Ok, so my last entry was over two weeks ago I think so this will be a whistlestop tour of my adventures recently... Just after that we spent another 2 days at the NCP, one of which was very hungover due to one of the girls leaving meals the previous night, not the best when you have 20 noisy kids to look after! On the Saturday we painted the 2 grade 1 classrooms at Mahlanya Primary. We arrived at 8.30 in the morning, about 5 volunteers in total, and started the painting whilst we waited for the Swazi parents to arrive and come and help us... if anyone's ever been to Africa (or I've probably mentioned it before in my journal) there's a certain thing called African time that you soon get used to. It generally means add on an hour or so to the stated time... At about 10am and just when we thought nobody was going to turn up, in came at least 50 parents and guardians of all shapes and sizes. They had all come to see what we were doing/had done in the library and say thank you. It was really really nice to see them all there and see just how appreciative they were of our hard work. We also told them that through people at home we'd managed to raise money for the chairs and tables in both classrooms and they were SO shocked and SO SO appreciative. They started saying we were a gift from god - not too sure about that! Sile and I started to panic a little though as there were definitely too many of them to all help and some of them were slightly mature in years... It was fine though as only about 8 Swazi women stayed and they whizzed through both classrooms like there no tomorrow, very impressive. The best thing was that some of them said that know they knew how to paint they would go home and do the same in their houses. The classrooms looked so much better and will look even better once the new furniture is bought and goes in. I'll send pictures once they are sent to me.

My final week was spent mostly at the NCP with the kids there who are absolutely adorable. I'm really glad my placement wasn't there because it would definitely be too easy to get attached to them, I cried when it was my last day and I'd only spent 6 days in total with them, imagine if I'd spent the whole 3 months there...!

About 5 of us were leaving Swaziland around about the same time so we had a group leaving do, was fairly restrained actually, got home at 2.30 after visiting a local sports bar and chatting with the local Swazi's.

I left on the Sunday which was weird as it seemed like time to leave because everyone else had either left already or was about to leave but its strange how you feel when you have to leave your little comfort bubble, especially to travel down to Cape Town on my own. All was good though as when I got on the Baz Bus (a hop on hop off backpacker bus which goes all the way down to Cape Town) I met Tom and Chris. They're both English and Tom is also traveling on his own and is doing almost exactly the same route as me down to Cape Town. Really handy and safer to be traveling with someone else, especially a guy, no romance though before you all ask!

First stop on the way was Durban where we spent 4 nights and did a spot of shopping, went out for a nice Mexican, I learned a new drinking game (always good), visited an aquarium and got lost looking for botanical gardens! We did eventually find the botanical gardens though and had some nice tea and scones with Durban's older population! Durban is really nice as it has nice houses on nice wide streets, has nice restaurants and cafes but it's also not nice as it's not safe and you can't just walk around with your bag and camera etc. You can't take pictures in the street really so most of my pictures are from buses and generally have a bus window or seat in them!

We left Durban on Thursday headed southwards for Port St. Johns which is very very different from Durban... will fill you in next time as my internet time is about to go... Lots of love XX