The Convention

September 13th and 14th we were at the convention. It was amazing to see all of these women brought together for scrapbooking. There was one page that someone had displayed that reminded me of my sister Alyson. It was titled "Confessions of a Shoe-a-holic" and the whole page was of 81 different pairs of shoes. We got to eat lunch with the lady who did the page and she told us of the different name brand shoes she used: manolo blanik, christian leboutin, jimmy choo, etc. She had 4 different pairs of knee-high black boots that she assured us were all different in there own special way. CRAZY!

We loved the different ladies that helped us in each of our classes. Most of them were great helps!

Saturday night we had a Gala dinner where the colors were black and magenta. We had such a great trip with the other girls from Utah.

Sunday night after two long days at the convention we went to a really nice steak place called "The Butcher Shop." I got a full steak dinner with the works for $15 we could not believe the prices for food other there. It was unbelieveably cheap. Then we took a few pics with all the stuffed animals they had, Kell with the warthog and me with a hippo. So fun!

Although we had a great meal, we were almost too excited to enjoy it. We had to get up the next morning at 4:30 to get to the airport on time for our flight to Port Elizabeth to go on Safari!

SOWETO

On Friday Sept 12 we went on a tour to the Soweto neighboorhood in Joburg. This was a neighborhood where many black people were forced to move from the city. It was eye-opening to see the shacks some people were living in as well as seeing so many advertisements for HIV and AIDS. I knew it was a problem, but I didn't really think about it being that prevelant.

We got to tour a church and see some school kids there for a memorial for one of their teachers. It was interesting to see that children are the same no matter what country their from or what socioeconomic status they have.

We then went to a museum about some of the violence that happened back in the 60's with some students who refused to learn Afrakanns.

After that we went to lunch at a local restaurant called "Wandie's" the food was surprisingly tasty (of the things we dared to eat!)

When we returned to our hotel we went shopping at Nelson Mandela Mall. It was pretty high end but we did get to take our picture with this giant statue of the man himself.

Africa Pics

Ok so I finally got some pics from our trip.

We left Salt Lake at 6 in the morning on Sept. 10 and finally arrived in Johannesburg at 5 pm on Sept. 11. Even with the 8 hour time change we were still traveling for a little over 24 hours.

We had a great flight from Atlanta to Dakar on the western tip of Africa. That leg was about 9 hours and we each had our own row so with three seats to lay on and an ambian, things were really good.

At Dakar we stopped to refuel and let some stinky guys on to check the plane for bombs and other things left behind by people getting off. Then we continued on for another 8 and a half hour flight to Johannesburg.

We stayed in a pretty nice neighborhood in Joburg and after a little incident with ambian (Kelly not me) on the flight we decided to try another one so we could sleep that night.

I'll update more later!

Out of Africa

Ok so I decided after this amazing trip to Africa, I needed to start a blog so I could remember everything that happened. I am a horrible journal keeper so I think this will be a much better option for me!
We had a couple of really long flights but they were totally worth it when we actually got there.