Secret Garden and Basketball

Hello!

I just want to quickly share with you my Friday activities! I was preparing for a long day of lecture at Lynedoch but, as usual, Grant surprised us. We began the day by going around the circle and sharing with the group something we were grateful for at that moment. Then we went around again and each completed the sentence "the greatest gift I've received from this experience to date is..." Hearing the thoughts of my incredible classmates was an energizing and moving way to begin the morning. Afterwards we walked about a mile down the railroad tracks to a secret garden! It's actually a nursery and I suppose it's not that secret, but it was really neat. Grant told us we had an hour to explore and relax.

It was such a simple place, but there was so much to see. There were tons of plants and flowers with a walkway winding through all of them. There was a wooden playground tucked into the corner. There were tables, chairs, benches, and a comfy bed in the middle of the property. There were wind chimes and cool mobiles made out of recycled materials hanging everywhere. There was a small, unobtrusive cafe. There was a beautiful black lab and a small cat, who both loved our attention. There were cages with talking parrots and many other kinds of birds. There was a small pond with the cute bridge built over it. And all of this was in the shade, thanks to the huge trees that formed a canopy. Before we knew it an hour and fifteen minutes had passed so we headed back to Lynedoch.

After returning we had our lunch and Grant announced that we'd be doing our last activity at the train station so that we could take an earlier train home. While waiting for the 1:55 train we took turns standing in front of our classmates and listening to them compliment us. Grant wanted us to point out each person's positive attributes, and it often became emotional because we've grown so close in these six short weeks together. We weren't finished by the time the train came, so Grant boarded it with us so we could continue. Ten minutes later we arrived at Stellenbosch Station and still had two people to go, so Grant got off the train with us. When we finally finished we made him stand up while we shared how we felt about him. He wasn't expected this and was extremely humbled by everything we said. He let a few tears fall before thanking us and sending us on our way. So the day turned out to be the greatest 5 hour lecture I've been to.

But the excitement doesn't stop there. This evening I played in a basketball game against the University of Cape Town! Earlier this week I decided to join the Stellenbosch team because I miss playing basketball and I have ludicrous amounts of free time. It's technically a club team, but there are no varsity basketball teams in South Africa, so this is the real deal. Except it's not. The team's only slightly more organized than St. Mike's intramurals, and that's not saying much. The game was close for the first quarter, then in the second quarter 2 of our girls fouled out. We only had 6 players to begin with, so we played the entire second half with 4 on the court. The other team had at least 12 players and they played a full court press for nearly the entire game. We ended up losing by 44 points. Regardless, I had a good time, I'm finally meeting some South African students, and I'm really excited about playing basketball three days a week.

Ok the last thing I want to tell you all about is the Wish List that I've compiled on amazon.com. My friend Kate gave me the idea because she's looking for donations for a school in Ghana that she's working at next month. I'm not expecting anyone to make purchases, so don't feel like you have to, but I wanted to give people another way of becoming involved in my experience. Some people have been asking about ways to help and I figured this would be easy. Most things on the list are under $10, and then it's $4 for shipping. There's maps, art supplies, and puzzles on the list right now because I thought those were cheap but important things for the school. So if you want to make a purchase, you simply go to amazon.com, click the icon that says 'Gifts and Wish Lists,' type 'Sarah Regan' into the 'search for a wishlist' box, and click on my list. It works similar to a wedding gift registry, the bill gets mailed to you and the product gets mailed to me. And, as I mentioned before, sending raincoats over here is another great way to make a difference in the lives of these children. Thanks so much to everyone that wants to get involved and to ALL OF YOU that have been reading my blog!

Tot siens!

P.S. Here's my mailing address again for raincoats...

Sarah Regan
International Office
Wilcocks Building
Victoria Street
Stellenbosch, South Africa
7600