Yo guys.
In case you didn't know or forgot or whatever I've been in South Africa for the past month doing some trekking and project work in a school and it was amazing, much better than I was expecting it to be too.
The acclimatisation trek phase part thingy was pretty easy on the flat, although I wasn't too keen on the rocky bits where there was a bit of a drop down into the ocean, we had a rave at a hostel in St. Lucia after it and I danced on the tables for a bit, on the rocks in the swimming pool, on the bar.... lol (the expedition leader does not know this, although knowing my luck he is secretely a member of this site and now does, if so, hi James!
lol...)
We also did a project at a school which was amazing, we sorted out their library for them which included fixing broken windows, repainting both outside and in, organising the books and other stuff in there and doing some paintwork to make it look more child-friendly like painting the alphabet on the wall etc. We also did some teaching at the school to some of the older students who were good enough at English to understand us teaching them a lesson in the language and played games and sang songs etc. with the younger kids during breaks and after the lower school had finished. At the end they held an assembly for us and did some zulu songs and dance which was amazing and almost made quite a few people in the group cry, we did give them a couple of English songs back although I feel that there's were much better, but then again song and dance is a big part of their culture.
I had to finish the final trek a couple of days early due to exhaustian, which was due to a few things including lack of sleep, tablets I was taking, illness and the long trekking days weren't exactly helping. The majority of the rest of the group completed the full trek although there was one other person who missed a day because of illness and did the final day and one of the teachers had to stay behind with me in the log cabin. It would have been nice to be able to do the full 5 days but there was no way I was going to finish it in the state I was in.
I managed to recover in time to go on a 2 day horse trek into Lesotho where we spent the night and then horse trekked back, whilst leading my horse up a particularly steep bit of mountain the people ahead stopped and my horse decided it didn't feel like stopping, my right ankle has suffered the consequences of that and I have to go and have an x-ray on it on Tuesday morning to check it's nothing majorly serious, at the moment it's just sore and a bit difficult to walk on at times. I also need a pathology test to check for malaria as I was taken off my anti-malarials after being told I didn't need them and it was those giving me the serious rash, apparently that is actually an infection and I did need the malaria tablets so that needs checking, hopefully I'll be OK.
There was some really great moments and some really funny ones too, like when our expedition leader took me to the doctors and the rest of the team hid his hiking boots up a tree and then left him notes which sent him on a tresure trail around the campsite only for him to find that they were in the tree right next to his tent and he hadn't even noticed, I thought that was funny, there was also the rave at Bib's in St. Lucia and the night we stayed up until midnight on the first trek playing campfire word games and then realised it was really late and all had to get into our tents quietly so as to not wake up other people already sleeping.
Overall, a great time was had although I was ready to come home again and see family and friends, as well as be able to go on the internet without having to worry about how much time I'm spending on there and how much it's going to cost and if others are waiting for the internet etc.
I would also like to apologize to the person who won the Avon Aromatherapy Mint Shower Gel, I can't remember who it was and obviously now it's been cancelled I have no record of it. I did send it the Monday morning after it was won on the Sunday night but unfortunately it didn't arrive within 2 weeks for some reason, it annoyed me but there's not much I can do. Let me know if you're on this forum if you're still interested in buying it and I'll resend it for you as soon as possible.
And just to let you all know, I will be relisting sometime soonish and will be re-joining in with being a SwapitshopLounge member.
Thanks to all those who read the essay.
StacFace
BRING BACK TOKENS 
