Swellendam, South Africa

Finally a new blog post to continue posting photos from South Africa, because school has started to slowly eat away my time. hehe. So the first thing I want to introduce - the picture above, they're Jersey milk cows! (I always had the impression milk cows are only black and white... lol) while the next photo of us with the cows behind (excuse our messy hair because of the wind), they're cattle beef - which means they'll be cooked one day :(

These are the apricots we picked in... 10 minutes? Look at how many apricots are there in just one tree!

The photo below, is the view right in front of the house (not the house we stayed, though. It's a good friend's place!) When we were sitting there playing with their cat, drinking, talking while Johannes was cooking the beef, I couldn't help but be amazed by the painting-like scenery. And then the next photo you will see the long table full of food (well, sort of), definitely one of my favourite dinners there. It was such a great night. It was only the first day we reached there but we already felt like home. I wish I'd be back there again one day, together with my family.

So this was the third place I travelled to in South Africa - Swellendam. I'm sure you can clearly see the difference between this place with the previous, it's a much much smaller town, also one of the oldest towns in South Africa. Many many farms. We were there for a week, and these are just the photos taken during the first 2 days there. I remembered when we mentioned to the people in Cape Town that we were going to Swellendam next, for a week, they all had the same weird expression on their faces - "What can you do there for a week? It's really just a small small town." Well yes it really is just a small town, but the people there are the loveliest people I've ever seen. We enjoyed every second together with them, we were all spoilt by their unconditional love. Besides the berry farm (that I blogged about last few weeks), we visited milk cows farm, cattle beef farm, apricot farm, went hiking, had bingo with people in 2 old folks houses and so on. It's something different, you see? 

Never in a thousand years would I expect myself to fall in love with South Africa, even I myself am surprised. It scared me a little to realise how much I want to go back there again. It took me a while to get over the whole "I'm not in SA anymore" feeling... because we've got to appreciate whatever we have now instead of wishing to have things we don't have, so I decided to love where I stay.

It's about 12pm now and it's been raining since 10 hours ago, just feel like lying on bed and relax. Happy weekend, everyone! Thanks for the lovely messages and comments on my South Africa photo diary, I'm glad you all enjoyed the posts! :)

Monday blue

Every once in a while, when I wake up from my sleep and find myself being alone, I'd still feel a little sad to realise (again) that I'm not in South Africa anymore. For the past month, when I was in South Africa and back home in Malaysia, I was showered with so much love, my time -  the minute I woke up until the moment I slept, was all spent with people I love. I guess that's why I'm not used to being alone all over again. School has officially started today, which means I'm away from my family again. I'm still trying to get myself back to the 'working mode', I know I will do fine soon! Monday blues, go away.

Berry Picking

I'm going to continue blogging some diaries and photos taken at South Africa before my school eats me alive. 

I can't wait to share all the photos I took!

So... we visited one of the berries farms to hand-pick some blueberries. They actually have youngberries (a hybrid between blackberries and raspberries if I'm not mistaken), raspberries and blueberries, but only blueberries (I kept typing 'blackberries'!) are ready to be picked. It's my first time seeing a real blueberry plant and also the very first time I ate blueberries fresh like that! yum. It was so sunny and hot that day that each of us tried to pick a full basket of blueberries as fast as possible before we got burned under the sun. At first I was really slow. You ask me why? because I ate all the blueberries I picked, typical me. hehehe.

The more I look at the photos, the more I'm determined to go back again one day.

The Beginning

In case you wonder, the photo above was taken when I was in South Africa. The sky was extremely crowded of stars that night, it was incredibly beautiful. The trip to South Africa was full of surprises, laughter and love. I couldn't believe the amount of love people are willing to give to others whom they haven't known long enough. I've had so much fun! For your information, I did the highest gorge swing in the world!

Anyway, I spent my new year eve counting down at a pool party in South Africa and spent the first day of 2013 taking 17 hours of flight back to Malaysia. And then these few days were spent sleeping in, fixing my body clock, catching up with my childhood friends and so on. I haven't even unpacked all my clothes from the 25kg luggage, but I'm going back to the airport again tomorrow, this time back to Singapore, back to school life, back to reality. I remember during November I started losing all my motivation for school, thus I did quite badly for that assessment. I was so glad holidays came at the right time, now I've had enough rest, I believe I will be able to cope better this sem!

Here's a status I posted few days before I came back from South Africa...

I'm surprised to see how much I fell in love with South Africa and the people in the country.

I actually wanted my first post of 2013 to be post like "2013 resolution" or reflections or anything that seems to be a good beginning, but I haven't seem to start thinking about them yet. I'm not sure why but I'm not exceptionally excited that it's already 2013, but also not really sad that 2012 is over. In fact I don't really feel the difference like I did the past years. I wonder why! But well...December is over, January is here, it's time to resume back to my school life.

Happy New Year people! <3