November 5 - 10, Joburg and Pietermarzitsburg, South Africa

South Africa!

We have arrived safely although are a bit jumbled. Because of our scramble before we left the US to turn in school applications, finish jobs, pack up and clean up the house, we really only planned our time in Europe. We have arrived here in South Africa only knowing where we will be staying until November 14. Knowing how South Africa has a in house 'travel agent' at almost every hostel we figured we would be okay to land and then figure our travels out. Not really so!

We stayed for three nights at a backpackers place in Joburg, an offshoot of a place we had stayed before. Because it had been a good experience before at the other place we assumed the same for the hostel in Joburg. While there is too much to say here and we haven't decided what to do about our experience yet, i.e. should we write the owners, etc. let's just say that it was crazy and overwhelming. This craziness meant that the 'in house travel agent' was not helpful. When we did ask something we were told she would get the answer for us, but the answers never materialized.

We then left and took a bus to Pietermarzitburg where we are to be until the 14th. We are here on the gracious invite of Gerald West to attend a conference on Contextual Bible Study. The place we are staying ( Thorn Tree Lodge) is magnificent. Our room is huge and has a thatched roof. The only problem being there is no internet here and the closest internet place is at least .5 mile away. Because we have just started planning our time in South Africa we sent out a lot of emails to contact different accommodations and now are not able to respond. We took a taxi to the nearest mall yesterday because we were told there was internet there and we needed to buy a card reader to be able to download our pictures and we wanted to buy a sim card for our cell phone. The whole trip was a bust – the card reader we bought can only be installed with a CD – our computer has no CD reader. The SIM card we bought does not work in the phone so then we went to several cell stores to try theirs none of which worked. And the big purpose in going – the internet, well that also didn't work. Needless to say this was all discouraging to us.

But today is a new day and we are about to embark on a walk to the closest internet place. If you are reading this now, you can assume we made it and it worked. :) Tomorrow is the start of the conference which we are really excited about.

We will update you as soon as we can get internet again.

Andrea