The Beginning of our Journey...

This is Peter with a bit of an update from our travels so far. It's taken a while to get things up and running as far as this blog goes because: 1. it took 30 hours to get here, 2. we stopped into a farm in Pretoria the first couple days we were here and they didn't have internet, and 3. we've been a bit lazy just trying to conquer the jet lag.

But we're up and running now. It's been a great trip so far even though we're only a couple days into it. We've boarded our flights and traveled from LAX all the way to Heathrow in London, only to complete the half way mark of our journey. We hung out there in a private lounge that some credit card of Kicker's gave him the priviledge of visiting. Then we boarded our next plane from London to Johanesburg- only about 12 hours long. The first leg of the flight was great since the plane was basically empty which allowed me and Kicker to jump into full rows of empty seats and lay down to catch 8 hour "naps" on our flights to London. Then on the flight to Jo'burg we got an exit row which helped us stretch our legs out. Thanks to Kicker's sweet talking the ladies at the South African Airways desk put in a good word and got us a good seat.

Since arriving in South Africa, our friend Yolana picked us up with her friend, Sam, and we went to their other friend's place in the country side just on the outskirts of Jo'burg. We hung out there for a day and a night taking naps, playing tennis, and watching rugby (the host family's son's were playing in a televised match). I'm not much of a rugby fan, but it's sure easy to get into a sporting event when you watch it with player's family members. It was actually a really close game and luckily our host family's son's team won the game.

The second day at the farm outside Jo'burg we decided to visit a game park about 5 minutes away and we got to see some amazing creatures and a wondrous cave. There are some pictures on the slideshow, but the photos cannot do justice to what these animals look like in real life. We got there just after the game park was having its feeding time, and the lions, wild dogs, and cheetahs were out and about. The lions were probably the most active. There were around 8 lions with one tearing away at the carcass of water buffalo or something. At one point a female lion tried to sneak a bite away from the male and there was a bit of roaring and clawing. I think the lioness decided it'd just wait it's turn.

After the game park we hopped back in the car and drove to meet our host family in Pretoria. On our way there we went to see the son of our host family play in his high school symphony rehearsal. It was a pretty fun event mostly because it was in another country but also because it was incredible hearing about 400 hundred kids playing instruments and singing to the tune of Superman. If it wasn't so hot and Kicker and I weren't jet lagged we definitely would have stayed awake the whole time. Bascially, we desperately needed the coffee at the break. It was, honestly, a good show.

After the show we made our way to the family's house we were going to stay with and met Hanlie and Clive. They are very generous and have been feeding us like kings. We are staying in a pool house all by ourselves and their house is quite remarkable. They designed and renovated it with help from their daughter who is a very accomplished artist. We loved everything about the pool house except for the monstrous, hairy, mean looking spider we found crawling around the tile floor last night. I was coming out of the bathroom walking back to the bed when I saw a "rain spider" (as we later found out it was named) working its way past my bed on its way to Kicker's bed which was on the ground. Of course we are in Africa and to my knowledge anything that looks mean in Africa probably is mean in more way than one. So we took appropriate action and got out the camera as we continued to yell and scream about how "freaking big this freaking spider was." After a couple pictures where the spider reared back on its hind legs, we decided it probably didn't like us and it was time for us to flip flop crush it to death. So Kicker grabbed my sandal and was trying to pick it up to dump it off outside when he decided that his strategy was just too risky- after all the spider was just about the size of the flip flop. After Kicker dropped the flip flop while I was yelling at him, I picked it up and smeared that spider all over the floor.

Today when we woke up at 12 noon South Africa time, we found out from Hanlie that our friendly spider was just that, totally harmless and in fact a good omen, much like the lady bug. Well, we smashed it on the tile floor and didn't really care about that good luck mumbo jumbo. That's what I'm going to do any time I see a spider the size of my hand rearing up on its hind legs, I'll tell you that much. Either way we survived the night and had a good work out with the club team at Tuks University here in Pretoria. Friendly people but the pool is about 84 degrees and we're at about 55oo feet in elevation- it's hard to breath to say the least. We did a pretty easy work out and didn't worry about impressing the coaching staff. Maybe we'll do that in Durban.