Monday, December 26, 2011

Merry Christmas!!

It is the festive season!

Amazing things have happened this christmas. The way we celebrate christmas may be a little different to other people. We do presents in the morning - that's pretty much what everybody does - and then we organise the house for the afternoon because we celebrate christmas with the Terry family (the other family who founded The Chaeli Campaign) and they arrive at two-ish. Then we start the celebrations.

I think it's much better celebrating with the people you want to celebrate with. This way, everyone has an epic, awesome time. We have christmas lunch. The only thing is our lunch happens a little later than the general population. We have lunch at seven o'clock at night. It's very chilled. It's amazing!

But, being the people we are...we don't really do things slowly and we don't really do the whole relaxation-for-an-extended-period-of-time thing. So, true to this trait, a week before christmas we had the National Dancing Championships in Bloemfontein. We had to drive there because it's just way too expensive to fly a week before christmas (especially to Bloem as there are only two airlines that fly there). This is always interesting when travelling with four wheelchair users. Fun times. I honestly could have died of lack of surroundings.

The only thing I saw for twelve hours of my life were sheep and prickly pears. Do you have any idea how mind numbingly boring that is? I'm pretty sure I lost brain cells due to no activity...

Anyway, I digress. We only got to do our christmas presents on the Thursday before christmas. We decided that it was an awesome thing that I'm in a wheelchair because we get special parking - it's especially helpful during holiday seasons.

I think it's important to use what you have. I don't feel pity for myself and neither should anybody else. It's christmas and I believe christmas is about being with each other and creating amazing memories together.

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Nationals, here we come!

Tomorrow morning is going to begin very very early - 5am early. So excited! Can you see the sarcasm in my face?

We are going to Bloemfontein for our dancing national championships. It's going to be awesome...once we get there.

The team is going to be arriving on mass in 2 Kombi's, so we have to drive there. It means we have 12 hours in a car with 6 other people, which is fine for about a quarter of the journey. Then you start to get tired of one another and bored of the company. The worst thing somebody can ever do to fellow travellers is to open a packet of cheese flavoured Nik-Naks in the car! Trust me, I know what that is like. It's horrific. There is no way to get away from the smell of old socks on dirty feet!

That will not be happening in our car - I have put my metaphorical foot down!

The other thing is that when you travel to Bloemfontein by car, there is not the greatest scenery. In fact, there's very little scenery to speak of at all. The majority of the time you're driving on the same road that has NO life around it for kilometres at a time.

I guess we'll just have to keep ourselves occupied by doing funny things inside the Kombi and not rely on outside to keep our brains functioning.

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Back home again

So, we are now firmly back in South Africa. We had a day flight, which is okay, but personally I'm not a fan. I felt like I lost a whole day of my life. I kind of did because I spent it in a metal tube where I couldn't do anything other than watch movies - and I can tell you, you can only watch so many movies until you die of boredom. I was very close to dying of boredom.

When we got to Cape Town International Airport, we were welcomed by the family and SABC journalists. We had interviews with them, and then went home to collapse after a hectic day of doing nothing. I was so tired.

It's so good to be home. It's really busy though, interviews with newspapers, tv, radio, it's ongoing. As I told you, really busy. Really tiring. But it's still really fun and I'm having a good time.

Everybody was and is asking me if I'm glad to be back home and have life back to normal...

I tell them that it's awesome to be home but life is definitely not back to normal. At least not the normal we were used to before I won the prize. I guess we are just going to have to get used to a new normal.

That's what life is about. Getting used to new normals.