Immensely long weekends, and how dessert makes everything better

This past weekend was seriously long. As in, we had Friday-Tuesday off, due to two public holidays and Witkoppen deciding to close on Monday just for funsies. We definitely made the most of it, considering it was Lauren's last weekend in Joburg. She heads to Tanzania for 2 weeks, and leaves in less than 2 days.

Thursday evening was filled with a girly movie night, complete with amazing wines and peppermint crisp desserts, mmm. So nice just to chill after a ridiculous day in which I had 5 clients out of 7 with HIV positive results. Its beginning to get to me more than I thought it would, so in a way its great timing that tomorrow is our last day at the clinic for our placement.

Friday I brunched with Lauren and Roshan, one of the Northwestern journalism students who is interning at a Joburg newspaper for a few months. We went to Nice in our fave neighborhood Parkhurst. Nice is this amazing brunch place attached to a bookstore and we consumed ridiculous desserts like a pear and almond tart. It was such a gorgeous late summer day, tons of people were out and about just lazily brunching and enjoying no work. We met up with one of Lauren's friends from high school, Andrew, who happens to also be in South Africa doing a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship. He and his friend Nick accompanied us to one of our favourite dessert places, OdD cafe, and of course it blew their minds as we knew it would. So nice to meet some more Americans with lovely Tennessee southern drawls, they were fabulous. After dinner with Dillon at an Italian place, we ended up at a Mexican restaurant of all places and an array of Americans/South Africans downed some pretty legit margaritas. We ended the evening at the Bohemian, which has live music and normally a lot of patrons but it was virtually empty so we called it a night.

Saturday was one of those beautiful late summer days with incredibly clear skies, so some of the Northwestern kiddies, Lauren, and our social coordinator Dillon headed to NeighborGoods market in Bromfontein, this hip area near the CBD (central business district). Tons of food stands with everything from paella, Jamaican food (got it, loved it), tiny cupcakes and lots of South African local breweries and wineries. There's a lovely rooftop  bar where all the beautiful people were drinking and showcasing their outfits of which I felt very dowdy by comparison. Afterwards we checked out the Oriental Plaza as it had been on our to-do list, but it was mostly just a depressing huge outlet mall. Lauren and I did a bit of gift shopping at the Rosebank African craft market, and then had a disco nap (where you nap when the sun goes down) before going to a Pirates and Punks party at a somewhat sketchy bar pretty far away from where we stay. It was a mini reunion of Splashy Fen people which was awesome, and a generally pretty great night, filled with lots of commenting on the horrendous punk outfits and terrible heavy metal music. So many mohawks..

Sunday my friend Fats and I had a ridiculous amount of energy, so of course we went rock climbing at this indoor rock climbing place for 3 hours! I banged my knee about a thousand times, fell from the wall, and got major hand cramps but it was so worth it, we had a blast. We got lunch at Duke's, which is famous for its burger combinations, and I got a chicken sandwich with sundried tomatoes, roasted butternut and pumpkin. Salivating yet? Followed up with a walk in the dog park at the Joburg Botanical Gardens, and called it an early night as Lauren and I had to brave the monstrousity that is Home Affairs at 7 AM on Monday.

Monday consisted of me wanting to either poke my eye out, drink heavily, or just give up as we waited in line for 4 hours at Home Affairs, all to pick up our tourist visa extensions that could have been taken care of weeks ago, had they been ready by the time they said they were. Obnoxious. I made the best of the day though by seeing The Avengers afterwards (fairly good) and then headed out again to the Bohemian, where there were actual good live bands and tons of hipster college kids, felt like I was back in Boston.

Tuesday was bittersweet, as both Lauren and I acknowledged that it was the last day off we'd get to spend together in Joburg. We met up with the little Americans at the botanical gardens and had a picnic- highlights include handmade guacamole, milk tart and biltong (like beef jerky but BETTER). We then did a bit of shopping at Sandton City (the ritzy shopping mall) and met up with Curtis for the last dessert club meeting, which was really sad. Made slightly better with red velvet cake and flourless Belgian chocolate cake, I might add.  We talked about the art of saying goodbye, and how even though you get used to doing it, you don't necessarily ever get good at it, or at least I don't feel like I do. I wish we had discussed in our BC Pre-departure Seminars how to say goodbye to a life you never knew you'd want- how to say goodbye to South Africa and the amazing people now in my everyday life that I can't imagine living without. More on this in another post.

Thus, an amazing, social, fun-filled weekend that really made both Lauren and I so glad we live in Joburg. I've been doing my best to keep her smiling and to enjoy her last days, as I'm lucky to have another 2 weeks here. I guess I'm watching her to see how she handles it all too, as it'll all too soon be me.

Last day at the clinic tomorrow, and I'm ready for it to end. I think the counselors are throwing us a goodbye party with gourmet food from Chicken Licken (yeah...). Should be an emotional, surreal kind of day, I imagine.