Here is another extremely Long Tale
(Wednesday, August 31, 2005 5:04 PM)

Hey everyone here is another amazing story with a bunch of spelling errors, bare with me.

Just to update everyone on my wieght gain, I think I have gain about 3 pounds if I have the conversions correct.

As I have probably mentioned to you how tight the security is here with all the gates and security alarms. Well a couple of days ago I woke up to a scare. The alarm had woken me up at my early rise of about 10 in the morning. It was pretty hecktic since I have never heard such a loud pulsating noise in my life. I went down stairs to check the premise to see if any of the doors where open or if the dogs had acciently activated the alarm system. Well Stupid me I had to go back upstairs to get my keys to deactivate the alarm. Instead of deacivating the alarm I pressed the panic botton. I thought I was pressing the deactivation key so I kept on pressing it. After opening the gate and the garage a dozen times and scaring the dogs to death I finally got the alarm to stop. Than when this is done Henley Watch call me to see what was going on. I swear the guy on the other side probably thought I was the burgerler because they kept on asking me the same questions over. I rest of the day I was pretty scared for my life so I got the dogs to stay with me upstairs.

On Friday I had the oppertunity to go Ice Skating in Vernahern which is about 20Km from Henley. I was invited my my four host family, the Youngs. You don't know ho refreshing it is to go iceskating. I finally was able to breath clean, cool air. The other kids that came were freezing to death, and I was at home. There was another exchange student part of another program that also came. His name wa Davis and came from England. We were about the only ones that weren't complaining about the cold. I ended up playing puck soccer which is playing icehockey with your skates. I fell three times really hard because the ice seemed like it had never een cleanedin weeks. There were huge cracks in the ice and you really can't stop on top of those.

On Satuday I had an opertunity of a life time. My host family brought me to Emperors Palace which is a franchise of Ceasers Palace Casinos. It is a huge casino with everything. I know you guys probably thought I was there to gambale but I actually was able to resist the tempations of the slots. Actually I was there to see a live tap show called "Tap Dogs" at the Theatre of Marcellus. It was an amazng performance of six Australian workers who tap dance so that the days would seem shorter. It was amazing, not just because there were australian men with there shirts off sweating and tap dancing at the same time, but they were working hard out there. Two of the main characters where constantly dancing. They usually perform twice a day in the evening with only an hour break in between. Crazy. It was great performance, if only I was in the front row so that I could have worn a rain coat and be splashed on.

On Suday I went to church in the North end of Joburg. Than later we were invited to a person named Chris' house. Even though he is extremely afraid of rats and lives in a complex that has an infestation on them, he is a pretty good cook. Chris was an exchange student 11 years ago to Argentina. The amazing part of the story is that now he is the club presient for his club and he now is a room mate to one of the exchange students from SA (from a different district) who went to Argentina (exchangee in a different district). It really goes to show you how this experience will be life changing.

As I have mentioned that my Rotary club is extremely different from my home club. Lets just say Henley does everything different. Every month that has a fifth week in a month both Rotarians and Rotary Anns have a stoup and soop (which is like a bunch of people making soups and you share) at one of the houses. This may seem normal, and it was at first to me. But before I had classified this to be the first normal thing Henley has ever done a bunch of belly dancers come out of no where. I will never go to the Nursery and look at the owners the same ever again. The owners of the local nursery and two ladies from the local bar are going us lessons on belly dancing. I never thought 50 year olds and over were able to move where hips and stomach and breast that much before. One of the Anns said that it takes years of child birth to be able to do this. (Very desturbing, I think the liquor was talking)

I finally got my bank account open and my school uniform. My school uniform has changed from pervious years. Now instead of looking like nuns we look like cashiers at MacDonalds. I am told that I am to wear my baseball cap every friday for Assembly day. I have also found out that there is only 17 people (includi me) in my class. Crazy. School is starting next week on Tuesday and I am also moving to my next host family on Sunday. This week is going to be a drastic change.

This weekend I am spending time with an exchange student from Wincoshin at a trout lake in the northern end of Johannesburg. His name is Bradley and he is a very interesting character. We are partners to win a grand torphy for the most catch. It will be an interesting week.

I was wondering if you guys got effected by the aftermath of the hurricane, ie storms, violent weather, etc. Will update soon,

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Bounmy Inthavong