Frontier Farms Adventures!

 4 March 2010
-First is a quick glimpse at what I have been up to this week.  We spent this past weekend about 3 hours away from PE at a frontier farm.  It was beauitful and a ton of fun.  The pictures are out of order but the captions explain what you're seeing... enjoy!

Sunday we went on Bakkies literally up a mountain, in the background of this picture you can see the beautiful Winterberg mountain

This is the steep hill we climbed or should I say raced up to get to the top!

The first girl to get to the top got a bottle of wine... I made it up first :)

Colin was the first boy.. Cheers!

                                                  Cedi and I at the House

The sheep getting herdered to come see us

Feeding a baby rebok

I have to admitt I didn't catch it someone else did, I just wanted to hold it!

Inside part of Winnie's house where I stayed

Where 6 girls and I slept

Different views around the farm

Wondering what I had gotten myself into... yuck.

First and probably last time milking a cow

My first dinner at the farm... the brown stuff in the bottom right is smiley (sheep face) needless to say I didn't enjoy that part!  Everything else was lekkar (good)

Winnie my farm mom and I cheers an after dinner drink she gave us girls, it was very light and tasted like candy!

The kids in the nursery love when we bring them books

Traveling around in the bakkie

Little waterfall that where we ate lunch and later swam

My least favorite part of the other farm the trophy room... they had every African animal imaginable except an elephant

The second farm house we visited was unreal here is part of the living room

The zebra room!

Kaite and I with our shirly temples :)

Now for more of an explanation of all the adventures this past week has entailed!

I can't believe I haven't written in over a week, it makes it hard to remember what went on!  Classes were more typical this past week and not too terribly exciting but I'm continuing to learn a lot.  The books and movies in each of my classes teach me so much, however the work load increased this week.  I have a paper due today and a 3 hour long class that I lead with 4 other girls, Friday 10 learning journals are due, next Monday I have an exam, on Tuesday a paper and a reflection are due, and on the following Thursday another paper is due!  I'm not complaining I'm just proving that there is work invovled in my classes but I'm grateful because I am here for school and to learn as much as I can!

As you can see from the pictures I had a wonderful weekend.  I wish uploading pictures didn't take so long because none of these pictures do the landscape or farm homes I saw justice.  Our group travled up into the middle of nowhere where we were hosted by 2 different families.  They took us in as if we were their family, it felt wonderful.  We got three incredible meals both Friday and Saturday but the best part might have been the coffee, tea, and cake we had each afternoon and by cake I mean at least 4 different homeade desserts set out that were all amazing!

After arriving on Friday we did a lot of typical farm things I would say.  I milked a cow which was an experience.  Lauren and I were the first ones to hop down and upon doing so two cows went to the bathroom so needless to say our clothes got pretty gross.  Most people tasted the milk from the utter but I wasn't brave enough and I'm okay with that.  We also chased sheep, saw an eland, kudu, wild horses, and many other things.  After exploring the farm and land we had a fire where we hung out and snacked all evening until our big dinner!  Winnie made us each get smiley on our plates, which is sheep face ew!  I really didn't care for it, but I did try it.  Quite a few people actually did like it.  Then we all went to our different rooms and farm homes.  I stayed with Winnie and Manus which was great because they had so many fun stories to share and were so happy to have us!

The next morning I was woken up by a legitimate "cock a doodle doo" I had no idea that roosters actually do that!  To accompany that racket there were also cows mooing and the reboks crying for their milk, it was interesting to say the least!  After breakfast we loaded into 3 bakkies and went on a crazy ride along the farm land.  It is impossible to explain how rickey the ride was, I can't believe they let us stand and ride in the back of those trucks the way we did, it really was crazy!  I have bruises on my hips that my parents have seen to prove how bumpy the ride was.  We ended up at this amazing little rock formation with water we got to swim in.  The water felt amazing and you could only get back to the whole swimming hole by actually getting in and swimming there so I don't have any pictures of how beautiful that was.  Then we hoped back on the bakkies and went to a waterfulll where we had lunch!  We were able to lay in the little waterfall and swim, it was so perfect.  After that we went over to Arrilla and franswa's farm.  Their farm was incredible.  Their house was huge and so ornaitley decorated, then outside they had everything from their trophy room, to a beatiful pool, and a rose garden.  They have a sheep farm so we saw a sheep get sheared and then had a huge steak dinner.  After dinner back into the bakkies for a night safari.  We were in-charge of using the spot light to find animals so regaurdless to say we didn't seem much but it was a blast!

Finally Sunday was another adventure.  We literally drove up a mountain and then got to hike/run up the last part.  Franswa turned it into a competition and since as many of you know I'm a wee bit competitive I took off running and beat the other 19 girls on the trip to the top which resulted in a really nice bottle of wine that I will enjoy with my parents and Fr. Mahon this weekend.  Going up the mountain wasn't planned and resulted in us getting home a good 5 hours later than I had anticipated which pushed me to my limit because my PARENTS were waiting for me in PE.

I got back to Langerry where the front desk told me my parents had already stopped by 3 times!! I wasted no time and sprinted to their hotel which was right down the road.  Walking into their hotel room was truly surreal.  I don't mean to sound sentimental but seeing them and hugging them with the Indian Ocean in the background almost mad me start bawling for the first time on my trip because I was so, so thrilled.  We just laughed and laughed as we hugged!  Then I took them to a good resturant where my dad had ostrich and my mom had a kind of fish none of us had heard of.  It was fun to be able to eat and share a glass of wine with them since I'm old enough here :)

Monday was another amazing day.  We woke up (all of us shared one big bed hehe) and saw the sun coming up over the ocean.... it was beautiful and something I hadn't seen yet.  Then we had an awesome breakfast buffet and went to volunteer!  I wrote about that in my other blog, but long story short my parents loved it and I'm so glad they got to meet all of the kids and staff there.  Then after volunteering I went swimming and we went to lunch.  My parents saw me off as I got on a kombie alone for the first time to go to class!!  Later that night we had a brai at Langerry so my parents had the chance to meet my group!  We had another slumber party and good breakfast and yesterday morning they saw me off to volunteer and they are currently at Addo at some two night safari stay in a luxurious tent while I sit here in a hot smelly computer lab at school.... I thought they were coming to South Africa to see me?!?! haha!  I'm kidding and thrilled they get to experience this beautiful country!  They will be back tomorrow and Fr. Mahon will also be arriving, I'm sure I will have all sorts of great stories to share about the fun things we do this weekend!  Until then thank you for reading this long, long entry!  I hope everyone else is having a wonderful week!

All my love,

Megan E.