What's your favorite sausage?

My parents came this week with my sister, Angi, and my cousin, Janna. I met them at the airport. Little did I know, when I asked for 14 prom dresses for my youth pageant...I would get 50. I'm not complaining though. You can never have enough crushed velvet and puffy sleeves. haha Thanks to everyone who donated. I'll take pictures of the girls wearing them so you can see your dresses on them! Fun! They'll be so excited. So since there were so many dresses, we had to take a taxi just take the luggage all the way to the south part of the country. My sister had to drive the rent-a-car on the left side of the road. Although my buttcheeks were constantly being clenched tightly in fear of crashing and all of us stressing at each other everytime we bottomed out in potholes (or drove 4km with the red light on because we forgot to push down the emergency brake), nothing could ruin the trip. Not even the smell of the clutch burning out.

We went to see my family the first night, stayed at the animal park reserve the second, at last night enjoyed the comforts of a B&B. We drove all over Swaziland with the suitcases hog-tied to the trunk. I've never felt like such a hillbilly in all my life. I felt like all we needed was a few more loose teeth and a grandma in a rocking chair of the hood of are car to engage the perfect moment. Just picture taking speed bumps in a small European car packed full of tourists and luggage roped to the back of the car. :) Well if attention is what we wanted, we definately got it. So much for not looking like tourists. I guess its hard to hide when 3 out of the 4 people visiting me are wearing fanny packs. haha I wish I were kidding. I caught myself thinking, "Yes, this is really happening. A Hummer or truck would be appropriate through the bush, but my family is offroading in a small euro car with a maximum baggage capacity 3 suitcases." It was awesome.

I brought them to my clinic to meet people I work with. They went shopping in the markets. We ventured through the vast 10,000 acres of rhino poop. We're attacked by elephants from all angles of our jeep and played "chicken" with a giraffe who refused to share the road with us. It was fun. We ate mangoes, lamb, and ampala stew and watched half naked men do traditional dances while we tried to keep the monkeys from stealing our stuff.

I was sad when they had to leave, but I'm finding myself encouraged. It was a nice break and showing them what I'm doing and speaking SiSwati for them was a good confirmation that I have been working here in ways that I might not know. I stayed at a hostile friday and saturday to prepare myself to go back to my site. First night was with my friend, Lisa, but last night I had to go alone. God totally provided though because although my agenda was to cry the whole night since everyone was gone haha, I found another volunteer there that I didn't know very well and we had time to talk. He taught me a card game and we watched music videos. I then met some guys from Germany traveling with there one Swazi friend. They are students at a university in South Africa this semester and are traveling. One asked me to come with them to get some supper. Usually I would decline especially because I could picture uncomfortable silence and wanting to go home, but being stuck wherever they took me, BUT although I just got ready for bed and showered I felt like it could be fun. I decided to go. Alone. With five German guys my age and one Swazi girl I had just met. It ended up being really cool. We went to supper and all talked. I finally hung out with people that, for the most part, got my jokes. One "cricket" moment was when they were telling me who was sharing dorms at the university. I said, "Aww...that's cute. You guys can have pillow fights before bed and talk about girls before you go to sleep." They seemed really confused, so I changed the subject quickly. They did like my joke about wanting to fit in and that's why I ordered the same peach iced tea as everyone else. There was this one guy who kept asking me random questions. In the states we would call him a "nontraditional student". He's so nice and had lots of political questions. We were all asking questions about our favorite things. It was quiet at the table and he looked at me and asked, "What's your favorite type of sausage?" To a german, maybe not so random. To me...well. haha Everyone busted a gut and I just looked at him and said, "Sebastian, that's a personal question." We made jokes about it the rest of the night. It ended up being a fun night. We actually ran over a stop sign on accident, but they just laughed and continued so I didn't want to be the responsible one. Maybe we should have left a note? We went to a club dancing after and than a few of us stayed up until 5:30am talking about books, Americans, traveling, etc. It was cool. God is hilarious. Who would have thought I would ever be in a situation like that. Me, one Swazi girl, and five crazy German guys. I am a magnet for random things. And I don't hate it.