Taxi Van

This past week I had one of the most thrilling experiences in my life, or at lest in the past five years I can honestly say.
So it started at 10 o'clock in the morning last week, Thursday. A trip to Cape Town, South Africa. We had planned on just simply boarding the train in Stellenbosch, taking a taxi ride to the beach, and enjoying the day on the beach. Little do we know as Americans about how the train and taxi system works in Africa until after you experience it for yourself. The description alone may not even come close to what it is truly like.
To start, my experience with trains has been good to this point in life. Europe, my first time on a train, was beyond what I had expected. The seats were nice, comfortable, and the train moved quickly from town to town, and even bypassing some. New York, my second time on a train in a different location. It was good, slower than the Eurorail, however, the seats were nicer, there was so few people that I had a seating section to myself, and they had power strips so I could watch movies on my laptop the whole nine hours.
This last Thursday, however, was a totally different experience. The train looked almost as though it should be out of commission. The outside is a sight to see, but the inside, it was not so much. The seats were small, not too comfortable, and the isle was maybe a foot and a half wide. Still more, this train was the loudest and most bouncy and squeaky train I have ever ridden in. The train stops here in absolutely every town, maybe 15 or so, between Stellenbosch and Cape Town, which is hard to imagine because by car the ride is a half an hour. The train ride alone took us an hour and a half, solidly. The slowest train I have ever been on. And the train station itself in Cape Town is just as crazy as the train ride itself. It is total chaos there.
The Taxi Van. An experience that everyone should know and share with each other. At first, it seems sketchy, a little frightening maybe, your kind of unsure really. So, you have a van, a driver, and a wrangler (the breakdown), and up to 16 passengers squeezed in like sardines. The whole time we were in the taxi van to the beach, the driver is pulling over every few street blocks dropping passengers and gaining more passengers. and while all of this is going on, the wrangler in our first taxi van was yelling out the window and running around the van in the street every time we dropped passengers off. As if all of this was not enough, we were dropped off at the wrong place in town by our first driver.
Now, back up real quick to when we first got on the van. We were in the van for approximately 15 minutes before the van moved trying to max the number of passengers. There are other van wranglers trying to steal passengers from vans while the vans are waiting to take off as well. There was one wrangler in particular that did not want to give up on the five of us. He tried to get in our van and talk to us, he came up to my window after he got kicked out of the van, and just kept persisting. It was a crazy moment in time.
Back to the present time. We were dropped off at the wrong place. So, what else do you do than try and get another taxi van to get where you want to be, right? Out of all the taxi vans in Cape Town, South Africa, what other van would choose to pull over than the one van you try to avoid riding from the beginning. You remember the persistent wrangler I described from the beginning of this trip in the taxi to the beach in the last paragraph, well, you may have guessed, it was the same van that pulled up. The van that we tried to avoid at the beginning was the van we hopped on next. The look on the wranglers face was great. We were of course in shock and awe of the whole happening until after we got out of the van. Funny enough, that second van was the best of three vans we had to ride that day. Funny how things like that happen.
The worst part of the trip though, which is impossible to explain here, is the traffic of Cape Town. Unless you have driven in Europe in a crowded city, India, Africa, you just can't understand what the traffic is like.
It was quite a day. What seemed like a great day at the beach ended up as  three hours at the beach and about four to four and a half hours just getting there and back.
I believe that this is an event that everyone should and should have the privilege of going through.

Ethiopia

So, I have this amazing opportunity to go to Ethiopia during June and July of this year to work as a missionary and document the beginning of and opening of a new orphanage. I would be doing some documentary work as a videographer and photographer, as well as just giving my time and efforts to help with the work around the orphanage. I am pretty excited to have this opportunity and privilege and to start praying for this mission and place.

If it is one thing I have learned over this past year, and truly over a years time now, is that self abandon and patients with prayer is definitely one way GOD has changed my life and brought me to the point in life where I am now today. I'm completely grateful of the grace and Mercy that our Father GOD has lavished upon our lives, hearts and souls. With out, we would be no where, go no where, and be nothing. Because of GOD, however, we are who we are, living and doing life where we are.

South Africa

So, I have been in Africa for near a month now. I'm pleasantly shocked. I came to South Africa with no actual expectations because I slightly knew of the diversity that the continent contained. I am in South Africa in the Western Cape area of the country. Western Cape is very much a tropical climate area.

Getting here when I did, the area was dead for people roaming the streets. I was here a week to two weeks before the whole of the student body arrived here in town. You can just imagine a college town during the off season, not much life at all, very minimal at all. However, it gave me the opportunity to catch back up with my sleep, acclimate myself with the heat, and get to know the town a bit.

It may surprise some people, but I have not actually done to much yet here. I have seen a lot of the local area though. I figure that because I have 7 months in Africa, I can start slightly slower. It also ended up working out this way because I am now just getting to know a large number of people since everyone really just started showing up in the past week in a half. But, now that I am getting to know quite a few people, as well as everyone else getting to know everyone around them, we are all starting to go out at night together, to the beaches, to Cape Town, hiking, etc... It is starting to get quite exciting around here, things are shaping up, and the Braai is now an every other day happening, sometimes more often than that, the Braai being out BBQ parties as we would call it in the states. The braai is however a party of it's own kind, different from what we know a BBQ party to be in the states. I will try to get a working definition and explanation soon enough to fill you all in.

Africa is amazing though. The people are very nice, warm, welcoming, etc... There is surprisingly very little crime at all here in the Western Cape area, less than back home even. The beach here is as close as a half an hour, wine tasting is within a 10 minutes to some of the closes wine estates, Cape Point/ Cape peninsula, the Cape of Good Hope is within a half an hour, and to the very point maybe 40/45 minutes if I'm correct. It is pretty amazing to think of. Hiking, mountain biking, and even some small climbing/ bouldering is just a 15 minute walk through town to Stellenbosch Mountain. The mountain is pretty deceiving as well. When you look strait up at it, you cannot see how tall the mountain actually is, or how far back the mountain actually goes. We hiked just a few days ago up the mountain three hours, and down two, and that was just the beginning of the mountain range. The peaks keep going soo much further back and higher in altitude than we were willing to go, but it was quite amazing. And if you get lucky, you can spot some really amazing lizards up on the mountains as well as baboons.

South Africa is a very intriguing place, and that is just the Stellenbosch and Cape Town area where I am. A fraction of the whole country. To see the rest of the country though would take soo much time and effort. But the most exciting part for me though is to have the chance to work with some of the town ships, Habitat for Humanity, and in June and July going up to Kenya to work with a new orphanage that is opening up at that time. I would rather spend my time directly helping and working with the people who need the help than just worrying about seeing as much of the country as possible, even if it is just within this little area that I am in.

Well, that is all I have for now. there will be more later. This is to be continued.

Pictures

So, the more I think about it, the more it drives me crazy. Why do people think that spending more money on a digital camera today will get them better pictures and results now. Over the past school semester I have been become much more reliant on film for my photography than my digital camera. Crazy, yes, but I have four film cameras and one digital camera. There is only one reason that is. Film will, in my opinion, always give a better result than digital cameras. If you know what you are doing, the results are amazingly stunning.

So here is the deal when it come to using film. Don't be afraid to go cheap. I know, it sounds crazy, but it's my thing. Use a Diana camera, a Lomo camera, a Holga camera, or other similar cameras. You don't have to use only professional SLR type cameras to get stunning results. This is how I have been shooting lately. I have been using a Diana F+ and the Diana Action Sampler. The pictures I have posted that are the 4 in 1 pictures, those are shot with my Action Sampler camera. The greatest part of these cameras, the cheap prices. Check out these cameras, the results will be nothing less than desirable.

The Journey Begins

So I have been on the road now for three week approximately.  A snow storm every travel day, 4 airports so far, 3 more anticipated, 2 buses and 1 train! Each day I have traveled, unfortunately, there has been a snow storm. Leaving from home at 3:30 a.m., faced with a storm, taking off on the first plane, a 3 hour delay, and the list continues.

Today, arriving at the airport at 5:30 a.m., I had to reschedule/ rebook my flight because of travel conditions on the interstate. However, I am now at the airport waiting to board at 2 p.m. I am happy now to have decided not to create my blog until this point. What else would I do at an airport for approximately 9 or 10 hours!

So my journey started with two weeks down in New York visiting friends that I have not seen in the past two years. It was a great and grand reunion. I was in the Ithaca area of New York the whole time. It is a very beautiful area with ginormous rolling hills and forests in every direction you turn your head.

After New York I spent a week in New Hampshire. Mountains in all directions. Forests in all directions. Snow covering the ground everywhere. Mount Washington is now among the most beautiful views I have ever seen, especially here state side. Seeing the mountain capped with heavy pure white snow after a storm is a sight to see. Unfortunately I have no pictures of the mountain to post at the moment.

The thing about these two areas that remain the same but yet is very different at the same time is the architecture. There is no reason why the NE is called the New England states. It took me back to my days living in Italy. Small town everywhere, almost every shop is locally owned and run, and it just gave me the feel of a real European town, or at least as close to the feel of a real European town as possible without being in Europe. That is saying a lot about the states.

But here I am now, sitting at the airport waiting to leave in a few hours, being completely sleep deprived once more, only having 4 1/2 hours of sleep last night. I am excited to see what this next day and two will bring my way, what I will be faced and presented with. I will post again, though I'm not quite sure when. Look for more new pictures to pop up as well at any given moment.