ZIMBABWE here I come!!!

Hey everyone
It's 7 pm right now and we're leaving for Zimbabwe exactly midnight. We want to get to the border by the time it opens (6 am) and we want to be the first people there so we don't have to wait in line. We wanted to go white water rafting on the Zambezi River but apparently they have cancelled all trips because the rapids are too dangerous. Hopefully by the time we get there, they will re-open the place.
I drove a manual car today! Well just for a few minutes, then I gave up cuz i kept on stalling the car when trying to park on a hill. Otherwise, I think I was doing pretty well up to that point.
I have been trying to post up my pics but this internet connection is so slow and I'm too impatient to wait for so long =)
There's this one East Indian dude who smells really bad. Not from a curry smell, but more like a BO, haven't showered in a long time and every oriface of his body stanks so badly kinda smell. Anyways, he mentioned that we should have one big gigantic tent for the 4 of us so then we don't take up space in the car for his tent. I quickly shut that idea down!!! I'd rather have another chance of getting molested like in Swaziland than not be able to breathe!
Don't worry, he doesn't know my blog site so he won't read this. But for those who know who i'm talking about, you know what I'm talking about!
I have news from back home! My brother bought a house and now i have a new room to use! I'm going to turn it into a games/dance/guest bedroom. It's going to have all of my bro's playstations and nintendos, big mirrors so I can see myself while dancing, and a bed for those who want to sleep over at my house =) Apparently he bought the new Wii game and his gf bought the new Xbox so I can have all his old games. We rented PS 2 here in Sizanani for a couple of nights and I totally rocked everyone's asses.
I am going to stay in London and stay at Krista's place for a bit. Then travel to amsterdam to visit my family. I think I already told you guys that. If I have a chance, I'm going to visit the two Dutch girls I met here and possibly my pretty German boys!!! It was so weird to say goodbye to your close friends when you know that you may not see them again.
Anyways, so as you may have realized, this is just me rambling because I'm too psyched about Zimbabwe and I had nothing else to do tonight except wait another 5 hours until we get into our rental Nissan ??Almero?? for a another 5 hour wait until the border, then another day's worth of driving to Victoria Falls. haha... fun eh??
PS- Don't laugh when you hear me talk for the first time ok?? I have started rolling my RRRR's like eveyrone else and instead of saying "eh??" at the end of a sentence like typical Canadians, I say "nehh??" like a black South African.
Hopefully you get to see some pictures from my trip to Zimbabwe soon!

Happy Chinese New Year in South Africa!

Happy Chinese New Year everyone! I spent the whole day at the second biggest Buddhist Temple in the Southern Hemisphere yesterday. Can you believe that this temple is built right here in Bronkhurstspruit, South Africa?? Who knew there were so many asians over here. I seriously don't know where they all came from. I would see maybe one or two in a day at the most, but yesterday there were swarms of them! I felt like I was back in Vancouver, walking the night market in Richmond or something. The asian girls look exactly the same as in Vancouver/Hongkong. None of them have big asses as you would assume, living in big ass country South Africa.
We watched the dragon and lion dance then walked around the place for some good ol' chinese cookin'. I missed home so much because there was chinese food everywhere!!! It was also the firs time I saw recycling bins!! I was so happy i took a picture of them. People here don't recycle. They just throw away they're shit on the grass and burn it. Thank goodness for asians for thinking recycling =)
Then there was some kungfu fighting dances (tingtingting ting ting ting ting ting "kungfu fighting melody") and some gumboot dancing. The gumboot dancers were so cute. They were little african boys with big man's gumboots and doing the stomp basically.
I saw a cute asian girl and she totally looked like veronica and so not part of this world. I'm sure she was from somewhere in North America with her stylish looks.
On saturday, I abused the driver of the care centre that i work at and got him to drop me off in town to do some window shopping and pick me up a few hours later =). I don't know why I didn't take advantage of him earlier!
Anyways, I can't wait until Agnes and I meet up and head down to Cape Town. I want to either do the highest bungee jump in the world, or cage dive with great white sharks! Tell me what you guys think I should do.
Bye for now!
PS- thanks to those who have been leaving comments on my blog! Namely, eugene, aj, diana, julia and agnes. AHEM..... I DON'T SEE ANYONE ELSE LEAVING COMMENTS AND I KNOW YOU GUYS HAVE GMAIL ACCOUNTS!

swazi pictures

Hello my darrrrrlin's
So I realized, I don't have the greatest pictures from Swaziland. I did take a really long video of some Swazi dancing but I'm too lazy to post that one up. So let's see what I haven't told you about. I'm starting work at the disabled children's home now. It's unbelievably disorganized there but I won't even get started on that.
I think I'm going to extend my trip later and stay in Holland for about two weeks to visit my family. That means I won't see my parents when I get home because they will be in China by the time I get back. That means... PARTY AT MY HOUSE! I love making traditional south african cooking so when I get home, I can cook for all y'all! I think that is why my ass is growing so much... cuz i have two lunches and two dinners all the time.


So here they are!This is the old beehive hut we stayed in for one night in Swaziland. I looooooooooooved my little beehive.


My pretty furry sandals which I was not allowed to buy because it was cruel to animals... but i still loved them.


This is Rob, one of the new Dutch volunteers. He's here with his gf (fake wife) Anne. They had to lie cuz if they didn't, they were not allowed to stay in the same house, much less in the same room.


OH PUMBA!!!! I ate his relative on one of the nights we stayed in Mlilwane National Park. The night before eating Pumba's friend, I ate Blesbok (an antelope family). It was a little too gamey for my liking. Pumba was good though. The picture below is the Blesbok.
The blesbok ended up on my plate =)


The picture below was Pumba's little friend.




This is my little friend the Hippo. The guide took us on a little walk around the estuary and we were only about 10 meters away from them... separated by water thankgoodness.

These icing sugar topped nyalas were roaming all around our beehive huts.

Anyways, that's all folks!

My pretty German boys are leaving me

Hey boys and girls,
So this week has been a total write-off. I went away to Swaziland last weekend but didn't get home until monday midday because... well we wanted to stay an extra day there. I think with the combination of PMSing, lazy employees, and my Germans leaving me, I accomplished absolutely nothing at work. Oh well... there's always next week.

So far, I've had at least 2 people tell me my ass is growing into a beautiful black woman's ass. Hopefully it'll go down to normal size by the time I get home.

I bought TONS of things in beautiful Swaziland and spent way too much money. Sorry guys, didn't buy anything for you guys yet but i'll keep on searching =).

Oh I totally forgot about my scary night in Swaziland. Anne and I were sleeping in a tent in the camping ground of the backpacker's hostel one night, and I was woken up by the sound of, what I thought was, a thunderstorm. Instead, it was a man trying to unzip my tent's doorway! He tried to open it ever so slowly... click... click... click... and I saw his knees and hand. I yelped like a mofo, closed the zipper shut and tried to listen for the man. I woke Anne up and she totally didn't believe me and told me to go back to sleep, until we BOTH heard him behind our tent! Luckily, before we went to bed I met the security guard, Patrus. He told me to call out his name if I see someone that is not him... (When he said this i thought, how am i gonna tell if it's him or not in the dark?!?!) So anyways, I called out his name, again like a MOFO, and he came to my rescue. He ran after the guy and beat him with his stick to a pulp!
PHEW!!! what a nite! After that, we were put in a dorm room with a lock. There were two boys with us who slept in the dorm rooms already cuz they didn't have a tent. They were such pussies. They didn't even come out of their rooms. Instead, looked through the caged window and asked us, "are you girls alright?" Oh Man...

Anyways, so that was the scariest moment I've ever encountered in Africa. Next time that I'm camping, I'm going to situate my tent so that i'm in the middle of a circle of tents.

Uploading pics while at work

Now I feel satisfied. I've put up all the significant pics that I wanted to show you. Don't worry, I have tons more which I'll show you when I get back home or upload if I get too bored and want to sit in front of a computer forever. That would mean... tomorrow at work then =) hehehe.



The first thing we saw on our 4 am game drive was this lion! How cool is that?! It was just sitting beside the road of the Kruger National Park.

We were actually this close to the giraffe. No zoom needed! Well maybe a little bit to actually fit into the picture but seriously... this close!

We went on a walking tour with these two loaded guards. There's a picture of me holding one of the rifles but thats in someone else's camera. You just have to believe that i looked damn hot with a rifle in my hands.

We were so scared that the elephant was on a rampage and was gonna kill us all in our beat-up Landy but it was all good. It was on a rampage to get to water.
These are the girls that were originally here when I arrived. From left to right: me, Marleen, Angela, Elan, Zjolka, Julie. Marleen and Angela went back home to Dutchland. They are Dutch students studying disabled children at St. Mary's Home. Elan, volunteering as a marketing agent, went back home to London. Zjolka and Julie are PT's.

This one is for Dee. My favourite burger place in South Africa. Wimpy's... I think I'm in love.

These are the German boys I've been hanging out with this whole time. We were in St. Lucia for New Years, snorkeling, sun-bathing, checkin' out the TNA's on the beach. Don't worry, there weren't that many. When I took this picture, there were two gay guys on the left side checking THEM out! Yeah, I would have thought the Germans were gay too.

This was at 12:05 am January 1, 2007. We missed the countdown cuz... well no one was really watching the time that well. So we made our own countdown.

This is one of the beaches we went to during our St. Lucia trip. We went to so many I don't even remember where this one was. It's either Sodwana Bay, Cape Vidal, or St. Lucia Beach. All of them were really nice.

We went on a walking tour beside the Crocodile Centre in St. Lucia. Then we came upon an electric fence with this sign. I, wanting to go back the other direction, was outnumber 3 to 1 and we crossed the electric fence to the friggin dangerous game drive where you're not allowed to step out of your car!!! Fortunately, we came out of there alive.

Look at how the giraffe drinks! I had no idea that's what they do... I guess I never really figured out how they should drink water.

Sebastian (Sebi) rockin' out.

Look how scared Sebi was with our 1 kg prawns meal.

To end it all off, just wanted to show you how gay these German boys can get. No wonder gay men were checkin' them out!

Wowee 6 comments already??

Thanks guys for actually reading my blogs! I had an awesome weekend btw. I lounged in a convent and swam in their pool. Don’t worry, I didn’t get sucked into the nunnery. On Saturday night, we had a braai (bbq) with the orphanage that the German volunteers work at. The kids danced and sang for us, and gave the volunteers good-bye presents because the Germans are going home in two weeks. I can’t believe my Germans are goig home! So this is how Dee felt when her Swiss friends left her. Hehe.

Then on Sunday, we went to a small game park and did a 2.5 hour hike! It was really nice there and we saw lots of animals. The hike was really nice but I did it in my Old Navy flip flops which wasn’t so great. I’m trying to get the group to do the 17 km hike, which is probably gonna take a whole day!

I can’t wait until I go to Swaziland. We’re going next week. It’s going to be an 8-day trip to Blyde River Canyon, Kruger Park, and then Swaziland. I’m gonna be with the Germans and two of their moms… I hope I can last the whole trip without killing one of the Germans… I don’t know if I can stand 8 days with these people. We’ll see.

Did I tell you guys I’m hooked on Grey’s anatomy? I’m on disc 5 of season 2. It’s damn good…. I got all the girls here hooked on it too. I can’t wait until I get home and buy the 3rd season.

Anyways, I’m at work right now and I don’t think updating my blog and emailing is very productive for work. Talk to you guys soon!

rani

A real RD now!

Hey guys!
just wanted to let you know that I'm a real dietitian now! I passed my licensing exam. Let's celebrate! We're doing another Indonesian dish tonight called Rendang beef, except it won't be beef tonight because there's an East Indian guy who doesn't eat beef so we're doing lamb, shrimp and chicken instead. It's like a curry but super yummier!!!! When I brought up having vegetables in our dinner they all said, "what??? vegetables, what for? We don't need to waste more money on food". These people don't eat vegetables?!?!

Anyways, so tonight we're celebrating me passing my exam and celebrating/mourning for the fact that two physiotherapist may have kept or lost their jobs, respectively. There's a meeting this afternoon about the future of the Children's home that i was supposed to work at but had lots of violent strikes so most likely it's going to be shut down. On a brighter note, I'll still have my job =).

So the English girl that was supposed to be working here left early cuz she just couldn't cut it in the real world! Just kidding... in case she's reading this.

I've gotten way fatter and way lazier than usual. Let's hope I don't let it all go and get as fat as.... a sumo wrestler.

Also, may I add that as of right now Julia is my favourite friend because she's posted TWICE!!! That's two more times than anyone else people!

I might be going to Swaziland in two weeks time if I can get the time off. I hope I get to travel a lot. At least I get something accomplished over here. One thing I do have is a hot TAN! Muahahaha all you people in Canada and everywhere else that's cold. SUCKA!!!

Anyways, hope I can have more patience next time to upload my pics. Seriously, it takes forever. You have no idea....

love rani