July marks the ending of my work here in cpt, and the beginning of freedom to do as I please with the daylight hours, a huge plus. After the last few hectic days at Regency, an office party at Spiros (local greek restaurant) commemorated both my boss Richard's birthday and the end of my time here as an intern. Strange to think that I was only meant to be here for 3 months, and here we are nearly 11 months later finally saying goodbye. Due to my departures, I was asked to write one of our monthly articles featured on the Regency website detailing my experience here, feel free to look up the web page and check out what our NGO is all about (regency dot org)
This month also gave me the opportunity to bring a little bit of America to my friends here in Hout Bay. After learning of my cooking/ baking abilities on one of our weekend trail runs (when you are together for 8+ hours at a time it is interesting how the topic of covo always ends up on food) it became apparent that a 4th of July celebration was in order. With the help of a well-timed care package from my mom I was able to recreate as best as I could the star spangled holiday, complete with "American" food (foot long hot dogs, corn on the cob, potato salad, coke and chips), the brewer kid's favorite pies (Emily's red white and blueberry and Jesse's tollhouse pie) and watching of jackass the movie. So much fun, especially when I realized this is the third continet that I have celebrated independence day on!
I have also been able to spend some quality time on the mountain with JT these past few weeks. She wanted to show me some new trails that I had yet to run and to also get in some great views that I could take pictures of (since usually pretty focused on not falling off the mountain, running into protea bushes, or spraining an ankle). I swear the vegetation here has it out for me, between the protea bushes bruising up my legs and attacking my face and the prickly devil bushes that always seem to be around when I need a good hand hold, these trail runs have definitely made their marks. Visited a geo cache, ran under some epic waterfalls, waded, through rivers swollen from winter rains, and had some ridiculously good laughs. So sad that I wont be here when she and the boys tackle Double Hout Bay and Tuffer Puffer, should be awesome races!
Also managed to get an entry into the Knysna Forest marathon this past weekend, so was able to see the Garden Route that I have heard so much about. The drive consisted of taking pictures, jamming to music, consuming ridiculous amounts of coffee and wine gums, and learning Afrikaans vocab via road signs. Translating names like Suurbaak and Buffelsjagsrivier had us both in stitches. Knysna is such a beautiful part of the country, and was so excited to see this new place the best way possible, via running :) The race was an effort to say to least (I was refusing to let a bum leg stop me from experiencing such a beautiful route) but our little Hout Bay clan stuck together and with the assistance of an undisclosed amount of pain killers and muscle relaxers I managed to get myself to the finish line (I swear one of these days my stubbornness will lead to my downfall). Ah well, first off road marathon done and dusted, next challenge please! :)
