Day 2 of our advanture

July 17, 2016 - Day 2

After a good nights sleep we woke up and had breakfast to begin our day early. Today we traveled to Addo Elephant National Park. At the elephant park we learned many new things about elephants, water buffalo, ostrich (Did you know the male is black and white and the female is gray?) warthogs and many smaller birds. We had lunch at the elephant park and ... I ATE SNAILS!!! Yes you read that right I ate snails. They were actually very delicious. After leaving Addo we traveled to Kragga Game Park. On the way to Kragga we saw giraffe and zebra just hanging out on the side of the road. I just couldn't believe it. When we arrived at the game park we went on a riding tour to see and learn about zebras, rhinos, giraffes (Did you know the dominant male has darker spots and their spots are like our fingerprints all different), antelope (I have a great story to tell about them.), wildebeest, and cheetahs (just wait until you hear the story I have on them also). After a long and very eventful day we arrived back to Abalone Guest House (it is fantastic by the way if I haven't mentioned that already), ate a hot dog :) and ice cream and are preparing to head to Nelson Mandela 

Metropolitan University tomorrow. 

Water Buffalo

Warthog

Male and Female Ostrich 

So many beautiful elephants about 10 feet away in this picture
But wait until you hear this they came up near us and were only about 1 foot from us at one point. 

Snails in garlic butter sauce. So YUMMY!!!

These are the cheetahs that were in the cheetah enclosure today when our jeep broke down
and would not go. They did not hurt us but I must say when they began circling around the jeep it
did send a chill down my spine. On the brighter side they were beautiful creatures.

Here I am playing a game with many of my educator friends ...
The goal of the game was to see who could spit a piece of impala (which is a type of antelope) poop the farthest! I WON!!!
Don't gross out on me it looked like a dried up coffee bean and they only eat vegetation so it
was really JUST GRASS :)

Ready to go on our tour at Addo Elephant National Park

See how close I was to this giraffe? He was the dominant male of the family.

Breakfast every morning by Christine at the Abalone Guest House in Port Elizabeth.

Day One of our adventure.

July 16, 2016

After a short sleep due to time change (we are six hours ahead) we woke up early in the morning to begin some volunteer work for Volkswagen's Show of Hands. This was a day set aside for Nelson Mandella. On this day people in South Africa were to volunteer for 67 minutes. Our volunteer work was to paint Htlemeza Primary School in Uitenhage. We arrived at the school and were greeted warmly by many people who were painting walls, murals, and tiling a bathroom. Our task was to paint the murals in the library. What an amazing feeling it was knowing these little children that would be starting school on Monday would be seeing a beautiful freshly painted school and a running bathroom. It truly a blessing to be apart of such a day. We ended the day with a walking trip to the boardwalk for an early dinner and to exchange our money. It is 14.52 South African Rand to 1 US dollar.

My beautiful After dinner I had to have a cappuccino.
It was beautiful and yummy! 

Dinner at Blue Water consisted of steak Diane, butternut squash, spinach and baby potatoes. 

Mrs. Stiles and myself painting part of the mural.

Our finished product. This means "Read With Us!"

Mrs. Tyson and myself ready to volunteer. 

Mrs. Tyson, Mrs. Ludwig, Dr. Gross, Mrs. Stiles and myself with the Librarian
of  Htlemeza Primary School. She was so gracious. 

Work in progress

Look out South Africa here we come!

I am so excited! I am leaving tomorrow (well I forgot to publish my blog) with a group of 11 wonderful educators from Carolina Forest International Elementary School along with Dr. Gross and two professors from UNCW headed to Port Elizabeth, South Africa to teach and learn. Please join me as I travel on this wonderful journey.Since I forgot to publish I will update you on my day. We pulled out of Wilmington International Airport at 3:00.

This is our wonderful group ready to board the first of three airplanes. 

Here we are on our first airplane headed to Atlanta, Georgia.  

We are now in Atlanta, Georgia and getting ready to board our next airplane for Johannesburg, South Africa.
This airplane flight will be 15 hours and 38 minutes. 

My in flight meal with chicken, shrimp, fruit, a salad, cheese
and crackers and a brownie. I could not believe it was so
much food.

After one more airplane flight from Johannesburg to Port Elizabeth (that's 18 hours and 45 minutes on a plane) we are here. I was amazed at the questions the South African that sat beside me asked. He wanted to know all
about Hilary and Trump! It made me think if I knew as much ab out his country as he knew about mine.