Finally...

Well, I'm finally updating this thing.
I've been wanting to, but I didn't know what to write about; so I'll start with last week.

Liz and I, through a series of events, ended up at a catholic care center right next to where we do our soup kitchen (which I haven't helped with in a while). At first I had other things on my mind and I kind of wanted to do what I came for and leave, but we ended up on a tour of the facilities and I have to say that I was very impressed.

Background:
A catholic nun from Ireland, Sister Ethel, was sent here about 20 years ago to an informal settlement inside Port Elizabeth called Missionvale. It has around 100,000 people living there and about 90 percent of them are unemployed and 70 percent are living with AIDS. Sister Ethel came here and she was offered a tree to use, and started teaching and checking the kids there.

Um, Foreground?:
Now they give families a certain amount of soup ingredients and bread per week and give them clothing once a year out of an enormous clothing warehouse that they have. They have a clinic that treat about 200 people a day and a small school.
Every day they run a day care kind-of-thing from ages 1 to 18ish, which started at 30 kids at the beginning of this year and now they have about 600 kids there everyday. They feed them lunch and just give them a safe place to play and have fun because these kids, for various reasons, aren't in school (obviously 1yr olds aren't in school anyway).

So hopefully I'll be going back there to help out. I made some friends and got some numbers. Oh, and I found out that Mother Teresa and the queen of England have both visited the care center. Pretty cool, maybe I'll meet both of them.

It amazes me what some people can eat, and others can't.
And it annoys me when practically everyone can eat something, but I can't.

Last night we were invited to eat at Uncle Ivan's (who reminds me of a mob boss leader and I want to make a movie with him) house and while I was walking up to his front door I knew I was in trouble.

I smelled fish.
Ivan had made fish curry.

Now, I hear some fish are nice to eat, but I hate the smell, texture, and taste of fish. And these fish, which I found out later were "just sardines," were not the "nice to eat" fish. I can usually deal with the smell of fish, unless I'm full.
I managed to only dish out the potatoes from the curry into my rice and I was pretty proud of myself, so I ate that and kept a low profile at the table. I decided to eat some bread and I mistakenly grabbed a fish cake, which surprised me but I wasn't full, yet, so I managed to choke down the bite and set it aside. I finally got normal bread and filled up on that and I was quite content.

Then Joey, remembering that I hate fish, waved a plate of fish patties in front of my nose.
I was in the middle of a sentence with him and I had to stop talking and try to breathe through my mouth. Joey just started laughing quietly; that laughter where you're not supposed to laugh, so it's a lot of short breaths and low moans.
I just had to wait it out and drink some juice and then laugh it off.

Anyway, thought I'd share that with you. Nothing significant, just a story.
Love you guys.