Day 2

Wow. I love South Africa. Not only are the people who live with me (and the people who run my program) absolutely positively magnificent, the country itself is beautiful beyond belief.

But anyways, on to day 2.........

After staying up till 3 reading my new book "soccer vs apartheid", I awoke at 9am to some classic conversation in the kitchen. I slowly rose, wandered into the kitchen, and made myself a cup of tea. Multiple people were already up, and William, the program head, was in the living room making conversation with the other volunteers. As you may or may have not have read previously, a couple of our boys had themselves quite a night last night. I walked past William and the crew, and continued onto the room where the two boys who partied last night were sleeping. They were there, and we had ourselves plenty of laughs over the night we had had. After taking a shower, unpacking my clothes into cabinets, and eating breakfast, the group got prepared to depart to Mussenberg beach to have some surfing lessons. But before we left, a painter entered the house to finish up some work. His name was Marriot (like the hotel) and him and I had a lovely conversation. He is from Mauritania, a Northern African country, and he moved down to SA for the work. He is a funny dude, and he supports Kaiser Chiefs (big surprise...).

We left our Fish Hoek house at around 11, and headed towards Mussenberg. Roxy, Williams wife, drove us to the beach. Apparently, she was a fantastic surfer, and had been working on her trade for over 15 years. The drive over was beautiful, and attributed to my appreciation of the natural beauty of the country. We parked and went into the surf shop, where we met our instructors and dressed up in wet suits. Roger and Cameron were our instructors, both men of around 23-25. They equipped us with proper boards and led us to the ocean. After a short ABC's on how to surf, we ran into the ocean and began our surfing. I can honestly say, after one day surfing, I can see myself retiring at age 19 and surfing for the rest of my life. Its a wonderful sport, and the thrill you get from riding the wave for even just a few seconds equates that of scoring a goal: complete euphoria.

After an hour or two of surfing, Roger and I had become quite pals. He was an awesome dude, who was born in Angola, but moved down to CT at a very young age. He helped me improve my surfing game, and I cant wait to go back and surf some more next weekend. We headed back to the surf shop after we had finished surfing, and after showering and hanging up our wet suits, enjoyed a nice meal of pb&js that Roxy had prepared for us. While we were eating, we noticed that all around us were clothes, boards, and equipment with "Roxy" as its brand. The symbol for the Roxy brand was the quicksilver symbol turned sideways, added to another quicksymbol opposite it, creating a heart shape. Essentially, Roxy was a surfing brand, the equivalent of quiksilver, except it specialized in girls. What was amazing was that our Roxy (wills wife) was the same girl who ceated the brand!! Roxy, the surfing brand, is our Roxy! Wow!!!

We headed back home, and after changing back into our regular clothes, we began our orientation. Another member had joined our crew, Olivia, a cute little girl from Maine. William sat us all down and ran us through the ground rules. I will not go into great detail, as basically all the rules applied to the kids we will be teaching tomorrow. After an hour and a half of both jokes and serious comments, we were realeased to do whatever we pleased. Four boys and I headed down to a pub to watch the Arsenal game (lets avoud talking about it, shall we) and after a douple drinks headed home. Here I am, eating lasagna and drinking a brown cow, enjoying myself a beautiful 2nd night in SA.

Ma and Pa's quote of the day: My love for you is like surfing, no matter how many times I find myself being tossed around, I will always return and try it again!! Love you ma! Love you pa!