8-21-2007
Our first Race Day…Team Lego gets ready to go:
Shortly after our warm-up the teams were shuttled to downtown Pretoria, South Africa. (~15 minutes from where we were staying) From there we were given the instructions and tasks to complete to receive the next clue. In order to know where we were to go we had to find someone to translate for us and get a team picture with them. Team Lego was blessed to find the following couple to direct our paths.
We were off to the Union Buildings and had to catch a ride from the train station…leave it to us to utilize Courtney’s gift of catching a lift!! We did a quick stop, got a picture at one of the monuments and back to the train station to go to Jo-burg.
All four teams from our squad made it on the same train. We enjoyed each others company, but I won’t deny there was some strategy talk. For me, I’m sure many others as well, the most amazing part of the day happened on the train ride. Sean and Silas shared the Gospel with two men and at the end of the 2hr ride they accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior!
When in Jo-burg the teams look for comb’s (taxi-van like rides), Lego gets 2 taxis just to get out of the ciaos and head to the Zoo. Once at the Zoo we got a golf cart and zoomed around getting pictures with the South African national bird and 4 of the Big Five African Animals.
From the Zoo we were off to get a small lunch and our faces painted. The food was delicious and nothing appeared to be different from American cuisine.
After getting some food in our bellies and having some feathers ruffled our team was off to spend some time in the Apartheid Museum. We had an hour to tour and would have loved to stay even longer, but the day was getting later and we had one more stop to get to…the observation floor of the highest point in Africa.
We finished the race…and then there was the ride back to Pretoria on the train.
Probably one of the funniest parts of the day.
The squad split into two groups to go back home to ease in the shuttling process from the station to where we were staying. Lego and Zion were the second group to go home. We were excited to catch an earlier train just to find out that it was delayed…enough so that we crossed the isle way to the train that was leaving later. The we heard the earlier train was leaving…so we switched trains…this happened at least 4 times. Finally the later train leaves at it’s scheduled time. We arrive at the station, go to the restroom and as we begin to leave…who do we see, but teams Concrete and Awaken!!! They went through the same shuffle of trains only in different cars! We enjoyed a very cozy ride home!
