Blessed:)

Hello!
So, I just wanted to share a little about my week and how life is going :) Monday was Mom's birthday. I felt like I celebrated it for 3 days with this time change! I think I blogged about Monday already. Tuesday (yesterday) was a great, relaxing day. The sun was out for most of the day. I have been SO blessed this week to have gotten a few good times to talk with Jeremy already instead of a few times total in a week! Although the internet connection here is not so good and things can get super frustrating, it's better than nothing and we recognize. Today I was able to spend some time talking with Brooke and Evie before her nap, Grandma Dean who just got Skype! (yey!!) and listen to Dad's sermon (on arcadechurch.com) of Truth Part 1. Makes me feel like I'm literally not on the other side of the world!

Before all of this communication I had today I started off the day by waking up to 1) geese at 6am, 2) a girl shouting at monkeys to GO AWAY at about 6:30 and 3) my roomie's alarm. Oh to live in a community... in Africa. Went to breakfast, was spoiled by a hot meal (even though I only eat cereal, we are so blessed to have every meal prepared for us!), talked with Jeremy, went to tea time and celebrated a girl's birthday with Apple Pie, got ready for the day, lunch, (as you can see we eat a lot here...), drove like 3 hours to the Drakensburg Boy's Choir which was GREAT! (Mom, you would have loved it!), drove 3 hours back, late dinner, talking to people, now studying for an Art final in the morning.

Tomorrow I have my final from 8:30-10:30am. Durban & beach from 11-5p ish, dinner at the "revolving restaurant" or some name like that which I guess is pretty well known here and I'm exxxcited about that! Then I may stay to go to this performance night which as spoken word and lots of other poetry/singing things but if that's the case I get back realllly late so I may not go. Then back to bed!

Friday and Saturday from 9am-4pm we have a community class in preparation for next week's start of our community projects! I got the place I wanted to go to most: Project Gateway. It is a business that has many different outreaches. It's main goal is to put people in the community back on their feet by giving them skills so that they can start a business and provide for themselves. They have a women's shelter/counceling center for women which I can work with a little. I guess the women love to bake so we can go over there, play with their BABIES! (YEY!) and just build relationships. Most of these women have been raped and are pregnant or have just had babies and have no where to go. I hope I can spend time there. There's also a fashion school on campus where some women who get in can learn everything fashion from basic sewing so they can start their own business. There is a grade school where the government has just approved us to be able to help out with. Then there are odd jobs like painting and gardening and maintenance that will need to be done. There are 6 of us going and I love the group and am excited to go :) We will be there about 4 days (Monday - Thursday) for 5 weeks (with a few exceptions). We start on Tuesday the 10th.

And that's my life! I'm sure there will be another 3 albums by the end of the week as usual on Facebook so keep checking! I have so many new pictures all the time! :)

With love from South Africa,
Paige