The Weekend of Dreams!!!

On Friday night, Leeds vs Rotherham was on South African Sky Sports TV! What better way for the local volunteers to understand me a little more than to invite them round for pizza, beer and football J  So after having spent a day at the University of Cape Town having a workshop on community mobilisation and active citizenship to help us with our projects, we headed back to Mitchells Plain for a MITS football social J Unfortunately, Leeds lost… However there was still plenty of excitement with games of uno and dominoes getting fairly lairy!

Saturday morning started with far too much energy expended during my hour of cycling at the MITS sponsored 10 hour spin-a-thon. As if spinning wasn’t hard enough anyway, we were outside in the beautiful South African sun as opposed to the air conditioned spinning studio that I have become accustomed to back home!! The event was a success with many people from the community getting involved and spinning for as long or as little as they could.

At about 12, Charlotte and I jumped on a bus into Cape Town… We dropped our bags at the hostel and changed quickly before heading back out. We wandered down to the train station and caught the train out to Newlands for the Currie Cup Semi Final match between Western Province and the Blue Bulls. The game was incredible, and made even better with a Western Province win, meaning that they will play at home in the final next week… Weekend of Dreams Part 2… We’ll have to see?!

Once the game had finished we headed back to the hostel to shower and change and meet up with the rest of the volunteers who had made their way into town throughout the afternoon and celebrate in style out on Cape Town’s infamous Long Street.

Sunday started bright and early, and feeling surprisingly fresh J We had breakfast in a café over the road from the hostel. We left our bags in Celina’s car and spent the morning chilling out in the sun. The next stage of the Weekend of Dreams was to take place in Greenpoint at Cape Town Stadium where local boys Ajax Cape Town were hosting my South African team, the Kaiser Chiefs.

The quality of football in South Africa is generally very poor with players having no strength on the ball, a less than average first touch, and a minimal pass completion rate, and this was evident in the game despite it being between two of the best teams in the country! Kaiser Chiefs won 1-0 in a pretty average game that picked up in the second half. It was then time for the long bus journey back to Mitchells Plain to get some much needed sleep and prepare for another week coaching at Khanya Primary School J