Hope In Love

I don’t know who dubbed Port Elizabeth “The Firendly City” but I’m gonna have to disagree with them. I think I prefer Gareth Cliff’s nickname – “Port Elizabeth: The armpit of South Africa”. On the other hand whoever named it the Windy City was spot on. Now Cape Town gets windy…like the kinda wind that blows you away if you don’t hold on to streetlights wind, but it’s not windy ALL THE TIME. I mean seriously, PE weather sucks!

Since my dad and sister and brother moved to PE last year, I’ve been visiting quite frequently…uhm well, more than before. The first time I spent every single day at the beach – very cool being within walking distance of the beach. The second time I spent every other day at the beach. My third visit I spent my afternoons watching the world cup, then I’d stay up till 3 or 4 in the morning stuffing my face with pop-corn and watching movies, then sleeping in till about 1pm the next day and wake up just in time for the next match. I ended up only going to the beach once – on the last day of my visit – and I was so out of shape from the couch-potatoe’ing that the walk to the beach felt like quite a workout.

This last visit I was determined to not let that happen again so I planned to do lots of exciting things. Then I got there and remembered that there really aren’t any exciting things to do in PE. I had planned on going to see my cousin’s band (New AfroTeens) at the boardwalk, but it was so cold and windy I decided to stay indoors instead. The only thing I really did the whole trip was hit the mall (3 days in a row, same mall), go out to dinner for my brother’s bday and then a couple of days later for my sister’s bday, and take a walk to a mini-shopping center they call a mall…sadness! Didn’t see the beach once…felt like too much effort for such crappy weather. There was one day of good weather though, and the siblings and I decided to go swimming – which was cool.

The unfriendlyness was from every store cashier that I dealt with. Seriously, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM. At some point I had to go check in the mirror to make sure I wasn’t wearing a “Please be rude to me” sign on my forehead or something. Then there’s the people from NMMU…such rudeness…really? I don’t know if they can’t read or what but I was basically yelled at for something that was their fault – sheesh! I’ll be so happy when my dad finally buys a house and we move from the NMMU campus housing.

And then there was the monumental fight I had with my dad, but that’s another story for another day.

The trip was only saved by the fact that I got to spend time with my siblings and laugh like there’s no tomorrow. Funny people, those two.

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On my return to Stellenbosch Saturday morning I got off the greyhound bus at 10, and on the way to my flat I ran into two of the girlies from my first year of Vision K who are now in Matric (12th grade). They had just finished writting their entrance exam for University for next year and I was so amped for them. It just kinda hit me that 2 of my girlies are in matric (there might have been some jumping up and down and clapping and singing “yay, y’all are in matric” on my part and a bit of embarrassment on their part) and it was seriously one of the proudest moments of my life.

Anyway, I got back to my flat at 10:20, and went downstairs at 10:30 to catch my lift. Me and 6 other people took the 12 kiddies from the Vineyard House out to Butterfly World to see butterflies and then had a picnic lunch with them. Very Fun! Very Rewarding! Very Funny seeing little kids running away from butterflies cos they were afraid of them, but then they don’t run away from the snakes…odd!

By the time I got back to my flat I was so very tired, but I didn’t want to sleep just yet cos I figured I if I did I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night. So I went online, downloaded some new music and had a one man dance party. At some point I think I just passed out – don’t actually remember going to bed…fun!

On Sunday I went to church and had a very serious massive God-moment…which was really cool – been missing those. And then again in the evening service (enGAGE). Just super freakin’ blessed. Afterwards a bunch of us went to Gino’s for dinner and there were so many laughs…my stomach hurt so bad when I left there.

All that to say, the two days I spent back here in Stellies far outweighed the 7 days I spent in PE. I have decided that I could NEVER move to PE…EVER. Now all I need to do is find a way to get my sister and brother to move back to the Western Cape so that I can see them more often.