, then I ran 3 fast ones, then the next day 4, so I'm getting used to it quickly :).  I would say my highlights are running.  If I don't wear a shirt, I get all kinds of cheering and yelling from the kids along the road which is fun.  But yeah, as I run most people I pass say something encouraging, which is nice.  Everyone has been very friendly.  On Sunday we went to church.  Uncle Mark is a pastor there, so we greeted most people as they came in.  The service was very different from the church services at Walnut Hill (which has been the case for every church I've been to since coming to South Africa, which was expected).  The church is a smaller church, probably about 50 people were there.   Only a few people drove to church--most road a bus.  Wednesday night, Rory (I think he's the youth pastor, though I am not sure) picked Justin and me up and took us to Malcolm's house (Justin's brother).  It was the youth group for BCI (Breakthrough Church International) church where Malcolm works and Justin attends with him every Sunday before going to work at the mall.  Youth group was nice; we played some games to get to know each other and listened to a song and prayed and had some snacks.  There were 9 of us including Malcolm and his wife (plus 3 little kids that played in the room next to us).