Differences Between America and South Africa

One's company, two's a crowd, and three's a party. Yes, my third post in one day. I have no comment on how this happened, except that it did. Anyway, on to the post:

Since I have arrived here I have noticed differences between Americans and South Africans, which of course comes at no surprise to anyone. Some of these differences are cultural, others linguistic, and some go as deep as their thought process. I know the last one sounds weird and could almost be described as a bit negative, but what I'm trying to say is that we come at problem solving different ways. I'll try to do a better in-depth job of explaining what I mean I subsequent updates to this post. These differences, that I've seen, do not apply to all South Africans, or in that case I guess to all Americans, but to the general populace that I have met of both groups.

Words:
American-------------African

flashlight-------------torch
traffic light-----------robot
jacket---------------jersey
jelly-----------------jam
jello-----------------jelly
trunk (vehicle)-------boot
swim suit------------costume
napkins-------------serviettes

Word Pronunciation:
America------------------------Africa

fillet (fill-ay)--------------------fillet (fill-it)
aluminum (a-lume-in-um)------aluminum (al-loo-minium)

Like I've said, there are more differences than just how we speak the English language, but experiencing it is easier than actually writing about it. So, I'll be keeping this page updated with the differences I find, which mean that this page will never truly be complete until I leave, but I decided it would be worth posting now instead of at the end of my stay.

Christmas...with no snow. Odd.

 In light of my second blog post addressing my few blog posts, and stating I would do my best to write more, I have decided to write about how a South African Christmas goes in the Beakley household... or at least how this Christmas went.

It was about 80 degrees out Christmas day. We first went to a church service at 8 in the morning. When we got home, we began working on making brunch...which wasn't served ultimately until lunch time. Most of the day was spent hanging out and fellowshipping. Later in the day we went swimming in the pool, only to be forced out by the worst rainstorm I've seen since I arrived here. We had over a dozen towels spread out on floors to soak up drips that were coming from leaks in the roof. It got so bad, Phil's room was in danger of flooding, so he had to go out in the rain, lighting and hail to dig out a trench in order for the water to not get backed up as it streamed into the road. After all that fun we lost power for a while. Eventually the power came back on, the hail and lighting stopped, and a steady rainfall settled in for the night. We had Mexican, tortillas and such, for supper, but nothing else of note happened the rest of the day that I can remember. You may be wondering though what happened to the presents? They were already opened, from Christmas Eve. So, that is a South African Christmas in the house of the Beakleys. Overall it was very interesting and quite unlike Illinois.

And since we are on the topic of Christmas, I've decided to add some other things into this post. I was sent two Christmas videos during the last couple of weeks that I thought were pretty neat, though very unlike each other.

The first is called The Digital Story of the Nativity which I thought was quite creative:

The second is of a hidden choir suddenly breaking into "The Messiah" in a food court:

Hopefully you enjoyed the videos and had a very Merry Christmas!

Over 4 Months...

since I arrived here...and since my last, and only, blog post. Yes, I have received much criticism about my lack of posts on my blog. I originally was hoping to post once a week... not happening. I'll try to post as often as I can, but I'm not making any promises as to the time span between posts. As to the content, I have decided to change on what exactly will go into the blog. I think this change may (again no promises) lead to more posts. I originally was going to post about any major things that happened to me throughout the week, much like my first post. But as things and events became routine here I found it difficult to come up with information for a post, to the point that I really stopped trying. So, my plan is to widen my topic areas from a schedule based post to...well, in general, anything. Basically all of my previous blog plans and ideas have been removed, tweaked, or corrected, which means I may end up posting anything from a funny, superficial youtube video to what God has been teaching me while I've been here in Africa.

And no, this was not a New Year's Resolution even though it is extremely close to the day.