HOSTEL!

Hello friends!! Warning: sliiight chance I may never come home. Get excited to hear about this blog, all about the hostel!!! Our amazing cab driver Akay hooked us up and recommended this place called Mantis and Moon, a straight paradise set inside a jungle. Right on the beach, every aspect of this place was packed full of relaxation. Alright, so we get in around 4 pm on Friday and get settled, the guy who greets us is a chiller from Seattle who has traveled to everywhere in the planet. The guys who work the place have the best life I could dream of. They’re travelers who are looking to stop and work for a while, but since it’s illegal for foreigners (unless you have a Visa that allows you to work) to work in SA, they can’t get paid. So instead they help out (cook, welcome guests, bar-tend, teach surfing lessons) and in exchange get a free place to live and free food and drinks. It’s amazing because they get to meet people from ALL over the world. Just in the three days we stayed we met guys from Australia, London, a lot of local South Africans, Scotland, and some other Americans. So all of the guys running the place are the coolest, most interesting people I’ve met. Stories of their travels have made me just want to drop everything and see the world!! I’ve realized how sheltered America is and there is SO much out there!

The first thing we did when we got there was jump in the INDIAN OCEAN!!! How many of you can say you’ve done that?? It was pretty spectacular. We swam around for a little then headed back and ate this amazing dinner the hostel prepared for us, the food so far is not too exotic, pretty similar to what I’m used to, a lot of chicken and vegetables for every meal. After dinner all the guests got together and hung out at the bar area. We met a friend, Colby, who is from Durban and just graduated from our school! She was so excited to meet us and the feeling was mutual! We walked off and started a fire and she came to meet us later saying “Where are my American friends??” We talked for a while around the fire, she explained a lot of SA culture to us. I told her how it’s a little scary and caught me off guard to have everyone immediately know where I’m from and from that base a lot of conclusions about my character. Colby explained that South Africans are impeccably good at figuring out other people. This is a country bursting with diversity, skin colors/accents/clothing, even the way people walk are indicators that South Africans can read really easily. She said that while some people here definitely hate white people as a leftover sentiment from Apartheid, most of the people here are just thrilled and interested to meet you, knowing you traveled so far to make it to this wonderful country. She told us to “be ourselves, because phony’s are ellgghh”, and we all had a good laugh, a huge relief. She promised to take us out to the best spots in Durban. The most amazing thing about this culture is that the random people you meet never stay random. Every single person I’ve met and had a connection with, I’m still in contact with. So there’s no fakeness floating around the social scene. If you spend hours talking to a person and truly enjoying those hours, there is no reason to not spend more hours of your life doing just that. Crazy thought huh?

The second day we had surf lessons!! I surfed in the Indian Ocean! I got up and surfed those waves! So much fun, I think the days of surfing when I was little really did help! we ate another amazing dinner and the second night was fun, because we were better acquainted with the people who worked at the hostel. I really have a hard time calling it work, because we chilled with these guys and they did everything we did. I was particularly interested in a guy named Ross, he’s from Scotland and he is a “tree surgeon”, which he tried explaining but I still don’t get it. He was one of the most interesting people I’ve met in my life. We got along so great, it was awesome to realize that some things (humor, music, optimism) are universal. I’m not trying to jump to any conclusions here but I’m almost positive Ross is my future husband. His Visa is about to run up so he’s traveling to Mozambique for a week and heading back into SA for 3 more months. He’s such a cool guy, it is so interesting and amazing to get away from the American way of getting to know someone. Here, people seem to be so much more interested in a life story. A thousand times more honest and genuine, at least so far I’ve been lucky to meet people who make me feel this way about their culture. This hostel (I’ll put up pictures!) is the most amazing place on the planet, and we definitely made up our minds about staying there again.