Freezing Bajeezing

Let me tell you how cold it is. Negative degrees I swear. Well negative Celsius not Fahrenheit. It's so cold that you go to bed with no feeling in your fingers and toes and wonder if you'll even have fingers and toes in the morning. Okay so I may be exaggerating a little bit but it's really cold. The worst part is when you're inside and there's no heat. I don't know if it's just because the university is on winter break or if they just don't have heat. But the dorm we stay in has it's doors open every single day the entire day. So the hallways are freezing. When you wake up in the morning you don't want to get out of bed because you just got really warm. Brooke lost feeling in one of her toes Monday and hasn't felt it since. It's a serious issue. It wouldn't be so bad if they had heat inside. But they don't so you never really get warm until you're in bed for awhile and your blankets start working to keep your body heat in. Even during the lectures we all har our costs and scarves on still. I use my computer with gloves whenever I can because it's so cold.  Okay now that I've complained enough about the cold i'll move on to tell you what we're actually doing in the cold. Yesterday we went on a tour of Bloemfontein. It was really neat and interesting. The first stop we made was at naval hill which is the highest point/mountain in Bloemfontein. So from the point you can see basically the whole town. It was cool and our tour guide threw so much information at us while we were there. We were on that point for over an hour while he talked to us about the development of Bloemfontein from the very beginning of its colonization. As we were leaving Naval Hill there were ostritches on the side of the road. And as we drive towards them they decided to wander into the middle of the road. Kind of like Canadian geese like to do at home. They looked at the bus like "oh you wanted to drive here? Well, too bad." it was funny and eventually they ran out of the way but it was really excited to actually see an ostritch in the wild and not in the zoo. Alyson, Brooke and I were total tourists and sat in the very front row of the bus, but guess who got the best pictures of ostriches? We did. No biggie.  After Naval Hill we went down to the town and walked in a square learning about the city of Bloemfontein. It was crazy. We were told to leave everything on the bus except our cameras if we wanted them so we reduced the chance of getting pickpocketed or anything stolen. We walked around, saw city hall, the parliament building and this big square where people had stripped the copper off the statues and plaques there because they needed the money. We also ran into this man who had a bottle he was putting up to his mouth and inhaling. Our tour guide told us it was a substance very similar to glue and a lot of people in the city are addicted to it. He told us that some start as early as 11/12 years old and by the time they're 12 they are so messed up they don't know who they are. It's very sad. The man followed us for the rest of the tour and while we were getting on the bus he was yelling in Afrikaans at us asking why we can't give him money if we all are carrying water and food.  After touring Bloemfontein we went to a gated community called woodland hills. In order to get in you had to pass through huge gates and talk to security. If you didn't live in Woodland Hills you had to show the men your papers and everything to make sure you're allowed to visit. Our tour guide had to pull a lot of strings to let our huge bus into the community because usually absolutely no taxis or busses are allowed into the community. While we were touring the place we saw a kid riding a bike who looked at the bus with wide eyes and his jaw on the ground. We thought it was so funny that he was so shocked to see the bus. The community had its own hospital and mall but not it's own school yet. They were planning on building a pre-primary school soon but the high schools around the community are excellent so they didn't want to compete with them. The point of the community is to not have to leave if you don't want. They have their own water and electricity separate from the surrounding towns. It's amazing. And if you want to live there its only 1.5 million rand for a townhouse and 10 million rand for a single family home. And you better act fast there's only 60 plots left! The whole community is 2000 hectares and the fence surrounding it is 8 km long with tons of cameras along the perimeter and inside the community. The community has existed for 7 years and there has never been any crime committed in the entire 7 years. Zip zero nada. Nothing. Crazy huh? That's only 15 minutes away from the first city we went to. Such a huge difference between the two.  Later in the day we went to the festival again where I had a pizza cone. It was literally a cone of pizza crust filled to the brim with mushrooms, bacon and cheese. It was so delicious. After that I also had a kudu roll which was basically a hot dog but the meat was antelope. That was delicious as well. For dessert we all had cocktails and tried these pancake things. I know, shocker I had a pancake. I don't like pancakes but these were thin and more like crepes but they were rolled up and had cinnamon and sugar inside. You can put cinnamon and sugar on anything and I'll eat it. The pancakes were delicious and were only 3 rand each. Oh and in case you're wondering 8 rand is 1 dollar so 3 rand is less than 50 cents. After eating everything in sight we walked around the vendors looking at all the cool things. Alyson got to use her bargaining skills to buy all her gifts for people back home. The funny thing about the vendors here is that they aren't pushy. They don't come out of their stalls trying to lure you in to get you to buy anything. They don't even speak to you when you come in unless you say something to them first. Not at all what it's like anywhere else where people are basically attacking you to get you to look at their things. The festival was fun and we walked around looking at everything. They had so many cool things i'll have to post some pictures of it later so you can see how cool it is.  Oh and then we got chip twisters again and mini donuts that were amazzzzzzzing! They were covered in chocolate with sprinkles fresh out of the fryer and they were so good! We also got caramel ones too but I didn't like those as much as the chocolate ones.  That's all for now. But I will leave you with this: when we go to Qwa Qwa this weekend it's supposed to snow. Send me some heat please! I'm not prepared for snow in the middle of July.