Thanksgiving w/o a Turkey, but great Company!

Last week, Grassroot Soccer had its inaugural South African Intern Reunion! This year GRS hired an intern coordinator whose job is to specifically look out for the intern class. He decided that it would be a wonderful idea to have all of the interns reunite in the middle/at the beginning of the year to re-connect and swap stories of how everything is going in everyone's respective GRS Site. So, interns from Zambia and Johannesburg hopped on airplanes to fly down, while PE and Lesotho/Kimberely hired cars to trek over to Cape Town to meet up.

Our first two days were primarily in the Cape Town HQ office where we had group meetings and team meetings to discuss what is working in our sites and what we can improve on. The meetings were very beneficial as it gave us time to bounce ideas off each other and also vent off some steam that might have been boiling for the past couple of months. We were also given ample time to hang out/enjoy Cape Town. During the 5 day trip I was able to peruse a market in Houts Bay, have a famtern dinner in Camps Bay, braai and play soccer in Khayelitsha, eat chicken and sausage for thanksgiving, and hike Lions Head (e very large mountain overlooking CT) at midnight (Thanksgiving night)!

Interns in Cape Town!

Lions Head Hike Crew

Men With Moustaches

Braai Stations

Individual Station

One anecdote that I would like to share was our opportunity to visit Khayelitsha. Khaylitsha is the largest township in Cape Town stretching miles along the side of the N2 (the national highway we took to drive from PE to CT). One fun thing about Khayelitsha is that there is a braai (BBQ) "station" where there are around 20 grills with vendors trying to convince you that their cooking expertise is better than their neighbors. Our lunch consisted of pork, beef, and lots of bread. We were then given the opportunity to see the Football For Hope center which was built by FIFA when the World Cup came to South Africa. The FFH center is in the middle of Khayelistha and was really cool to see, it was literally right among all of those houses and anyone has access to the fields. After gawking at its majesty, we split into teams and engaged in some fun yet competitive soccer. We played soccer for about 2 hours in the blazing sun although exhausted, I along with the three Kimberely interns stayed and hung out with the neighborhood kids at the field. They played with one of my fellow interns long, blonde locks, roughhoused with the crazy, Trevor Prophet and taught me some more xhosa. It was one of the first times that I was able to hang out and play with kids in the township and I soaked up the opportunity as much as I could.

Field in the middle of Khaylitsha

The Matthew's Reunited!

FFH Center

Barrett's (roommate in PE) mural!

Now back in PE we are in the home stretch of the year. We just had our last HCT (HIV testing and counseling) Tournament yesterday (blog to come!) and start a  Skillz Holiday tomorrow. So we will have our hands full. However, after that we will be hitting a hot, summer vacation in December, still crazy for me to think about!