6000 times

Well I’ve promised so many people I would finish my spring break blog today that if I didn’t, I would probably have to go through the fear of bungying again to make it up to them.

So let’s see, we arrived at Starling late Thursday night. Friday morning, we scheduled elephant rides. Azriel however, did not want to do it so he stayed back to watch the opening ceremonies of the rugby world cup. That’s when my second thoughts about riding kicked in. Whatever. Their elephants! They’ve got to be at least as cool as the opening ceremonies of the rugby world cup and if Melissa Hallisey was going to ride an elephant in India, then I wanted to ride one in Africa.

Well we got to the park and I basically just dropped Nick, Michelle, and Maggie off then went home. So Hal, you’re cooler than I am in that aspect. You rode an elephant.

The chance to ride home alone, without anyone telling me where to go, that the music was too loud, that their butt was falling asleep, that I missed a turn, was probably better than riding an elephant. Of course, then I get back to the backpackers in just enough time to watch the end of the opening ceremonies and see the infamous New Zealand All Blacks do their haka before the game. I don’t know much about rugby either but I would highly recommend youtubeing this. It’s badass. I'm realizing that the more rugby I watch, the less I like soccer and my dislike for it is completely irrational but I insist upon disliking it. It's like I was born to dislike soccer.

The rest of the day we really just spent relaxing outside in the sun and wandering around Plettenberg. After our week, it felt so good to sit and do nothing (not like it was hard to be driven around a safari and take pictures of elephants, kudu, springbok, etc.). It was the night that got interesting. One of the German workers at the backpackers asked if we wanted to take a party bus into town and go bar hopping. Mistake number 1: accepting this offer. Those Europeans, know how to party. And little did we know, the R40 that we paid for the bus, included a babysitter! Nice. I’m almost 21 and still being watched after at the bar. Our night started off early and when we got to the bar, people were still having casual drinks. We, however, were a little bit ahead of the game. Sure enough, we accepted the challenge and cliché of being obnoxious Americans and danced the night away. I’m sitting on a stool by the bar watching my 4 friends and 3 random Germans from Starling take over the dance floor when next thing I know, Nick and Azriel have thrown me over their shoulders trying to get me to dance. Mistake number 2: letting this happen. I’m not exactly sure how they expected me to dance with my feet in the air but it was kind of embarrassing. Thinking that we have well represented America at one bar, we wanted to continue our tour so we head to a bar across the street (yeah, we walked there. The stupid party bus didn’t even take us that many places). We dance the night away there too. Mistake number 3: Dancing. My sister may be a ballerina from the time she’s known how to walk and my brother may have the rhythm to be on “So You Think You Can Dance?” but the dance skills skipped me. One guy actually comes up to Michelle and tells her that there is no way she can be American. She dances so well she must be Spanish. Then he asks her to teach him how to shuffle. In her own words, Michelle made the shuffle her “bitch” that night. As we’re making fools of ourselves on the dance floor, we all notice that Trevor, our babysitter, is just watching us practically in shame that he’s associated with us so we drag him on the floor too! This guy, is quite the interesting person. At the bar we found out that he just jumps out of planes for a living. He says he’s jumped over 6000 times. 6000 TIMES?! I could barely jump off a bridge while being attached to an industrial rubberband. The guy’s crazy.

Around 2 or so, we take our party bus back to Starling and start a fire in the lounge. Here’s mistake number 4. There’s a pole that you can pole dance on in the middle of the lounge. I am proud to say that I sat on the ping pong table with my face in my hands while those who shall not be named got up and “danced” on the platform and kind of on the pole. As people just get plain tired from trying to swing around the pole, we settle and sit by the fire to talk. Apparently though, we had to break into the lounge because the alarm went off and half way through sitting around the security company shows up. One of the workers deals with it and we continue to talk. As if Trevor couldn’t get any cooler, Azriel, who asks probably the most provoking questions of any person I’ve ever known, starts asking Trevor what he did before skydiving. Trevor was a police officer during apartheid and after 1994. WHAT?! Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve met the Dos Equis most interesting man in the world right there on the couch in Starling’s lounge, Plettenberg Bay.

As interesting as he was, I started to fall asleep and around 3:30 AM, that’s when my night came to a close. Saturday we all woke up slap happy recalling the night and going through pictures. We watched another rugby game and then headed home. We finally made it home around 6. You would think that we would be sick of each other but we actually ended up watching a movie together and then catching up on some much needed sleep.

On Sunday, we caught up on work. Last week as school was pretty hectic because of all the work I DIDN’T do over the break. As we’re all quietly doing our work out back, we hear Michelle screaming in the front house at Nick. No one yells at Nick because he cooks. You just don’t bite the hand that feeds. Azriel and I run to the front house to find Nick and Michelle fighting the invasion of a pigeon. As I run around and close all the doors to our rooms, Lauren opens the windows from the outside, Nick and Azriel swat at it with placemats, and Michelle looks like she’s trying out to be ground control at the airport directing it out the front door. We got the pigeon out without anyone being hurt, pigeon included.