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Spring Break, Southern Hemisphere Style

It's pretty hard to write a post detailing the last 3 months of my time in Cape Town, but I will try to fill you all in. I've been remiss in posting... I'm volunteering, taking 17 credits, Pan-African dancing it up (questionable on my part), and living with a wonderful host family. I pass out at, like, 10PM on a lot of weeknights. Except Wednesdays and sometimes Thursdays, because those are good nights to go out! Spring break was September 3-12 and it was INCREDIBLE. I went to Mozambique, Swaziland, and Kruger National Park in Johannesburg, South Africa. Every part of our trip was hilarious, even when we were driving in a truck (classic... tourists in Africa) for ten hours from Jo'burg to Swaziland. We drove all over Mozambique and visited Inhambane, Vilanculos, Maputo & Xai Xai. What that means is that I basically spent six days visiting incredibly beautiful beaches in Mozambique, quad biking, dancing, and eating delicious meals around the camp fire. We stayed in the most beautiful accommodations in Mozambique - there are few things better than waking up about 100 ft from the ocean. It was easily my favorite part of the trip, but I'm a huge beach person. My favorite part of Mozambique was snorkeling in these beautiful reefs off of an island about 45 minutes from Xai Xai. We all spent literally an HOUR pulling the boat off of the sand that morning after the tide had gone in. It was insanely hilarious and consisted of everyone yelling and trying to push in a semi-coordinated manner while people yelled "1, 2, 3, push!" in Portuguese/English. While snorkeling, I got thrown into the reef at one point and have a pretty bad scar on my back... but it's so worth it. I saw the most beautiful colored fish and ate the most epic lunch of grilled, fresh fish with fruit and rice. It was the most fun ever.   I also went to Swaziland. I'm kind of weird for this, but I loved when we all got out for immigration through Swaziland. We were basically drunk with exhaustion after waking up for a 3AM flight to Jo'burg and driving ten hours, and Swaziland looks and feels completely different than Cape Town. It was dusk, there was fruit hanging from the trees, kind of sketchy outdoor bathrooms, and everyone was laughing. We set up camp in the dark at Hlane national park... also hilarious since my first camping trip was the Grand Canyon this past May. I swear I like nature, I'm just from New York and my idea of nature is a little more beachy... hahaha! But in the morning light we could see that there was a watering hole RIGHT near our campsite, and there were tons of rhinos, crocodiles, and other fun creatures. Also, I heard a lion roaring as I fell asleep on my second and last night in Swaziland. I feel bad starting off my posts from abroad with such a shallow account of the trip, but I am so behind on posting. Please forgive me! I have done a LOT of thinking on this trip, and the thought of having to compress it all for a blog post is a little overwhelming... so please enjoy this slightly shallow but fun account of my time here so far. Attempting to weave some sort of context in for you, lovely readers, seems like a herculean task at the moment. But it is coming in future posts. With that, I leave you with a super adorable picture of my  host brother, Liam. I'll post one of my host sister soon.  :)