Day 24 - Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day! A day of romance. A day of love. For Martin and I, it was a day of climbing a mountain. Lions Head Mountain to be exact.

After Martin EVENTUALLY woke up, about an hour after me, we quickly headed down for lunch, where we were treated to a not too bad bangers and mash. The funny thing about Berghof Retirement Village, is that you never know how the food will turn out. You can get something that sounds really nice, and it be inedible. You can get something that sounds awful but is actually quite nice. Or you can just get average food, that you eat because it's free, and you don't want to spend all your money on food. Today, it was a decent meal, so I was happy.

We were either going to go to Hout Bay Beach, or Lions Head, depending on the weather. After seeing that it was a little bit cooler than what we've had since we've been out here, we decided to put off Hout Bay, and go up Lions Head.

We decided to walk our way there instead of getting a bus to the bottom of the mountain, which meant that before we'd even started the trek up it, we'd have to walk up this ridiculously steep road to get there. Easy.

So off we set, took about 30 minutes to get to the bottom of Lions Head, and we started venturing up the little path that was guiding us. Before we left, George said it was fairly dangerous to go up it just the 2 foreigners, and Yonick and Jodi's mum apparently said that it was really dangerous too. They weren't all that wrong. After walking for about half an hour/45 minutes, the clear path turned into just a path of rock, that you had to climb, and lift yourself up over. Some points I was genuinely scared. It was brilliant.

As we got higher and higher, we get more tired, and the path got more dangerous, and the weather got more windy, and it felt more unsafe. But we kept going. We were so close to the top, when Martin hit his ankle on a rock and had to stop! We were literally 10 minutes from the top! We were so close! After waiting for a bit, he told me to carry on without him, and he'd sit on a rock, rest his ankle, and wait for me. I didn't come all this way to not reach the top so I agreed, and carried on. Sure enough, 10 minutes later I was at the top! All by myself! The view was absolutely incredible. You could see across the whole of Cape Town, it was beautiful. I'll upload some photos as soon as I can, but wifi's been poor recently, and I'm tired after all that walking, so I won't do it tonight. But wow. It was amazing. It was a quality feeling knowing I'd walked up the whole thing aswell, I was just gutted that Martin hit his ankle and couldn't join me. It wasn't the same without him.

After taking plenty of photos, and just admiring the sights, I decided it was time to go down to Martin, and head home. Phwoar, getting down felt a lot harder than coming up! You had to sit yourself down, both hands on the rock, and lower yourself down onto the next rock, so as not to over jump it and go tumbling down the side. We took our time coming down, just to be safe, and after about another hour we were safely on concrete roads, it felt weird after walking on rocks for the last few hours.

Legs tired and achy, we carried on walking home, and every now and again we'd turn around and just be amazed that we walked up as far as we did. I was chuffed. Exhausted, but chuffed.

Tomorrow we have another day off, this time the choice is between Hout Bay, if the weathers really nice, or the Aquarium at the Waterfront, which George says is amazing. Then onto watch the Arsenal - Middlesborough game somewhere after. Hopefully we can bag a win, and a place in the quarter finals!

Harry

Day 23 - Ruterwacht Girls & Drommedaris Girls Football Teams

After 3 weeks, we're finally starting to see the weather we are used to back home. After going home from Table View in rain yesterday, we woke up to rain and grey clouds this morning. Every cloud has a silver lining though, as Martin and I went for a run in the drizzle, as we had the morning off, and managed to go a lot further than we had been going previously. I could've gone on for longer too. Guess im still not completely used to the South African heat yet. Give it time, though.

Joe asked us to go in to the Learning Centre at 1, which meant we didn't have time to have lunch at the Retirement Village, so decided to go out at around 11:45 to grab a quick meal before moving on to the Learning Centre. We decided to go to a place called Steers, as Lourens said it was basically the South African equivalent of Burger King, and that he used to own a franchise of Steers, before working at Communicare.

Big mistake.

Now, I'm sure the Steers that Lourens owned was nowhere near as bad as this one, and this Steers was based at a petrol garage just down the road from us, so we should've known better, but we (mainly I) had the worst experience I've ever had at a fast food place. It was ridiculous.

It started off with the long wait to be served. It wasn't particularly busy at all, there was a maximum of 3 people in the queue at any one time, and 2 ladies on the checkout too, so I assumed I'd be seen fairly quickly. Nope. After just over 5 minutes of waiting I was finally seen by someone.

I know sometimes it's difficult for some South African people to understand our accent or what we say, but I was saying my order so clearly and slowly. I made sure that it was completely understandable. Nope. After trying to order a chicken burger meal (or 'combo') for Martin, and a large bacon burger meal (or 'combo') for me - with me asking many times not to have cheese on my burger - the checkout kept pressing a different combination of orders, none the right one, before Martin and I just settled on me having a combo, and him having just the burger, in order to get things done. After waiting for 10 minutes we finally got our food, and headed back to the car.

Got to the car, opened up my burger box. Covered in cheese.

No for those of you that don't know me well. I have a weird appetite. I can't stand the taste of cheese and butter, yet I love Pizza's and buttery mash potato. It's odd. So when I saw that my burger was drowning in cheese, I wasn't best pleased, after waiting a good 20 minutes to eat.

Long story short, after heading to Steers at 11:45, we didn't leave until around 12:30. It was ridiculous. Lourens if you're reading this, I know for sure you wouldn't have let that Steers be as shambolic as it was!

Then, as we were driving to the Learning Centre, we somehow managed to take a wrong turn somewhere, and got caught in a load of disgusting traffic as we corrected ourselves. So we ended up arriving at the learning centre at around 1:30. Friday the 13th felt appropriate for the morning we'd had.

After arriving at the Learning Centre we jumped in Joes car and headed off to pay a quick visit to the Deep River Communicare complex, where quite a few of the residents were gathered in the reception. After saying hello and introducing ourselves. They spoke a bit about themselves and what the complex was like, before they asked for a big group photo.

Now, the older ladies were being quite flirty to Martin and I, and we both found it hilarious some of the stuff they were saying it was brilliant, but after the photo was taken, I got a surprise when the woman on my right gave me a cheeky pinch on my bum!! Unbelievable. Joe, Lourens and Martin all found it hilarious when I told them in the car. I was left emotionally scarred!

We then made our way back to the Learning Centre, where Jaden and a little girl called Sharleen (I'm guessing it's spelt like that), who plays for Ruyterwacht Girls, hopped in our car, and we drove them down to Atlantic Football Club to get ready for our girls session.

We ended up with around 4 Ruyterwacht girls, and 7 Drommedaris girls, which was quite good as both teams had only just been made, in order to give more opportunities to girls to play football, which Martin and I agree with completely. 

After a quick passing and moving exercise, it was time. Ruyterwacht vs Drommedaris. Harry vs Martin. As my Ruyterwacht girls were 3 short on players, we were allowed one of the Drommedaris girls to even them up. After a quality game, it turned out that the ex-Drommedaris star scored the winning goal for us to give us a good 1-0 result. I was chuffed. Martin wasn't. Shame, haha.

From the session, we took all the girls, plus Jaden, back to the Drommedaris complex, where there was a big fun and games evening, organised by Joe. We didn't stay there long though, as it was open until late in the evening, but we stayed there long enough to say hello to everyone, have a few covers actions, eat a hot dog, and see our little friends we met on Wednesday at Drommedaris. Inam gave me a massive hug when she saw me, and even pulled out a Valentine's card for me! I was well happy, although she spelt my name "Hagry". Ah well, it's the thought that counts. We also saw Alonso, who told us that he successfully gave all his 5 girlfriends Valentine's cards, before letting out a cheeky grin after we congratulated him!

Tomorrow we have a nice day off, where we hope to go to Houts Bay if the weathers nice, or climbing up Lions Head if it's not fantastically hot. Either way, it'll be a good day.

It's also Valentine's Day, and I'm still yet to receive my card off Maddie, after I sent her some chocolates and a personalised card! Although I gave her a slightly wrong address, which leads to a student housing accommodation, so I'm hoping the card hasn't ended up there. Oops.

Harry

Day 22 - Maja Crèche, JG Meiring High School & Table View Soccer Club

Another day, another 10 hour working day for me and Martin.

It all started off at the Learning Centre, where we had our second session with the Maja Crèche. After our session with them last week, we knew that they understood us a lot better than Goodwood and Sunflower Crèche's, and managed the games a lot better. So, after playing a game of Huddles, we decided to try the Domes and Dishes game that we originally tried at Goodwood in our first week, followed by getting them all sat down in a circle, rolling footballs to eachother, and aiming to hit targets.

After the crèche session was over, we had around 4 hours to kill in the Learning Centre, so we ended up playing on the computers, helping get stuff ready for the games evening at the Drommedaris tomorrow, and playing a bit of table tennis. After I humiliated Martin a couple of times, Joe fancied a game against each of us. For an old man, he was amazing at table tennis. He beat us both by a good few points each.

After Martin eventually managed to beat me, we headed off to JG Meiring High School, where we had a session with the Under 15's, as apposed to the under 17's, who I think had cricket that day so couldn't make the football session. It went really well, just like our session with the Under 17's.

We didn't have long as we had to leave at 4 to head to Table View Soccer Club, so we did a quick shooting exercise, before playing a game called Over The Bar, that we learnt at Arsenal. Safe to say the shooting wasn't too great, as I managed to get hit by volleys twice, and only 2 goals were scored, out of countless shots. It was fun, and the kids enjoyed it which was nice, too. We then ended the session with a quick match, which Martin and I got involved in as per the groups request. My team had a nightmare, though, and lost to Martins team 1-0.

Soon after 4, we left JG to quickly drop Yonick and Jaden home, then went off to Century City 5's, the place we were at with Reach For A Dream on Tuesday, to meet a guy called Kurt, who was one of the coaches at Table View. As we were following him to the training pitches, I fell asleep in the car, and Martin managed to take an incredibly hideous photo of me sleeping, where I have about 3 chins and my mouth is wide open. I'm just hoping that he's not mean enough to unleash it on Facebook.

We arrived at Table View at around 5:45, after supposedly being stuck in heavy traffic. I had no idea because I was fast asleep! But had to be energised straight away to take the session with their Under 14's and 15's. We only had 45 minutes, as training finished at 6:30, so we get them into a bit of Rondo games, then progressed it into possession games, before finishing the session with three 6-a-side matches. Before we knew it, time was up, and we wrapped up the session, and we headed home.

Since we've come out to South Africa, Martin and I have just been amazed at to level of attitude and discipline the children have. At Table View and Atlantic Football Club, all the kids are really obedient, responding to us with "yes coach" or "okay coach", which is completely different to London, where you're likely to be faced with a challenge of getting the kids to listen to follow instructions, or even to prevent them from being nasty to eachother. Everyone out here is just friendly and well mannered, which makes it a lot easier for us!

After a long day, we're both exhausted and will take tomorrow's lie in with open arms, or in my case, an open mouth and 3 chins, as we catch up on sleep we desperately need!

Harry

Day 21 - Sunflower Crèche & Drommedaris

3 weeks down, 9 to go! We're already a quarter of the way through our trip which is a crazy feeling as it feels like just the other day that we hopped on a plane at Heathrow to fly out here. Hopefully the rest of the trip is as good as the first 3 weeks have been.

We had another early wake up, and had to be at the Learning Centre for 9, to have our first session with Sunflower Crèche. We were meant to have them last week but for some reason the session was cancelled.

We did pretty much the same session as what we'd done at Goodwood and Maya Crèche's last week, with the traffic lights game, followed by the relay races. However, after seeing that a small group of kids were really struggling to understand us, we scrapped that, and got the kids in a circle, sat down, and got them rolling balls to each other, before adding targets to roll and hit. They seemed to get that, and enjoy it, so the session was saved! Thankfully.

After that, we had a few hours to kill, so Joe took us down to the local Cash and Carry store, which is like a big warehouse where you can buy loads of stuff in bulk, for a decent price. He picked up a crate of fantas, aswell as a crate of cokes, along with a massive multipack bag of niknaks, that Communicare keep at the Learning Centre, that they then sell on to anyone who wants a snack while they're there.

At around 2ish, we were asked to sit in at a meeting for a company called Stenza, run by one of Joes friends. Stenza is aimed at basically increasing the facilities for kids to play football on, and run a tournament in commemoration of Nelson Mandela. They also provide support for the kids that are involved for their academically studies, aswell as football. We were there to basically show our support to the headteachers and coaches that were attending, and essentially help them try and get Stenza into local schools that the attending teachers run, which we were happy to do.

We had to leave the meeting a bit early, as we needed to get to the Drommedaris complex at around 3:30, so we left Ruyterwacht and headed off. Martin and I took a separate car to Joe, and as we both knew where we were going, we tried to make it into a bit of a race. Unfortunately, Joes car is a lot newer than ours, and has power steering, decent accelaration, is smaller and can overtake more easily,  and generally is a million miles better than our little Tazz. So we obviously lost. It was close, though.

At Drommedaris (you'll see if you read last weeks post, too), Joe likes to teach a life lesson to the kids each week. Today the life lesson was blowing our noses. Sounds easy, right? Well it was. Joe left us to teach the life lesson, as he had bits and bobs to do, and it literally took us no longer than a minute to teach it to them, them to practice it, and all the tissues to go in the bin. We then offered the kids a chance to play a game outside on the grass, but half the group wanted to stay in and colour their Valentine's Day colouring sheets Azille printed out for us to give them, so Martin to half the kids outside, and I stayed inside with the colouring lot. I ended up playing and chatting with one of the girls, called Inam, who seemed to really enjoy the attention I gave her, after seeming a bit shy and lonely to start with. At the end of our time their, she even told Martin that I was her 'Valentine's Day boyfriend'. Sorry Maddie. She was probably the most adorable little girl I've met since I've been out here, and she looked genuinely upset when we had to go, which was sad to see, but she said she'll come to the parents and kids games evening on Friday so hopefully she'll be happier then.

Martin also got chatting to this kid called Alonso, who was a self proclaimed 'Ladies Man', and he said how he had 5 girlfriends that he was sending Valentine's Day cards too. Good man!

We got back at around 6ish, and went for a quick run around the park, as we hadn't been on a run in a while. It was so much easier in the late afternoon/early evening as it wasn't as humid as in the mornings. We did 2 laps of the park but I reckon we could've done more. Slowly but surely we're getting used to the climate, and getting ourselves fitter too, which isn't too bad. Legs are absolutely gone though. They were knackered after yesterday, and are just painful now.

After going for our run, we decided to treat ourselves, so we made our way down to a place called the Maharaja, which is a little Indian restaurant, a ten minute walk away from Berghof. Martin even found out that they did Chicken Kormas too, so I was a very happy man. I was feeling peckish so ordered a Chicken Korma, aswell as a Butter Chicken, which was basically the South African name for Chicken Tikka Masala.

The taste was weird. The korma tasted nothing like a korma. Dont get me wrong, it was nice. But instead of it tasting coconutty, it was replaced with Cashew nuts. Very odd. Masala was nice, though.

After stuffing our faces, and feeling unbelievably fat after, we were pleasantly surprised that our bill was a lot lower than we expected. Happy end to a happy day, I guess.

Tomorrow, another full day, where we have a morning crèche, an after school session, and a club session. So another 9-7 day. Brilliant. Hopefully it's as fun as Tuesday's was, though. That'd be nice.

Harry

Day 20 - Goodwood Crèche, Reach For A Dream & Atlantic Football Club

Day 20, and our first full, busy day.

We were scheduled to have 9-7, 10 hour day today, but after leaving at 8:30, and not getting home until around 7:30, it worked out that we had an extra hour.

We started the day off with our standard Tuesday morning Goodwood Park Crèche group. 4 sessions with 4 different classes. 2 older groups (5/6 years old), 2 younger groups (4/5 years old). Safe to say this was a bit of a difficult day at Goodwood. After being told by Joe to make our sessions 20 minutes each, we managed to roll through 3 sessions in an hour and a half. Now we usually have lunch after our 4th session, so the idea of a full on lunch at 10:45 didn't exactly appeal to me too much, so we had to drag out our 4th session for as long as we could. It all worked out though, as the final class we had were our most difficult group, where a very small number understood English and, as a general, the whole class were a lot slower than the other 3. So after a very tiring 4th session, we managed to pack up and get sat down for lunch at around 11:30, which wasn't too bad.

After Goodwood we were then take to Century City, about halfway between where we live and the Learning Centre, where we would meet a group of kids from Reach For A Dream, who were basically like the South African version of the Make A Wish Foundation we have back home, where they run various programmes and provide different activities to terminally ill children, in order for them to take their mind off their illness, and to basically have fun.

It was a good session, we didn't do much as the adults were worried about the kids getting too tired, so we had a quick passing warm up, followed by a penalty shootout, ending in a 5-a-side match.

It was really nice to be involved and to see the smiles on the kids faces, but when we all sat down for lunch and got chatting, it hit home that the kids we were laughing and having a kick about with, are facing something none of us could imagine, and how scary it must be for them, yet they're still strong enough to smile through the day, and not show any sign of what they were truly feeling. So around lunch time I was a lot more quiet than I usually am, and let it all out firing shots at an empty goal after everyone left. Most of the shots were terribly off target though, which was a bit embarrassing. Oh well.

After Reach For A Dream, Martin was thirsty, I was hungry, and we had time to kill before our session at Atlantic Football Club, so we headed to Canal Walk Shopping Centre, which we were told was the best shopping centre in Cape Town, to have a look around and see what it was like.

I thought it was really nice. It was a massive centre, with loads of shops, restaurants, and a decent looking cinema, too. I even tried my first Macaron too. It was chocolate flavoured, no tasted absolutely incredible. Definitely a fan now.

After we got something to eat and drink, we headed over to Atlantic Football Club, to take over the Under 15's session. Barely anyone turned up until about 15 minutes after we thought we were going to start so we had to shorten our session. As there wasn't many under 15's, they combined in the under 14's too, meaning we had about 18 kids to start with. However throughout the session, more and more turned up and we eventually had 26. It was a bit difficult as Atlantic said they'd provide us with balls, but didn't give us nearly enough for the number we had. So Martin took over around 16 kids, and did the session we originally had planned out, while I took the extras, and latecomers to do something similar, but a lot more complex, due to the lack of balls that we had. Our session was an intense, fitness focused exercise, with football involvement in. With my group we did pretty much the same thing, but had a crazy rotational system that really got the players thinking about what they were doing  and where they were going. But it worked which I was amazed by. After that we got them into a 7-a-side match, and a 6-a-side match to finish off, which was really good to watch.

Overall it was a really fun session, a lot more fun than we both thought it would be, which put us in good moods. We're scheduled to go back next Tuesday, to coach the Under 17's, but were asked to come back on Thursday too, to take over the Under 15's again, which will be fun.

After getting home and hshowered, it was time to go downstairs and watch the Arsenal game against Leicester. Unbelievably nervy game, where we yet again managed to play poorly defensively. The dodgy refereeing didn't help either. Oh well, a 2-1 win, and we head back 4th until Man Utd play tomorrow. Hopefully Burnley can do us a favour, not getting hopes up though. Spurs lost to Liverpool, which put us in an even better mood, too.

Early start tomorrow, we have Sunflower Crèche in the morning, followed by another life skills lesson at the Drommedaris complex in the afternoon.

Harry

Day 19 - Communicare Learning Centre 2.0

Day 19, and the start of our 3rd full week out here in Cape Town. Time is flying by. There's not much to say for today so this post will be short and hopefully sweet.

We had an early start today, as Joe asked us to be at the Learning Centre for 9, so we were out of the apartment by 8:30.

After saying our hellos and greeting various people in the office, we sat and read the newspapers they had laid out on the table while we waited for Joe and Lourens to finish their meeting. When it finished, Joe took us into the computer room, where we would spend all day, just being there and helping people out with CV's, job searching, and other bits and bobs they needed help with.

Our first task of the day was to help a girl called Stephanie with her CV in order to help her out with jobs. After looking at her original one, we literally rewrote it, and did it all again completely from scratch, it looked decent at the end though, and she seemed to appreciate it, which was nice to see.

After a bit of a lul, while Martin was putting all of the photos from Joes camera onto the OneDrive account, I was called upon again to help a guy called Zayaad out with his business quotation email. That was a fairly basic job as it was just reading over what he wrote and correcting any mistakes, and changing it so it makes sense.

After that we had a pretty quiet day, so we got to go home a little bit earlier which was nice. Have a busy day tomorrow, starting at 9, and ending at 7. So an early night will be needed to get enough energy to cope with tomorrow. I'll let you know how it goes.

Harry

Day 18 - Camps Bay Beach

Today was the day that I tested my skins resolve to the South African sun, and see if I could survive a day out in the open on Camps Bay Beach. Safe to say I DID survive as I'm writing this obviously but you know what I mean.

After having an amazing lie in, which we stayed in bed until 11, we headed down to grab some lunch, which we were treated to a decent beef roast. After that, Martin stayed downstairs to Skype his family, while I went upstairs to get washed and dressed. 20 minutes later, we were off.

We had a brief idea as to where we were going, but had a map just incase. I opted to don the flip-flops, Hawaiian swimming trunks and top combo, where as Martin chose a more casual look. 

We decided to walk to the top of Kloof street, which is where we could get a bus from, but as we left fairly early we walked up along the bus route until a bus was expected fairly soon, which saved us a bit of money, but my feet killed after wearing the flip flops to walk so far.

After hopping on a bus we arrived at Camps Bay. What a sight. The sand was really soft to walk on, the sun was shining down, the water was glistening. It was beautiful. We picked our spot about halfway along the beach and set ourselves down. Martin was a clever clogs and forgot his towel so he had to lay down on bare sand. It also meant we weren't going in the sea, as I was certainly not going in on my own. Shame. Maybe next time.

After a couple of ours of just pure relaxing, we got a bit thirsty so decided to pack up and find somewhere to grab a drink. There were a couple of nice bars but as we were covered in sand and sweaty from the heat, we felt a bit out of place, so opted for a little cafe a short walk away, where we just chilled out for a bit, admiring the view.

Martin was told that a good place to get some food is Ocean Basket, which serve all kinds of seafood. So after our drink at the cafe we headed there. We were seated upstairs, which gave us a good view over the beach. We both chose to go for a classic Fish and Chips, but I was feeling a bit peckish so I got some sushi to go with it. Very tasty. Couldn't finish it all though. I'm starting to get worried that my appetite is shrinking, as I couldn't finish the ribs I had at Da Vinci's the other day, and couldn't finish the  sushi today. I did, however, have a little bit of room left over for some sticky toffee pudding. Which was well worth the bloated feeling as it was gorgeous!

After finishing up and grabbing the bill, we headed home, where I realised that after going 17 days without defeat to sunburn, I have been hit in the lower back region. Nightmare. I focused so much on my shoulders, which are the usual victims. That I forgot about the lower back. Oh well, it doesn't hurt too bad which is okay, I'm still counting it as a victory, so 18 days undefeated! Wayhayy.

Tonight's plan is to sit in and watch the African Cup Of Nations final, between Ivory Coast and Ghana, I'm hoping for a Ivory Coast win myself.

Tomorrow we're in early at 9 at the Learning Centre, so I'm hoping for an early night. Not sure what we're doing tomorrow though, I guess we'll find out then!

Harry