Cote D'Ivoire Comes to PE

Cote D'Ivoire was here!!!  I saw Salomon Kalou, 3 inches from me. 

The game tied 1-1 and Kalou only came on as a second half sub, but other than this it was awesome!!!  Met Warren and Greg at a bar down the road from the stadium for some pre-game drinks.  Jess walked over really early with me to watch the warm-ups.  I felt like a little kid.  It was so exciting!

Danny bought tickets for all the City Lads Ladies so they were all there too.  Enjoyed some great soccer (#12 is INSANE) and after the game got up real close to Salomon.  He came up to the stands, but only took one picture with a fan.  So I took a picture of him. 

City Lads

I have not been registered quite yet due to unforeseen issues.  South Africa is one of the most bureaucratic places I've ever seen!  It's crazy.  Trying to get donations for our HCT has been a hassle because no store has the authority to do so - have to go to the regional office.  Now trying to get registered is crazy.  I had to go through all this visa stuff and now I have to get the police to verify that I am residing in the country.  It's crazy.  So until everything gets taken care of I can train and watch games.

The first game of the season was a disaster.  I missed it, being in J-Bay and all, but it sounded bad.  I got to run during the week for it though.  Last weekend was better.  We had a nice home game and won 6-1.  Nice. 

We probably had so much energy because the red bull girls visited our practice on Friday.  They gave us all free red bull (of course) and nice pamphlets telling us that we should be drinking red bull to energize ourselves before sports....jeez. 

Other than this my weekend was a bust!  I was sick with the stomach flu from Friday to Tuesday.  Got 2 days off of work to lay in bed in pain watching movie after movie and season after season of 30 Rock.  I am able to eat food again though which is nice. 

Feeling semi-normal on Saturday morning however allowed me to fulfill my duties as an intern and I woke up nice and early to drive out to Booyens Parks, a super sketchy place that we were advised not to go to on the weekends...but targets call I suppose.  Jim and I went out there to bring food for lunch for everyone and pencils for pre-quizzes.  This didn't take too long and I was soon back home in bed.

And so is the tale of my weekend...

KALOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

BEST NEWS YET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

THE IVORY COAST IS COMING TO PE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bafana Bafana vs. Ivory Coast Nov 12th at the PE Stadium!

KALOU IS COMING TO ME!!!!!!!!!!!!

Drogba?  Toure?  Gervinho?

This is awesome!

What is they work out at our gym?

Omg omg omg omg!

Chiefs

Last night we went and saw the Kaizer Chiefs play at the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium.  This is one of SA's best club teams (Chiefs vs Pirates is the big rivalry for the title) playing in one of the World Cup stadiums (and a beautiful stadium at that).  The four interns went along with Dani (the filmmaker) and all the coaches on the City Lads.  We had a great time, though the score was 0-0.  I sat with Chika and Shuffle (my loves!) and got to see some people who I had only seen on TV before.  Soo cool.

My fun continued today.  I turned in all my reports yesterday so I took today off - kinda.  Jess and I went to Greenacres Mall for the whole day.  We just walked around and asked stores for donations for our HCT (HIV Counseling and Testing) tournament that we are hosting November 26th.  I am chairing the media and prize committees so I've been going around begging people for goods, money, airtime, ads in the paper, etc.  It's been fun and awkward.

Swimming

Woke up Tuesday morning at 5:00 am and went to the gym.  I think about doing it every day, but I can never actually get up!  Managed somehow though and went for a swim in the pool.  It was so nice and I need to keep doing it.  I felt so good afterwards.  I am really tired today though. 

Locked In

On Tuesday I had to turn in all of our site reports.  This meant that Monday I stayed late at work to work on our financial report because I received our bank statement that morning and needed to make sure the numbers matched and then put everything together.  I ended up staying past building hours on accident though.  Being alone in the office, people had shut out door and the building manager just figured everyone had left.  This meant that as soon as I opened up the gate outside our door the whole building resounded with alarms.  I was locked in the building and ear-piercing alarms were screaming in my ears.   Oops.  Jess called the building manager and the security company showed up.   The security guys thought it was funny and joked around with Jess while they waited for me to get out.  The building manager however was pissed!  He lectured me a bit about his time and how he wasn't getting paid for this.  My bad.

The Return of Lizzy/J-Bay

Last weekend was CRAZY packed with activities.  On Thursday Lizzy, last years Operations Intern came back into town.  She just was appointed the Programs Manager in Malawi and before moving there she made a stop in PE to see everyone.  She stayed at Warren's and we all went out Thursday to celebrate.  She was extremely nice and fun and I'll miss her being around, even if it was only for a couple days.  Friday we went out again and met up at Warren's before going out to a Halloween (not really) themed night at D&Es, that club we went to before that's just a hole in the wall that keeps dropping and going back.  I like this place, but can't stay there too long so we moved onto Castros to end the night.

Saturday morning Audrey and Danielle came in from Cape Town bright and early at 6:00 am for the weekend.  Jim picked them up, but I woke up soon afterwards because we were supposed to drop off some supplies at an intervention that we are running for a few Saturdays.  As soon as we got in the car however, Mendisto called and said that it was cancelled due to rain.  We were all awake though and went out to breakfast at the boardwalk.  When we finished we loaded up the car and drove to Jeffrey's Bay.  J-Bay is the hub of South African surfing.  It's this small town on the Indian Ocean that is just laid back and filled with surfers.  We stayed at Island Vibe hostel and just had a low-key day and night in the town.  Met a lot of people and had a good time.  I would like to go back there when the weather is really warm and bum around.  It's incredible the number of guys there who just have a little job and surf all day and hang out.  It's a weird lifestyle, but perfect for some people I suppose. 

We came back to PE on Sunday and invited the guys over for a braai to hang out and let the Cape Town girls to meet the people we always are talking about.  They were in full-swing entertainment mode and we eventually moved on to Barney's for a drink before going to this bar in the Harbor for a deck-party.  Supposedly the "deck party" is a thing that happened every week before, but the original place closed and it moved every week.  Somehow it was back at the original place though (not really sure how this works) so we went to this bar right on the harbor and had a good night.  A lot of people were tired from 4 nights of Lizzy's-back celebrations and ducked out early, but Shayne and I stayed a little later and hung out outside on the deck before heading home with Warren and Audrey.  Great and very busy weekend.

Proteas

Sunday, the 23rd of October we interns went to St. George's Park and saw South Africa (Sorry Proteas) play Australia in Crickit.  The game somehow wasn't very memorable for me.  We moved around a lot and saw our friends so I didn't pay as much attention to the actual match as I had initially wanted to.  Nice afternoon though.  By the time the sun went down I was too cold to stay in my skirt so we went home.

Mausam

I saw my first Hindi film in theaters here.  I saw my first Hindi film with English subtitles in a theater!  Mausam!  So cute, beautiful people, AMAZING music, but the filmiest ending EVER written!  It almost ruined the film for me.  It kinda did...but the rest of it is so cute.  I liked it and I can't stop listening to the soundtrack.

Umzingisi Must Go DOWN!

Last Friday, post-development session, we didn't have to work because we had a friendly soccer game against Umzingisi - another sport for development non-profit in the area.  We ended up losing 2-4 in the last minutes because everyone was dead.  I got an assist-ish (went up against a goalie on a corner and he dropped it on Jim's foot).  It was a lot of fun seeing people play and hanging out in a new way.

The best part of this story though was that the whole game was filmed.  Dani has moved to Port Elizabeth!  Dani is from Miami Beach and is a film-maker.  She was going to do a documentary on GRS in general, but after a bad experience in Jo-burg last spring she wasn't feeling so good about it.  Then she came to PE and met all of our awesome female coaches and changed the whole idea.  A lot of our coaches play for the City Lads (my soccer club) so Dani is now making a film on the City Lads and GRS and sport and females etc. etc.  She has some big funders AND ESPN has already shown interest in buying rights to it upon completion.  So…..I am going to be in a documentary.  Sick.  Dani is very cool though too.  We had dinner with her the other night and had a good time and she drives me home from training now so the boys don't have to come back to New Brighton to fetch me 3 times a week. 

VIP as VIP

Not Amused

GRS PE Braai

Our coaches  who didn't sign on this January were supposed to have their contracts end in October.  Headquarters approved us keeping them on until December, but we still decided to have a "farewell" braai anyways.  We took Friday off of work (although Ngwenya, Jess, and I were running around all morning buying things) and everyone went to the ocean for a development session/braai.  There were games and candy prizes and everyone got 2 braai packs.  A braai pack involves a vors, a piece of pork on the bone, and a chicken thigh.  This stuff is super tasty and they put spices in the pack for you and everything. Yum yum yum.  This was a bit of a celebration though so people brought booze and blasted music from their cars and danced.  It was a good time.  Mzee showed me some of his work as a graphic designer and after I told him how good it was he offered to do something for me so I gave him a "portrait" like picture of me and he made me this cool little photo.

                                                                               Our coaches are awesome.