June

Hi all,
Again, apologies for the long delay between blogs- time completely flies here, and somehow blogging never makes it onto my to-do lists. I’m sat here writing this from my bed, where I have unfortunately spent the last 6 days (yawn) as I managed to pick up a viral infection that has just completely drained me of energy and left me sleeping most of the time. But hopefully I’ll recover soon as I’m getting very bored!
The last couple of weeks have been manic, but in a very good way. Since the start of June, the schools have been on holiday here in SA and so Oasis have been running holiday clubs 5 days a week, from 9 till 1. These are just a chance for the kids to do something during the holidays, rather than just wander around, and we’ve all been helping out- they do sports, games, crafts etc and we also just spend some time and play with the kids. It’s been really lovely to get to know more children, and although we come home exhausted, we all love the clubs. 
In the afternoons we’ve somehow been managing to squeeze in all our normal activities- support for the full time members of Oasis, running errands, football clubs, clinic support, milk bank etc and then in the evenings we usually flop onto beds and watch DVDs! As well as the usual stuff, myself and Beth have also started our own cooking club, which we are VERY excited about. We’re got a group of about 12 nine to eleven year old girls, and we meet with them twice a week and do basic cooking skills and bake together- so far we’ve done bread, vegetable wraps and gingerbread biscuits. It’s such a fun afternoon and me and Beth are loving preparing for and running it and the girls seem to really like it to (they get very excited when they get on the minibus anyway).
Last week (you may have heard), as a GAT we also held mini Christmas on the 25th June, which was a brilliant day. We had people over, enjoyed a massive full roast dinner, had mulled wine, sang carols and then exchanged some presents, and it made us feel slightly better about the fact it is now so freezing over here and you’re all enjoying a lovely light English summer. However, although its deep winter here, I’ve been busy planning our holiday, which we take in 3 weeks time and the plan is to travel to Cape Town, then slowly travel up the coast to Durban over 10 days before returning to Jo’burg. Now it’s (almost) all booked, we’re starting to get excited, but also sad as after we return we only have less than a month to go (*sob*).
Oh, and I almost forgot- the soccer arrived! We had a few adventures involving losing the car and football games, and then Bafana and England went out, but world cup fever is still defiantly here, and all you ever see on the TV is the games. It’s been great for bringing people together, and even if I didn’t love the game, the atmosphere is great. 
Hope everyone is well, and summer (very jealous).
Lots of love, Laura.
P.S My new e-mail is laura.webber-gant@hotmail.co.uk, but I’ll still get e-mails sent to my old address. Thanks!