I Hate to Admit It

“If you lose those, I will lose you.” Mandalow

All right so my coolness just moved right down the drain. I hate admitting when I am not perfect, but my honesty sometimes gets the best of me. I got into my first EVER fender bender. Ugh, so embarrassing, pinche South Africa. Luckily it was not bad at all, no damage to the other car and minimal scratches to our car, it was just a horrible feeling. In South Africa if you are making a right hand turn across traffic (other side of the road) there is not a lane, so essentially you just stop in the middle of the road (the fast lane) to wait to cross. I let my guard down for a half a second, looked away from the road at a sign and when I looked back I saw cars stopped so I slammed on the brakes. Unfortunately instead of stopping, the brakes locked and I skidded right into the back of this lady’s car. I wasn’t going any faster than 20 km/h and it was fine because of the lack of damage and injury, but I still felt awful. I had such a good record and now that I am totally out of my element driving over here (I have been doing pretty well) I messed it up. So me and the Tazz, not the best running relationship. Don’t they all say, what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger. Let’s hope it made both me and the Tazz just a little bit stronger.

On a random office update side note, we have a white board in the office and on that white board we have started a tree of the hierarchy in the office (Note: there are five of us.) We are trying to come up with special names too, but we only have Mandla and Thembi so far, we are still working on Albert and I and Thuso. For Mandla, we sometimes refer to him as Mandalow because on occasion that is how he answers the phone. Yesterday during our brief meeting he kept referring to himself as the “beloved site coordinator.” So if I reference Mandalow or the beloved site coordinator that is who I am referring to. Thembi is Masta Thembizi because she is the Master Coach for our site; in other words she is in charge of all of the coaches. Mandla also calls her “my vision, my future” sometimes so the board references that as well. From there we are at a loss of what to put for Thuso or us, but I am sure it will come to us; we do have a year. Also the quote above is a quote that Mandla said to me yesterday when we went to pick up the refrigerator for the office and he gave me the receipts. I am not sure why I thought it was so funny, but I just love his lines and the terms he uses sometimes, so you may periodically see random quotes or words he used. He is also nervous about how often Albert and I tell him that we are putting things about him on the blog. So if any of you ever get the chance to meet him, I will fully expect that you tell him how much you have heard about him. We also got a receipt from the taxi that brought the KIM coaches to the BLOEM VCT and they wrote it to a “Garage Hood Soccer” in place of “Grassroot Soccer.” Very similar.