SURPRISE!!!!!

Last Thursday was the BEST DAY EVER!

So on Monday, Poetry, Christina, and Sarah pulled me aside at this CIEE event to tell me that they had made reservations for the 4 of us at Cafe Sofia (this nice restaurant) for Jazz Night to celebrate my birthday!  They told me we were all gonna get dressed up and go out afterwards and it sounded like it would be a great night!  So I get home from class and change clothes, and Poetry and Christina come pick me up from my room and we start walking to Cafe Sofia (Sarah was going to meet us there because she was coming from a meeting.)  So we get there (after LOTS of stalling by Poetry and Christina which I thought was weird but whatever!) and Sarah meets us, and we head upstairs to Cafe Sofia (it’s on the 2nd floor of a building).  Upstairs, there’s this big balcony, and you can see part of it when you walk in because there are glass doors, but there’s a part of it that you can’t see until you actually step out there.  So Poetry and Christina tell me we have a table out on the balcony, so they walk me there and the balcony is empty, so I’m about to sit down… and then Poetry grabs my shoulders and turns me to the left…

And there are LITERALLY at least 50-60 people out on that balcony screaming “SURPRISE”!!  It was the shock of a lifetime!!!!!  I was just screaming and screaming and screaming, I was just so shocked, and I just started crying!!  Everyone was soooo cute, they were all wearing birthday hats and had the little noisemaker things and there was a HUGE sign on the wall that said “HAPPY BIRTHDAY ELLIE!”  And it wasn’t only CIEE (study abroad) people, they had invited people from my church and from school and everything!!  I can’t even describe to you how happy I was the ENTIRE night.  It was like 45 minutes into the dinner and I would STILL just scream at random times because I was just SOOOO happy!  I really don’t think you understand!!  It was definitely one of the most JOYOUS occasions of my entire life.  So I said hi to everyone and they let me order whatever I wanted so I got these really really good lambchops.  And we were all just talking and having a really great time, and my table was just goofing around and singing all these Beyonce songs and stuff, and then all of a sudden everyone starts singing Happy Birthday and I see Christina walking towards me with a big chocolate birthday cake with candles!!  So I got to make a wish and blow out the candles and it felt SO good because this would have been my first birthday without cake & candles since it was the day of the funeral.  So that just really made the night complete.

After dinner we chilled and listened to the jazz band, and then we went across the street to a club called Cybar and we were just dancing and having SO much!  They made me keep my “Birthday Girl” crown on the entire night, even at the club, so drunk people kept coming up to me yelling “BIRTHDAY GIRL! BIRTHDAY GIRL!”  It was sooo funny!  But I really truly enjoyed myself because EVERYBODY was there, seriously, all my friends came out to show me love and it was just a wonderful time!!

At one point it was sad because I was wishing so much that Terrance could have been there, and me and Poetry were just hugging each other and crying… but I know that his joyous spirit was there with us the whole night and I know he helped put it on for me, cuz he kept saying he wanted to do something really big for me for my birthday.    I miss him so much but I feel him with me all the time.

Friday was another great night because it was the Liesbeeck Formal, a prom-type thing for my residence hall.  So we all got dressed up and my date was a boy Ravi from our program.  He even wore a pink tie to match me!!  It was a really great evening with good food at a really fancy place, the Cape Town Convention Center, and guess what??  I got voted Best Dressed!  They handed out these ballots and they took one nomination from each table, and Poetry’s flatmate Lendy nominated me!  So there ended up being a tie between me and this other girl so we had to come to the front and they had to vote by screaming for us, and everybody got loud for me so I won this box of chocolates!!  It was really really exciting.  So I had two AMAZING nights in a row!  It was so much fun!!

Then on Saturday I went whale-watching with Brianna (who was with us on the Spring Break trip), two of her friends, and my friend Aya.  It was so relaxing, I loved it!  There was a whole festival so there were tons of people around just hanging out, and it was so cool to see the whales flipping around and squirting the water and everything!  I mean we weren’t close to them cuz I didn’t wanna get in a kayak or anything, but they were so cool to see because even from the shore you can tell how HUGE they are!!  So that was just a really nice, relaxing day.

On Sunday I woke up and went to church with Nyoko which was a great experience!  I love His People (the church I go to regularly) but it was just nice to experience something new.  They sang in different languages which was really cool, and everyone was dancing, and it was just a lot of fun.  And the pastor’s sermon was EXCELLENT.  He spoke about how to become great, and the first step is accepting God’s grace and using your talents to serve others and everything like that.  He was really funny too, and from the Congo, and it was just a refreshing change because usually there are guest preachers at His People who are white and foreign, so it just felt nice to have an African pastor for a change.  Then we went to Mzoli’s the MEAT place I talked about before, where they bring out a huge platter and you just dive in!  Well, Sunday we had more people with us so instead of a platter they brought a CRATE!!!  Seriously, those crates you move into your dorm with?  yeah, that big.  Full of MEAT.  Lambchops, chicken, and sausage!  It was amazing.  And SO good.  Of course.    Then I went to His People for the evening service and it was extra sad because all the songs they were singing were once Terrance had sung on the praise team, and it just made me really sad, but I could close my eyes and hear his voice so that brought me comfort.

Today I basically just went to class, did laundry, grocery shopping… just trying to get back into the swing of things.  It was rainy so it kind of put me in a gray kind of mood but tomorrow morning we’re going hiking with our mentees from the LEAP school so that should be really fun!  I’ll let you know how it goes and put up some pictures. 

I hope everyone is doing well back home or wherever you are!  God bless!!

“Weeping may last for a night, but joy comes in the morning.” Psalm 30:5

Well, everybody, I am back. Needless to say, it has been an incredibly difficult few weeks, but I am happy just to be alive and feeling blessed to have the opportunity to finish out the semester in Cape Town.

I can only briefly summarize the time since I last wrote, but I’ll do my best to paint a picture of how everything’s been going.

The first few days of spring break were wonderful!! Terrance, Poetry, Tyler, Brianna, and I left for our road trip along the Garden Route on Saturday morning, and we drove for about 4 hours, stopping at a beach to have some amazing seafood along the way. We stayed in a really nice hostel where we had our own room, the 5 of us all together, so we stayed up talking and playing games and stuff. The next day we went to the Cango Caves and had a really really fun time on the “adventure tour” which really was an adventure, crawling through all types of crevices and stuff! We also went to a wildlife reserve where we saw lions, tigers, cheetahs, crocodiles, and a bunch of other really cool animals! It was a lot of fun. That night we stayed in a hostel that had a room for like a dozen people so we were with a bunch of strangers but it wasn’t too awkward.

The next day was Monday, September 1st, the day when an ANGEL better known as Terrance De’Shawn Davis the FIRST was called back up to be with his Heavenly Father. If anyone was ready to go, it was him, but that doesn’t stop me from missing him every moment of every day. We were already close friends, having known each other for two years, but on this trip our friendship truly blossomed in so many ways, and I thank God that we were able to become even closer over these past two months. There are few people I can connect with the way I could connect with him, and I truly lost a best friend and a brother on that day.

Those first few days were some of the hardest, but Quinton and Ronel became like a father and sister to me during that time. They were indescribably supportive and exactly what I needed. Then, on Friday morning I headed back to the States – I stayed in DC for about 5 days, my mom met up with me, and then we headed down to Arkansas to be with Terrance’s family and to attend his memorial service. It was soooo wonderful to meet all of Terrance’s BEAUTIFUL family members!! What a blessing. Then, that following Sunday, I headed up to Detroit for a couple days to see my sister, my dad, and a couple friends, and then on Wednesday I headed back to DC for Thursday’s memorial service on campus (which was TRULY amazing.) And last but not least, I hopped on a plane Friday to get back here, my home-away-from-home, Cape Town! It was a great feeling to be back – Quinton, Chenai, and Sarah picked me up from the airport, and then Sarah and Ravi took me out to dinner. Sunday I went to church and I thought it was going to be really difficult to go without Terrance, but luckily I met up with Lowena and that made it a lot better. It was great to see all my church peoples, because they have been so supportive through this entire time. Then Nyoko and Lowena cooked lunch for me, and we just relaxed for a while, enjoying the Sunday afternoon.

Monday was really, really hard. I could barely wake up, so I missed my first couple classes, but I had to go on this mandatory field trip. When I got back from that, I went and saw Ronel for a little bit, but I was pretty tired so then I just chilled the rest of the evening. I only had to be on campus for a few minutes all day Monday, but it was too much for me. I was walking around about to cry the whole time! It’s just crazy because Terrance and I were basically attached at the hip the entire time, so every single spot on campus contains a memory of him. It has to get better at some point, though, at least it should.

Yesterday was cool because I slept in and then Quinton took me out to lunch! It was really nice catching up with him because we are both dealing with similar emotions and stuff. Then I went to my classes which weren’t bad, and then I went to see Brianna, who was one of the girls on the trip with us. It was so wonderful to see her. After that I met up with my friend Hilary for dinner, and then we went out to this jazz club, which STARTED out as a fun evening! But let me tell y’all what happened.

So this jazz club is like a restaurant, right, and there’s tables and you order food and drinks and chill and there’s a band playing. That’s the set-up. So there are like 7 of us and we are just sitting around talking and laughing and everything and this old white man comes over to the table and yells, “You guys need to shut up! I am trying to enjoy the music!” And we’re wondering what is going on, because our waiter came by and said “I don’t know what he’s talking about, this is a restaurant, you can talk all you want.” So we continue talking, and the man comes back and grabs me by the back of my neck and yells “And that goes for you too!” I was in COMPLETE shock because at first when I felt him grabbing me my mind told me it had to be one of my friends sitting on my left or right messing with me. But then I turned around and saw his face and heard him yelling at me and I am just thinking WHAT IS GOING ON? So everyone is shocked and tell me why management does NOTHING. Apparently the manager went to him and said “what you did was really inappropriate” and the old man said “I don’t give a f—!” and they just left it at that! I’m sorry but if you were in my restaurant you would have been kicked out in .2 seconds if, #1 you assaulted a girl, and #2 if you cuss the manager out! But the guy next to me was like, “Welcome to South Africa. If you’re an old white man, you can do anything.” I was just appalled by the whole situation. I mean I’m fine and everyone is fine but I am just upset about the fact that they allowed this to happen with no type of repercussions.

But moving on from all THAT… today was a great day! It’s Heritage Day, a public holiday, so no school! But I still woke up early to go to the District 6 Museum, which documents a really diverse, dynamic community in Cape Town that was completely bulldozed during apartheid to make way for a White area. We took a tour of the outskirts, which was the only part not bulldozed, and our tour guide had grown up in that part, so he showed us his high school, his dad’s job, and the church where he sang in the choir. He was so happy to show us all these landmarks in his life, and he told us to imagine what it would be like to be one of the people from the rest of District 6, who can never return to those places that meant so much to them, because they had been bulldozed all because of racism. It was really heartbreaking, but a really great experience. Then I had my first visit to a counselor here in Cape Town, and he was really really great, so I know he is gonna be helpful as I deal with everything. What a blessing! Now I’m headed to Cultural Delight, a showcase especially for Heritage Day. Poetry’s gonna be performing, so I’m excited about that.

I am missing Terrance more and more every day, but I am consoled by the fact that he was so at peace when he left this world, and so ready to meet his Father. I also feel SO blessed that I was the one chosen by God to spend his last two months with him here in this beautiful country. I know I will have to carry on his work, and I am going to try my best to bring his love and passion for life to everyone I meet, so they can see his spirit inside of me.