Baby steps in SA

a tiny preview of beautiful africa with huge flowers and blue skies. God is amazing, ja?
so thats me in front of the union building (where the president stays). the buildings in the background make up about 1/4 of the city and its an amazing place!

this was breakfast. consisted of bread, chips, polony (which is some sort of very pink ham), cheese and egg. and there was a choice of "russian". i have yet to try it and we were joking that it comes with a real russian in your food. this whole thing is called s-something i cant remember exactly what. but i'll update once i do. but it was nice and i was actually supposed to bite into it like a burger.

and that was my friend's food. some sort of beans mash (name of which i cannot remember either!) and chicken stew. it tasted good though! hee.

the experience was interesting too. saw 2 white girls who were obviously on drugs w needlemarks on their arms. and because we were chatting w the owner and because i stick out like a sore thumb (being chinese), one of the girls sitting behind started chatting to me. and she shook my hand, asked where i was from and introduced herself as british. thing is, she spoke afrikaans and totally had no brit accent, and her hand was really sweaty (which eduardo said was another sign that she was on drugs). so although the 2 of us didnt feel threatened whatsoever, our normal conversation kinda stopped and we got out of there pretty quick. he calls it the "edge". the walk to union square after that was uneventful but seriously, pretoria is a beautiful place. everyone who reads too much crap off the internet should take it w a pinch of salt. yes, crime happens and there are unsafe people around, but pretoria is amazing and mostly, i've felt very safe. (:

we couldnt go into the union building without a SA identity card, passport and a letter, so just had to settle for a picture reflection of the main entrance.

africa is awesome. this might be discounted as the "high" i'm getting from the start of my trip, but i love this place.