Last Sunday night was no doubt the worst night of my life.

It was about 9 pm and I was in my room reading when I heard a glass shattering. I thought that Liz, my housemate, dropped something so I thought nothing of it. A few seconds later Liz calls my name out sounding really panicked. I opened my door and there she stood looking stressed with two kitchen knives in her hand.

I'm thinking wtf is going on! She gave me a knife and said that she heard a window breaking in the front part of the house...man I was practically shitting in my pants at this point.

Knives in hand, we walked around from room to room inspecting the windows and found that nothing was broken; we concluded that a neighbour's house is being burglarized. Which was strange because this is a relatively safe neighbourhood. Anyhoo, after about ten minutes of insanity I headed back to my room and locked myself in hoping to fall asleep asap and get away from the unpleasantness.

WELL! That's when things got really bad.

I got woken again by Liz but this time it was the sound of her car heading out of the gate! She was going to her boyfriend's house, which she does once or twice a week. I was FLABBERGASTED. I was thinking what the hell is wrong with this girl, leaving me in the house all alone when she knows I'm not used to the crazy shit that goes on around here. ('here' being South Africa, and 'crazy shit' being the routine break-ins and rapes.)

I barely slept the whole night, I was praying all night and reciting over and over all the verses I had memorized from the Quran. I left my room every hour or so to see if there was anybody lurking around outside. I think I slept at about 4 am after shedding a tear or two.

Anyway, long story short, I found out the next day after coming back from work that the loud 'window breaking' noise was actually a light fixture in Liz' bathroom falling and shattering. The really fucked up part - she discovered this fact shortly after I went back to my room and didn't bother to alert me so that I can stop freaking out.

Honestly that was the worst night of my life - all because of an absentminded housemate and her defective bathroom light.

hello again

Time is flying, I can't believe I've been here for two months. I haven't been up to much, just working my little heart out. I'm not as worried as before about trying to travel as much as I can. I came to realize that for me just living in a new place and developing a routine there can be more exciting that doing the whole tourist thing. It's great when a strange place starts to become familiar.

On the other hand though, I would like to do a touristy thing or two before I leave. I'm leaving my internship on the 14th of April but I'll be in Joburg until the 26th. During that break my goal is to visit Durban and maybe (that's a big maybe!) Zimbabwe.

The internship is still going well. I enjoy coming into the office very much. The atmosphere is not tense and oppressive and the people at HURISA are very easygoing and pleasant people. They seem genuinely interested in my development and have been providing a very supportive working and learning environment. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity and I consider myself very lucky to be here! I feel like I'm getting the most out of the opportunity in learning as much as I can and also passing on what I've learned to others through the training. When the time comes for me to leave, it's going to be hard!

I honestly don't know what I'll do when I get back to Canada. Should I go back to school or get a job? Neither option appeals to me at the moment. I'm applying to jobs while I'm here but nothing fruitful yet.

Moving on. I braided my hair with extensions in late January and I recently took them out. It feels so good to be free from all that mess of hair. I lost a lot of it in the process of taking the extensions out though. So my once thick and unruly hair has been reduced to thin and wiry fluff : I'm just letting you guys know so you won't freak out if I come back to T.O. with half a head of hair :)

What else to say? I'm working on taking pictures and uploading them, I'll let you know when I do!