May 9, 2012

 Left George at around 8 am, filled the gas tank and found our way out of town. It will take a while getting used to their signs and traffic and roundabouts and stuff!!  They don’t really have much fast food, certainly not like in Spokane with fast food places on every corners and in between.  Not here!!  Not many take away places, which is probably a good thing.  Now we will have to sit down, take time and eat healthier foods, always a good idea.

We arrived in Port Alfred around 1:20pm and stopped at Andy’s CalTex gas station for fuel and to wait for President Robinson to show us the way to our temporary boarding.  It seems that here in Port Alfred; they are not that keen on putting up street signs. When they do I think people take them down to patch holes in their roofs or sell them for scrap. So, it would be easier to follow him than understand his instructions to get where we would be spending the night with few street signs marking the way. We called him, but with no luck getting through. We left a message and around 2pm he discovered that he had accidentally turned his phone off.  It turned out OK though. It gave us time to talk and wind down from the drive here. The roads here are striped somewhat like ours in the states with dotted lines to mark the lanes and solid lines to warn when not to pass. I think that is what they mean, but from my observations I’m not sure. They may mean something quite different.  It seems here in South Africa it’s no big deal to pass three and even four abreast on a two lane road. Quite invigorating I thought but Janet has other words to describe it and being on mission I’m not at liberty to write them.

President Robinson had us follow him to the church building (it is a rented building) to see his wife, meet the primary president, get familiar with the building, where it is located and then off to unload our stuff in our temporary boarding until we take over the Robinson's flat on Sunday. 

It is a pretty nice place that overlooks the bay but we are anxious to move into our “permanent” living area so we can unpack and get on with life, buy food and just putting everything in order.  We have been living out of a suitcase since April 15 when we left home to go visit Nate and Cheri before entering the MTC and we’re ready to settle in somewhere.