Drakensberg Boys and Giraffes

What a great week :) On Tuesday our clinicals were cancelled because we had a guest speaker come to AE and he held a four hour seminar for us on Zulu culture. It was super interesting and I am so glad that I was able to go. On Wednesday it was the hottest day ever! We drove a little over 2 hours to the Drakensberg Mountains to see the Drakensberg Boy's Choir. They are one of the top boy's choirs in the world, ranking up there with the Vienna Boy's and I just totally loved them! They did a lot of African songs and old gospel songs. But they also did "Beautiful Girls" by Sean Kingston which was so great! They were so much fun to see and totally worth the long hot drive in the bus without air-conditioning. And it reminded me of the good times in high school when I would travel to go watch my friends' choir competitions and performances, so that brought a smile to my face :) Here is picture of the beautiful sky on our drive home near the Drakensberg Mountains:

Thursday I was back at Mason's clinic and was able to work with Sister McKay in the ARV unit. It was a lot of observation and helping her with documentation. She isn't to keen on letting student's draw blood or do assessments, which was unfortunate for me but I still feel like I learned a lot because I was so full of questions. Midway through my time with her, the waiting room outside broke out in songs of praise to God again and my heart just instantly felt happy. I asked to go sit in the waiting room so that I could hear the pastor's message and join in on the songs and Sister McKay was very kind to let me. It was a good message and I feel like I was meant to at Mason's just for me to be in the waiting room for that short bit.

On Saturday, a group of twelve of us asked to go to a local game reserve in the morning to see some giraffes. The rest of the group had already been to see them during one of their class field trips but the nursing class and one other class had not been. So "Baba" (Father) Philip kindly took us. And within 5 minutes of walking through the game reserve we spotted their tall heads poking through the trees!! :) We all were so excited and walked off the path and into the bush to get closer, and naturally the giraffe started walking away. But we followed him for a couple of minutes and he led us straight to all of his friends! :) It was amazing there were like 20 giraffes just chillin' in the bush with the zebras! There were even baby giraffes -so cute! It was seriously so fun to see them and get close to them, such an awesome experience! Here is a quick picture of me pointing to the big one behind me:

Here is a quick video that I took of them all surrounding us with the zebras. They were running together so gracefully but of course stopped right when I hit the record button. But it's still a cool video. Sorry it is kind of short and that I am moving it fast...but you can at least get the gist of what it was like :)

After spending the morning with the giraffes and the zebras, I went out to lunch with my chalet mates. We went to this place called Frankie's which is next a cute little lake. I had a very tasty burger which I haven't had since I was back at home. And then we topped it off with a $1 ice cream cone which was perfect because it was miserably hot again. Today, I skipped church for some much needed R&R. I feel like I have been on the go since day one, so it was nice to sleep in and spend some time to myself. I also spent some time today in the stream that leads to the big waterfall with some friends and we played games and watched monkeys jump from trees. Even though it wasn't a productive day, it was great :) This week I will be back at Ethembeni and then a new clinical site called Walk in The Light. I am excited to go to the new sight and I am really excited that we are getting closer and closer to the safari trip on April 1st because my new favorite animal is the giraffe! :)