So this last week was filled with all sorts of Good Braais and goodbyes. Anyways here is the brief story of the last week of school:
So the last week was a highly unproductive week for me. I was busy relaxing reading chilling, sorting myself out for traveling etc... I should have been studying more for my Biblical Studies Exam but for whatever reason I found myself not feeling any pressure for it. Anyways instead of studying hard I chilled, spent my days resting chatting with friends (thanks friends!) and sort of sorting out my room and cleaning.
Thursday I had my first braai of the week (Braai=BBQ but south African style) with the other exchange students from Denison Residence. They didn’t wait for the charcoal to get going (it took its time... I guess we north Americans don’t have braaiing in our blood?). Eventually after we used up almost an entire pack of fire starters to try to get the charcoal burning we had finished all of our cooking and had eaten our fill anyways. But it was awesome to chill and grill with friends.
Friday Night was another wonderful night this time we were celebrating Hillary and Nonto’s 21st Birthdays (Sort of Belated for Hills and very belated for Nonto). Anyways so we got together with their church friends and had a braai at the Diggs. It was a wonderful night to hangout with people and learn how to be patient with the process of braaiing and getting it started well. It was a wonderful night with lots of laughs and good times. We even sent one of the pastor’s daughters (from Church on the Ridge she was young like 5 or 6 I would say) to the hospital during the evening. She was being pulled around on a beanbag chair through the house at high speeds and clunked her head on the doorframe. And well she started bleeding from her forehead. They took her to the hospital just to be sure but all they did was give her a band-aid and sent her on her way. But still a very enjoyable night to spend with Nonto and Hillary and other friends.
Saturday was exam day: I forgot to set my alarm the night prior because it was late the night prior, but I still woke up before 7am like i was hoping. It was just really a crappy way to wake up when I wasn’t sure what time it was and if I had overslept because I had need of taking time to study that morning. I had breakfast with Kate and Mendisa at 9am and that lasted until almost 11:30am. The tail end of it they were busy swapping music and I studied during that time which was nice. It was great to be able to finally spend time with Mendisa. Mendisa is a drama student in her Masters program at the UKZN. Kate and I both know her through NCF church and Cell group in particular. The unfortunate bit about it was that Mendisa was super busy and our schedules never really clicked so her and I didn’t get much of a chance to hang out.
Anyways after breakfast I went back to my dorm grabbed the specific notes I had needed for my exam and ran to the LAN to send some emails and message some people really quick. Then I went to Kara Nichas for lunch (Biriyani Tub with Curry for 5.50R like 0.70$ just amazing! I don’t know if I have mentioned it before but yeah, AMAZING!). And with my lunch and notes I found a bench in the shade (Because it was ridiculously hot that day like 37+ degrees) and did some prep work for my exam which was about to start at 2pm.
Anyways the Exam went well 4 essays in 3 hours, but the best thing about it was that we had access to a Bible. Wow was that ever a huge help! Anyways so I finished about 30min early and was happy to be done with it so I left the exam and was finally done!
Saturday night was Braai number 3 with friends from Holy Trinity Church (The Bible Talks People). It was just amazing to be able to chill out with people braai one last time hang out, watch Jumanji, and to be able to relax after my exam. Super good and it was wonderful to meet some people from the classics department and other friend circles that were brought together by a braai.
Anyways Sunday was a day that started good byes for me. Sunday at Church on the Ridge (possibly my last time) wasn’t too bad, it made me really wish though that I had committed myself to that church a bit more throughout the semester but I still learned alot from the other churches as well. That Afternoon I did Lunch with Margaux, Hillary, and Nono after church which was cool, and then after that I chilled out with Margaux at the diggs swam, chatted, chilled it was nice. In the evening I went to Holy Trinity for one last worship service there. It was so nice to be able to worship with friends from TBT and others from that church. I said good bye to Ant and Kim Carr (the staff of TBT in PMB or ex-staff as they are moving to Durban now for ministry there), and also to Anabel and Savio, and a couple of other people from there as well.
Monday was a day where I sorted out my payments that I owed to the school, and after that I packed up my luggage. I left it in my dorm room locked up in the cupboard, because I have the dorm room at varsity until the 9th of December. Which is wonderful. That afternoon I said a handful of goodbyes to people from the varsity (exchange students mostly) and then I got a relatively early night’s sleep.
Tuesday morning I said goodbye to kate (as she was up studying for an exam early) and then I hit the road to start travelling (more on that later.).
Anyways I guess I should run through my emotions rather than just the actions. I guess part of me is still in a high degree of disbelief of the reality of saying good bye to these people. It feels like I have such a long time left in South Africa that I can’t be really saying good bye. There are probably going to be (and have been) three sorts of goodbyes that I will say to people. There will inevitably be those brief “Cheers and Safe travels” sort of goodbyes. This first type is not a heavily emotionally attached sort of goodbye. Basically it works out to being just a very easy good bye because well these are the people I know by name, might have spent a wee bit of time with, but really not too close with. The second type of goodbye is the next step up. This is the sort of good bye that has the reality of yes we have gotten to know each other more than just in passing, and has the desire to have spent much more time with them. This one so far has left me with the longing to have experienced deeper and closer relationship with them, and that will probably get a bit lost with time and distance but there was potential. Yes it is sad and tough to say goodbye like this but if I try and put in some effort with long distance friendships something may come out of these. The Last one I haven’t had to many of thus far this trip. They are the deep friendships that are going to have much more of a difficult time being distant from each other. Saying goodbye to Kate was like this. We have made and arranged to stay in touch with each other. I think for me the emotional reality of this one will set in when I am doing these goodbyes to the really close friends close to when I am heading home. Basically this will be difficult in and around the end of December when I say Goodbye to John, and Ryan, and Margaux, and Duncan. Those sort of friendships are ones which I hope to maintain (also like Kate and Minnie among others) which I will be sad about the distance, but at the same time I will learn how to use that sadness as a drive to improve long distance friendships with these people. They are the sort that I will be calling when I am doing the work of processing, or will be in conversation with over emails frequently I hope. Perhaps even road trip to visit the ones who are close enough to go to.
Basically I am going to keep on working on that long distance communication thing. I know that I will probably fail at it about a month or two in to the return to Canada, but at the same time I will be working on being persistent and patient with these friends so that I can figure out how to be in better communication.
Anyways I will be posting this blog asap and it will probably come with another post quick on its heels. Cheers!
Andrew
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