Day 15

Our last day of the trip started off with a bit of breakfast, and a trip to the local street markets. The girls bought some wicked souvenirs, including some really nice paintings. We bought some lunch at a local supermarket, and ate on some rocks that looked out into the Indian Ocean - very beautiful and very relaxing. After lunch, we headed back to the hostel, and did some last-minute packing before Percy, our driver, arrived. We said goodbye to the people at our hostel, and headed to the Cape Town International Airport. At the airport, Sarah and Andrea were picked up by the people from the International Volunteer Headquarters - these two will be staying one more week in Cape Town to volunteer at an orphanage. And then there were 4. After eating a bit of food in the airport, we said our goodbyes to Ilze and Craig, and thanked them for everything they had done for us. We then waited in the airport until Karl, the program director of Soccer4Hope, arrived for a debriefing. We discussed what we enjoyed about our time with Soccer4Hope, and what will be the next steps for the organization. We hope to continue helping the All-Stars on a monthly basis, and do the best we can to make this organization more and more successful. We then said our goodbyes to Karl, and headed to our gate. We hopped on the plane, and that was the end of the trip for Kristen, Salina, Jo, and I.

This concludes our blog postings from our trip. We hope you enjoyed following our blog, and we would like to thank all of our supporters and donors! This trip became a reality because of you!

Stay tuned for a montage of our trip!

Yours truly,

Morena

Day 14

Our 3rd day in Hermanus started off with a trip to Zwelihle, where some local soccer games were taking place. We watched some soccer for a bit until the two youth teams affiliated with Rainbow Trust arrived. They played a friendly match against each other, and team black ended up winning a shoot-out After the game, the team and split the teams into two groups, and we ran a fun training session for them. We played some games, and put together a few relay races for them. I think the kids really enjoyed themselves. After the session, we walked over to the Red Cross, located in the township, and had some braai, which was prepared by the wonderful people who volunteer for the Red Cross. After our lunch, we headed back to our hostel to change into some more comfortable clothes. We had the afternoon at leisure, so Corrie, one of the employees of Rainbow Trust, picked us up at our hostel and took us on a beautiful mountain walk. We walked to the "waterfall", but since the weather had been very dry, it looked more like a puddle - haha. The cave in which the waterfall was located was very beautiful, and we took lots of pictures together. After our walk, we headed back to our hostel to get ready for our farewell dinner! We ate at a beautiful restaurant (I can't remember the name), and we all had a FEAST! the meal was just sensational. We headed back to the hostel after dinner, where we all stayed up played pool until 2:30am, which was when Lindsay, Caitlin, and Brittany were picked up to go to the airport. We said our goodbyes, shed a few tears, and the 6 remaining players went to bed!

Stay tuned for our last day of the trip!

Day 12

Hello blog followers!

We starting off the day with a verrryyyy cold game drive in Aquila. We drove around for about an hour, and had yet to see any animals. We finally arrived to the lion area, and we saw about 8-9 lions. They were all walking so close to the safari truck, and we were able to take some beautiful pictures of the pride of lions! The lions started eating a bit of food further up the mountain, so our tour guide decided to move closer to the animals in order to get a better view of the feast! Unfortunately, one of the lioness's was not impressed that we were watching them eat, so she started to walk towards the truck, crouched down as if she was hunting, and was growling at us. The tour guide had to slowly back the truck up out of there before the lion attacked us! Very intense. After our near-death experience, we continued through the mountains, where we saw more hippos, springbuck, rhinos and zebra. As we were heading back to the resort, we ended up seeing what many of us were eager to see, a giraffe! He was quite far away from us, but Kristen was able to take some wicked pictures with her high tech camera! We headed back towards the resort and went into another blocked off section for animals; this area had cheetahs, leopards, crocodiles, and warthogs. All in all, the safari was absolutely unbelievable!

After the safari, we backed up the van, and made our way to our next destination, Hermanus. Along the way, we stopped a cute little shop in the middle of nowhere; we had a bit of lunch, and bought a ton of dried fruit and nuts. We arrived in Hermanus about 3 hours later, and we checked into our hostel, called Hermanus Backpackers. We decided to walk around the town and look fr whales in the Indian ocean. Although we didn't see any whales, we definitely enjoyed the beautiful views. We had a few drinks at a little pub close to water, and afterwards we headed back to the hostel, where the employees had prepared a beautiful braai for us; it was definitely one of the best meals of the trip! Finally, after a veryyy long day, we decided to call it a night.

Cheers!

Day 13

Good evening dear followers!

Day 2 of Hermanus started with a simple toast and coffee breakfast followed with our introduction to the Hermanus Rainbow Trust. We got in touch with this organization through our absolutely amazing travel agent Ilze. Seriously don’t know what we’d do without her. The headquarters are located in the township Zwelihle and although another township in South Africa, the environment is quite different from Guguletu. A couple of facts: the crime rate is way lower and there’s a smaller population therefore resulting in quite a bit more space. Many of the houses have yards basically. We had a briefing at the headquarters, running us through the general mission of the organization and the different departments within the org. Corrie has been working pretty closely with us during our time with the organization. Afterwards, they kindly took us to see one of their facilities. In one word: impressive. The athletic facility was complete with two rugby fields and a turf field for soccer and field hockey. Leanne, who works for Rainbow Trust, have us the run down on the facility and its maintenance. They have been able to fund a lot of the projects with the help of Barclay’s as well as the national lottery. After visiting the facility, we hit up a random field in Zwelihle and played a little World Cup. Congrats to Caitlin and Yuando for the big win. Lindsay and I were terribly disappointed. We headed back to the headquarters where Corrie organized such a nice and super appreciated lunch for us. What a gem. From there, we came back to the backpackers to get ready to stroll through the markets and have some dinner. Some of us were feeling under the weather or just plain exhausted so it’s no surprise that some of us used this time for a nap. We walked down to the coast for some whale watching (we spotted what we think was a Southern Right whale), market bartering and dinner. Some of us also hit up the Whale Museum at the time. We polished off the night with some great dishes, mojitos and amazing desserts at Cubana (might I suggest the brownie).

Stay tuned for our last day (and day 12) in South Africa. Sad face. Again, sorry about the lack of photos. We’ll get on it as soon as possible.

Day 11

On Wednesday morning we said our goodbyes to Cape Town and set out on the road. This time, we were headed for the quintessential African experience – a safari. We packed up all our belongings and piled into the van with Charley and Craig at 9:00 am. The drive was scenic and took us along a series of mountains and valleys, although most of us were either asleep or reading within ten minutes of departure. At one exciting point along the way, we witnessed a troop of baboons following along the roadway in the opposite direction as we were traveling. Our first African animal sighting of the day!

Around 11:30, we arrived at the Aquila Game Reserve, our home for one night. Driving into the reserve, we were all very excited to see the rows of buildings with thatched roofs that looked exactly like one would picture for an African safari. We were welcomed with a tall glass of sparkling wine or grape juice, and instantly felt transported into a luxury lifestyle far different than that we had experienced during our time visiting the townships of Khayelitsha. After we made our way through the reception area, we came upon a beautiful infinity pool where we instantly dropped our bags, found places on the surrounding lounge chairs, and settled right in. We had to wait until two to check in to our rooms, so we hung out by the pool for a bit, and then had a delicious and extensive buffet lunch inside the beautiful dining hall. Finally we got to check into our rooms. We each shared with one other person and enjoyed beautiful king size beds, outdoor showers, and towels rolled into the shape of elephants.

At 4 pm, we departed for our first game drive of the trip. We rode in a sturdy 4x4 vehicle with several other tourists and were each given a fleece blanket as we got in. We set off with our driver, Bergke who also acted as guide during the expedition. First off, he explained to us all what the “Big Five” animals of Africa were. Consisting of the lion, leopard, Cape buffalo, rhino, and elephant, these are the most dangerous animals because they won’t back down from a fight, and can do some serious damage if you manage to find yourself in a confrontation with one of them. Bouncing along the rough tracks of the 4,500 acre game reserve, we soon came across the first of the animals sighted, the Cape Buffalo. After that, the animals came in quick succession and by the end of the day we had managed to see:

A raft of hippos

A herd of springbok

A crush of rhinos

A dazzle of zebras

A flock of ostrich

A herd of oryx

An implausibility of wildebeest

A memory of elephants (ok, just two)

And, last but not least

A pride of lion

The lions were held in a separate enclosure and were quite a distance away when we saw them, but we heard that in the mornings they are often quite lazy and can be seen closer to the trail, so we crossed our fingers for our next game drive the next morning. As we left their enclosure, the sun had set beyond the nearby hills and I noticed it was getting quite dark so I asked Mo if she could still see anything. “Take off your sunglasses” was her response. Oh, right. Not my brightest moment.

We followed up the evening game drive with yet another filling buffet dinner where we went over many of the events of the previous days and discussed our amazing experience with Soccer 4 Hope. After a very exciting day, we all made our way to our rooms for an early bedtime, anticipating the early wakeup for the morning game drive on Friday.

Stay tuned for more adventures from South Africa! (and we will post pictures soon - they take a really really long time to upload and our internet time is limited, sorry)

Day 10

Molo!

Tuesday – our last day with S4H. Also, Wewe’s birthday. Thanks to some thinking ahead from Brittany and Kristen, we had ordered some cupcakes from Checkers. When we went to pick them up, Kris had a minor heart attack when the baker played a slight trick making her think they had not understood our order. No need to panic – we walked out with cupcakes and other refreshments incident free!

We arrived at the Rainbow Centre as usual – we opened the morning with a couple rounds of flinch and continued from where we left off on Monday. The groups switched activities between Excel and reffing, and both sessions went smoothly. After we had completed the skills training, we sneakily set out our party paraphernalia and surprised Wewe with a smashing rendition of “happy birthday”. Some heartfelt “thanks” were exchanged between ourselves, and S4H. Over the course of our 7 days working with S4H and in particular the 8 All-Stars, we developed some very close relationships, and lasting memories. We entered this opportunity with humble expectations, which were far surpassed. Hopefully the skills we provided were as useful as the life lessons the All-Stars taught us.

Charley arrived at 2:30 and we packed up one last time to deliver the last of our gear bags to the local schools. We stayed at the school for only a short time, as S4H had organized a game for us at 3:30. In Cape Town time, this really meant that despite our timeliness, the game did not kick-off until 4:30. We played 2 short matches, the first against a local U20 team, and the second against a U16 team. It was highly entertaining – the girls showed a good understanding of the game, and it was a good chance for us to show off our skills (or lack thereof).

Arriving back at Ashanti, we showered (we were a tad sweaty post match), and proceeded to the hostel lounge where they had organized a braai (aka a bbq). We ate our boerwurst and got amped for the upcoming pool tournament. Salina showed impressive (and highly unexpected) pool skill and made it to the final where she faced Wayne. Despite some fierce competition, Salina triumphed and won a Cape Point Tour, which, given our imminent departure from Cape Town, she kindly donated to Wayne. Shortly after Salina’s victory, we headed back to our rooms and to bed.

Later, Cape Town!

Day 9

Hey there!

Guess who!?

It’s Sarah and Andrea again!

Miss us?

It was quite a slack day with the usual breakfast of champions, consisting of the Ashanti Lodge breaky medley. We then raced to the local food stand to acquire goods for our large lunches. Yay for Checkers.

With a hop in our step we headed for the Rainbow Center. Little did we know that we would be waiting for an hour and a half…for the Allstars to finish their Monday morning meeting. In the meantime we hackied away and played some ‘taps.’ I leisurely slept on the concrete.

When they finally graced us with their presence, we started off the morning with the animal game. Caitlin was absolutely awful as she couldn’t hold a steady beat or remember any other animals involved. She improved…slightly. Lindsay and Brittany took half the folks to work on basic excel training and spreadsheets. The rest of us taught basic soccer and refereeing skills. It was funny…..Vuyani gave Bart a yellow card and then had to take it back after realizing that he incorrectly penalized her. We played a small-sided match and had the Allstars ref it as we purposely…and not so purposely, messed up.

It was then lunchtime…..we once again enjoyed our homemade goods and hung out at the center playing some goofy games. We then were sent to a couple schools to deliver equipment and then went to a large field in Gugulethu to ref and assist in a couple soccer matches. We led warm-up and I reffed. It was extremely difficult with the language barrier.

Dinner was at The Clay Oven on Long Street….we once again had pizza and it was fantastic as per usual. We went to bed ridiculously early…Mo achieved 8:30pm bedtime.

Keep following. Yo da best.

Peace and love,

Bean and Bug.

Our Weekend in Cape Town

Molo!

After a long and eventful week with the Soccer4Hope team, the girls and I were eager to do some touristy activities over the weekend.

Saturday morning started with a bus trip to Stellenbosch, where we enjoyed three lovely wine tours. The first one was called Vrede en Lust, which was located on a beautiful vineyard - we enjoyed some bread, cheese and crackers, as well as several white and red wines. Our next stop was at Tokara, which was much more casual. Finally, we went to Waterford - our tour guide showed us around the vineyard, and gave us some detail on how the wine is made. After enjoying some chocolate and wine at the last vineyard, we all headed into town for some lunch - we (including Charlie and Craig) ended up at a restaurant called Col Cacchio's, an Italian pizzeria, which was just delicious. Afterwards, we decided to look around a local street vendor to see if we could find some fancy souvenirs for our families. Salina was bullied by one of the gentleman trying to sell her a painting, and the babies (Andrea and Sarah) might have gotten ripped off on their purchases.

After our long day of wine touring, we decided to grab a quick dinner at our hostel. From there, 7 of us decided to head down to the Cape Town International Convention Center at the Westin, where a local dj party was taking place. We felt a bit out of place at the beginning, as we were the ONLY white people there, however, once one of the All-Stars, Vuyani, arrived with his brother and cousin, we felt much more comfortable. As the night went on, people became friendlier, and attempted to teach us dance moves - by the end of the night, Andrea's moves were a HIT! Some of us decided to leave a bit early, while others decided to close the place down - all in all, the 7 of us had a fantastic evening!

Sunday started off with a bus trip courtesy of Charlie to Roxy Surf School in Muizenberg. We all got into our wetsuits and rash guards (which clashed hideously) and after getting some basic surfing lessons from the instructors, we headed into the Indian Ocean. Some of us were able to get up a few times, while others struggled a fair bit (*cough* Lindsay *cough*). After 2 hours in the ocean, we were all exhausted, and ready for some food. We grabbed a quick bite, and headed to our next destination - the V&A Waterfront. We took a ferry ride to Robben Island - a prison in operation from 1960 to 1996 - where we took a bus tour around the island, and a guided walk through the famous prison. One of the highlights of the tour was being able to see the cell of Nelson Mandela, in which he spent 18 years. The tour guide who walked us through the prison was actually a former prisoner, which I thought was really cool.

After our tour, we took the ferry back to the waterfront, and we decided to have dinner at a restaurant called Quay Four. We watched the Manchester United vs. Chelsea game, and to my disappointment, Manchester United won. We headed back to the hostel, and decided to call it a night!

Hope you're all enjoying our blog!

Goodnight from Cape Town,

Morena

Day 6

Hello again from South Africa!

There is a lot of pressure from Salina and Kristen to write a blog that does justice to explain our day. We started off with an early morning breakfast at 7:30am and departed for Table Mountain shortly after. We took the cable car up the side of the mountain, and while looking at the breath taking views, we were rotating 360 degrees so we could really experience how far the ground was from our feet. On one side of the mountain was the city of Cape Town and the other side was the endless ocean. We spent an hour walking around the top of the mountain and thankfully no causalities. Haha. We were taken back by the stunning view while 1067m above sea level.

In the morning we hung out at the Rainbow centre with the S4H staff and then went to Mzoli’s together for a “light” lunch. The lunch consisted of a traditional South African braai (BBQ) including beef sausage, beef steak, lamb, South African corn, and salsa chutney. No utensils were provided so we had to be creative with our fingers.

Around 2:30pm we left for Khayelitsha Site B to assist the girl’s regular Friday after school tournament. We were surprised when we got to the field as the kids were playing on astro-turf, which was completely unexpected as the field was surrounded by shacks. This is the only astro-turf in the townships and was donated in 2008 from Chris Campbell. We were each paired up with a team and helped the MVP coach with warm-up and the games. Among dancing, hanging out, and playing with students we tried to coach as best as possible while countless children were hanging off each limb. The music was quite a distraction for the players and the coaches; however, the South African girls can sure shake their booty!! Even the young girls put our Canadian dancing to shame. Finally we got organized and the games began. There were 4 fields and 12 teams that participated in the tournament. We were asked to play the other American volunteers and won in shoot-outs, obviously. A few games later we played a South African U-16 team which was a fun experience. The best part of the afternoon was playing, dancing, and taking pictures with all of the kids after the games. We were sad to leave the group as it was, hands down, the best afternoon we have had together thus far. Despite their living conditions, the girl’s created a joyful and energetic atmosphere that we will never forget. We definitely were taught today that there are more important things in life than materialistic goods, of which we take for granted daily.

After getting cleaned up, we went to Ferryman’s for dinner at the waterfront, which was highly recommended to us by Craig. We enjoyed a variety of meals from fish & chips to spicy chicken curry and then although we left completely full we went to another restaurant for dessert. Highlight of the dinner was Morena’s comment: “do forks actually have 4 tines?” Poor girl, she doesn’t get out much.

We came home early for bed because we were exhausted from a long day with the kids. We are excited for a day in the country and wine tasting.

Salina & Kristen

Day 5

Good morning (or evening in Calgary)!

A shout out to our new followers! We seem to be getting more popular. Total count: 14.

This morning, we woke up to a grey overcast that hung over the city.  Once again, we had a great breakfast with some amazing coffee all together as a group and talked about what we would do with the All-Stars today. No classroom today! Just soccer. We started our session with them playing team bonding games ie. (sitting on eachother’s laps in a circle and trying to walk around, the human knot, etc). Also to be noted – the human knot doesn’t work if you have two interlocking circles. Once we discovered that, it was easy. We followed this up with a basic technical session, showing them dynamic stretching and really simple dribbling skills, finishing the session with handball and fast break. Some of their skills are amazing but they have great enthusiasm to learn and seem to have a lot of fun with whatever we try to show them. It started to rain lightly in the middle of our session, rendering the court really slick really fast so we ended our session there. Nania took a nice little spill as a result. In the afternoon, Sarah, Brittany and I took off to Sigcawu Primary School in Crossroads to hand out some gear to the girls. The gym set up was pretty sweet, having a court in the middle that was surrounded by a 2 foot ledge – perfect for indoor soccer. We spent the next hour playing keep away with some of the kids and teaching them some turns. The Sports Master (AKA athletics director) seemed really excited for us to be there. He seemed pretty entertained when we absolutely butchered the school name Sigcawu (there’s a click in there – it’s harder than it looks).

After we wrapped it up at Sigcawu, we all decided to split off for a bit for some personal time. Britt, Caitlin, Lindsay and I hit up the local coffeehouse called Vida E Coffee. One word: unreal. Probably one of the best vanilla lattés I’ve ever had. For all you coffee snobs out there, I would say it’s one of the tops. The four of us hung out there reading and writing in our travel journals. We were supposed to have a Braai back at the hostel but the weather wasn’t in our favor so we ordered up a bunch of pizzas from Da Vinci’s (so good) and had a couple drinks (or 5) at the hostel bar, before calling it a night.

Cheers from the other side of the world,

Jo

Note: Pictures will be added at a later date. I need breakfast.

Day 4

Hello our blog followers,

You’re lookin’ mighty fine this evening! Thought I’d get you in the mood before the news of our extravagant day. Ya dig it?

Today was an absolutely beautiful twenty-eight degrees! We woke up to the sun shining and the birds chirping. A few of us...who shall remain unnamed, woke up a tad later than the others. Great night. (thumbs up). Five of nine made their trek to Checker’s (closest supply of food), while the others slept a little longer. That place is amazing! Two of nine got some gouda, some pastrami, some yogurt, two buns, some protein bars, and some pasta salad. This all cost approximately ten big ones Canadian. Back at the homestead, nine of nine ate the typical Ashanti lodge breakfast..consisting of toast, yogurt, fruit, muffin, cereal, juice, and coffee.

Entering bus: New bus driver today....he’s a beauty. We made our way to the Rainbow Center and met up with all the Allstars, Ricardo, and Wewe. Our goal for the morning was to introduce time management skills and daily, weekly, and monthly scheduling. We accomplished this in one of the learning rooms of the center. We were each partnered with an Allstar, mine being Luyolo and Sarah’s being Cee. Jo did a short schpeel on the importance of time management, procrastination, and prioritizing. To implement this plan we had the Allstar’s write down their top 5+ priorities in everyday life, and their everyday tasks. We had them make a simple pie chart which indicated the amount of time that they allocated to their everyday tasks. In doing so we were able to see how well their priorites matched these tasks and the allotted time shown. One of the teaching aspects was to make apparent the comparison between the priorities and everyday tasks and in turn, figure a plan to better match them. For example, Luyolo said his first priority was family, but on his pie chart it came sixth in time spent. We spoke of ways to make changes so that they better maximized the use of their time. Cee spent a HUGE amount of time on Facebook everyday, so Sarah decided it was smart for her to deactivate her account....she just laughed. After charting, we had them make a weekly and monthly schedule, quite detailed, that indicated their daily, weekly, and short term goals.

We had a cute little break and played a game of ketchup...otherwise known as Tomato. In short, you all stand with bums high and try to get the mini ball through people’s legs by hitting it with two fists. When it goes through, you lose an arm...when it goes through again, you stand backwards with the use of both arms, and so on the pattern goes. We ended the game with a few bleeding fingers, sore nose, extremely bruised thumb, and high morale. Lunch was a treat.

Kristen got her hair braided by the twins and it was superb. We were worried that she was going to burn her scalp so Salina dabbed sunscreen on her head. Cutest thing ever!

Two of the groups were sent to Khayelitsha and another to Phillipi. Sarah, Bart, and I...Andrea, were off to Khayelitsha. We got to present the gear to the school (jerseys, pinnies, pylons, whistle, stopwatch, ball pump, and balls), and they were extremely appreciative. Bee tee dubs...This township was massive! Absolutely HUGE. (Hard to describe how BIG it is). There were two teams and a soccer match took place. We were lucky enough to lend our “talents” to the pitch and got to play! It was a blast. Bart even sniped a gino! We were given nicknames by the fans, Kristen was Rooney, Sarah was Messi, and I was Ronaldhino J. After the match was finished and alllll the kids went home, we waited another hour with Vee and Daniel for Charlie (our previous driver) to come get us. We played a couple rounds of World Cup with the boys and a few MVP’s. Sarah fell and her tail bone is for sure in pain.

We headed to Camps Bay to lounge on the beach, Jo and I attempted to play beach volleyball and were harshly shut down. Sarah and I headed for the large shelled boulders, while the others jumped in the ocean without notifying us. Kind of bummed that we were not invited, it sure sucks being a rookie. After the sunset we headed for Nando’s and ordered our individual meals. I enjoyed the vitality plate while others had a variety of peri-peri, corn, rice, chicken, and greens. Bart claims that Nando’s is similar to Swiss Chalet. We then got ice cream from Sinnffull Ice cream shop. It was so good.

We had a few challenges finding the ‘right’ taxi, however Sarah, Jo, Salina, and myself, were able to locate the ONLY female taxi driver in all of Cape Town, South Africa. After arriving at our hostel, we all cleaned up and headed to the hostel pub to watch the ManU game. They won, and now we sit here blogging at this late hour. Don’t worry we will let someone else write the blog tomorrow.

Hope ya have some beautiful dreams,

Andrea and Baby Benson.

Day 3 (Tuesday)

Tuesday morning we all woke up around 8 and got ready for our first full day volunteering with Soccer 4 Hope. After a continental breakfast, we hopped in the van with our guide Craig and driver Charlie and made our way to the Rainbow Centre.

Once there, we met with the All-Stars, Wewe, Karl, and Ricardo in a classroom to go over some of the background of the Soccer 4 Hope organization. Karl kindly filled us all in and we proceeded to pester him with many difficult questions!  After we had a better idea of how Soccer 4 Hope operates on a daily basis, we were able to direct our activities to better meet the needs of the group. After a short break, four of us started off with a goal setting session for the All-Stars while the rest of the group pumped up the many balls we brought and prepared and separated the gear for each school.

Jo led a great introduction to S.M.A.R.T. goal setting, and then each All-Star worked on a list of short and long term goals for their personal lives, and for their role within S4H. Our guide, Craig, turns out to be an amazing photographer and snapped many awesome pictures of our activities all day. After a productive couple of hours, we took a well-deserved break for lunch.

In the afternoon, the Dinos players split into 3 groups and accompanied the All-Stars to schools within their own communities to begin distributing the gear and to run sessions for each school in the townships. One group visited a school in Phillipi, a second in Guguletu, and a third (myself, Salina, and Brittany) visited a school in Khayelitsha. We were very excited to hand the gear over the the players and they were beyond excited to receive all the jerseys, pinnies, balls and cones. The jerseys and pinnies were put on immediately and wouldn't come off until the very end of practice! We led the girls through a couple of simple drills and then played a short game with them which I think was greatly enjoyed by all of us. :)

In the evening most of the girls made their way to the waterfront to enjoy a pub-style meal to at Quay-Four, while I stayed home to finish up some final work for school. Afterwards, we all met up at the hostel to watch the Barcelona - Real Madrid Champion's League game at the hostel. Finally, we made our way to bed after a very exciting and productive day!

Caitlin

Day 2 - Soccer 4 Hope Meet and Greet

Formal apologies for the blogging delays – I know you have all been refreshing your browsers every minute. The internet at our hostel has been mysteriously down for the past four days…

Day 2

On Monday morning we afforded ourselves a relaxing wake up time to recover from our two days of travel, and enjoyed a leisurely breakfast on the rooftop of our hostel with a magnificent view of Table Mountain.  We were eagerly anticipating the arrival of our final two team members, however, their flight was delayed by three hours, putting a wrinkle in our day 2 itinerary. Luckily, our fantastic tour guides - Craig and Ilze - arranged to drop us off for our Soccer 4 Hope meet and greet at the Rainbow Centre in before heading to the airport to pick up Salina and Kristen. Crisis averted. 

The Rainbow Centre, located in the community of Guguletu, is Soccer 4 Hope’s main headquarters in Cape Town, and it is here where we will be spending four hours every morning for the next six days. Our first session was dedicated to meeting the S4H staff and, as Monday was a holiday in South Africa, all the All-Stars, MVPs and staff were able to welcome us. The facility is equipped with a sport court where we played eight aside soccer before enjoying refreshment and getting to know the staff that we will be working with for the next two weeks. The highlight of the afternoon was giving S4H the equipment – ball, pinnies, jerseys, whistles, stopwatches, pumps and cones – we brought with us. They were extremely grateful to receive the much needed equipment and assured us that it will be put to good use to enhance the S4H programs. 

S4H works in 37 schools in 8 districts in Cape Town. There is one All-star coach for each of the eight regions, and these individuals, who were chosen for their exceptional leadership skills, are responsible for coordinating the after school soccer programs and league games. These programs run every school day for one hour, and it is the responsibility of the MVPs coaches to instruct these sessions. In the mornings we will be working with the All-star coaches, enhancing their technical soccer knowledge and developing other skills of their choice, such as time management and budgeting. In the afternoons we will be traveling to a number of the different schools, to distribute gear and assist the MVPs with after school sessions.

The evening was spent eating at an Italian restaurant near our hostel, and planning the morning’s session. Then some went home to bed, while others continued the evenings festivities with a couple bottle of wines at the hostel bar – a great place that I’m sure will be frequented. One night soon we will compare and contrast night life in Cape Town to that in Calgary. Stay tuned for this and other exciting details on the S4H sessions.

Ciao from Cape Town

Day One in Cape Town

After a long day (or two) of travel, we (Andrea, Brittany, Caitlin, Jo, Lindsay, Morena and Sarah) arrived safe with our bags at the Cape Town airport, and were greeted by Ilze and Craig of Southern Destinations. We dropped off our luggage at Ashanti Lodge – the gorgeous hostel that will be our home for the next couple weeks. 

Ilze and Craig took us on a tour of the city while we waited until we could check in at Ashanti. Craig was great pointing out landmarks like Table Mountain, Lions Head, Devils Peak and “sleeping elephant”, as well as correcting our knowledge of the local flora and fauna. Yes, those are indeed pine trees, and no that is not a turkey chicken, but a guinea fowl. They took us to a beautiful view of the city – Signal Hill – and from there we were overlooking Cape Bay as well as the newly built Green Point Stadium which hosted a World Cup semi-final. From here we also had a great view of Robben Island.

After checking in at the hostel, and organizing ourselves briefly into our 8 person dorm room, we went out to Long Street for lunch at a Caribbean place and watched part of the Manchester vs. Arsenal game. We might have enjoyed a couple beverages, which Brittany feels did nothing for our jet lag.

We followed up our lunch and beverages with a trip to Camps Bay – slightly delayed by the fact that the one taxi driver decided when we asked to go to the beach, we really meant a private country club. Not the case – we over loaded the second taxi, which required Caitlin to sit on the ground, next to the driver – and arrived safely at our intended destination.

Arriving on the beach, we attempted to take some jumping photos, and essentially failed miserably. Take a look at our only successful picture. We looked like sufficient idiots, that a local came over and introduced himself and asked after our accents… Andrea said “what accent” and thus our first friend was made. The sunset was gorgeous – Andrea pointed out the “sailors moon” – turns out this “moon” was really just… the sun. Brittany commented on the interesting clouds, which were “upside down since we are on the other side of the world” – Morena had a brief moment before the epiphany that this was indeed false. Moron.

We broke out a hackey sack and attempted some beach hackey – barefoot and sand did not help any of our skills, but we had fun nonetheless. Our new friends, Scott and Gareth live in Hermanus, so we will try and meet up with them when we are in Hermanus next weekend. The water was really cold, we were really hoping it would help our cankle situation post flight, however it failed drastically. Morena still has sausage toes as of the writing of this the next morning.

We walked along by the restaurants, and were impressed at the number of gorgeous people in Cape Town – Craig had warned us of this, but seeing is believing. After walking along all the restaurants and bypassing all of them, we went back to an Italian restaurant and ate some dinner and shared a bottle of wine – again, not good for the jet lag. Dinner was a relatively quiet affair, perhaps the 48 hours without sleep (or… a shower) was finally getting to us.

After catching a taxi back to Ashanti Lodge, we were all pretty excited to finally get to shower. If we had to rank the shower on a scale from one to amazing, I think we’d all give it at least an amazing.

Quite quickly after our showers, we were all in bed and attempting to read – Caitlin fell asleep with her book, then proceeded to kick it off the bed. Thanks for waking us up… Jo charged her iPhone, and proceeded to wake us up with her alarm. Thanks Jo. Andrea talks in her sleep… Thanks Andrea. And poor Morena just couldn’t sleep. Otherwise, a great night, and first day in Cape Town.

Cheers from Cape Town.