Arrival, Joburg: August 26-27, 2014

On the plane from Harare to Joburg, we met a very nice electrical engineer named Guy-Guy. All three of us talked for most of the plane ride. We were even able to give a witness to him. He asked us who the head pastor was in our "church." When we described the governing body arrangement, and how there is not one man elevated above the rest, he seemed truly surprised. He said that one lady had said something to that effect, but he didn't believe her because every church has a head pastor. He had never heard of the Watchtower before, either. I was able to show him the study edition on my iPad and told him that no matter where he went in the entire world on a given Sunday, we would all be studying the same exact thing in our mother tongue. I side noted that all of our magazines were on jw.org in hundreds of languages, even though we go from house to house in our ministry. Who knows how that will turn out, but I hope he gives the website a look!

Our hotel hired a taxi driver to pick us up from the airport. Ian told us so much about Joburg on our ride to Rosebank. Rosebank apparently is situated between the old city and the newer suburbs of Sandton. He does day safaris in Kruger National Park. If we had had more time, I'm sure we would have booked one then and there. He advised us not to go alone, or after dark, into the Hillbrow neighborhood. We arrived at our hotel, the Courtyard Rosebank, safe and sound. Apparently you can only get wifi free for one hour per day. That's ok, we have been without our phones and everything for most of the time we have been over here. 

Here is the coffee situation. In all hotel rooms that I have been to outside of the US and Canada, there is only instant coffee. Which is not coffee. However, if you go to a coffee shop, or a restaurant, you get finely brewed coffee. Better than I have had in the US. Sorry not sorry. We mad our first stop at Morherland Coffee and then shopped around for a bit in the Rosebank mall, conveniently located right across our hotel. Here, they are getting out of winter and going into summer. So, all of their winter clothes are on sale. I cannot express how perfect timing this is! We then hopped on the Gautrain (pronounced houh-train, give it a German flair and you have it) to go to Sandton Square. I won't lie, we got a bit turned around and walked for a very long time. Turns out if we had just turned right out of the station, we would have been right there. We got some frozen yogurt at Smooth. Then shopped. It's called Sandton City and it has 2 grocery stores at least inside. You can imagine how large it is. I don't think we bought anything other than food. But we got some local wine at Checkers and went back to the hotel.

At our stop, there is a store called Game. Think of it like the South African Wal-Mart. It has everything. We bought a couple of local beers Ian said to try and then ordered some pizza at Debonair's Pizza. It was so so delicious. Maybe just because we were hungry. Side note, Diet Coke is called Coca-Cola Light here.