This weekend I participated in a city immersion adventure in Joburg, tentatively named “Jozi, the Amazing Place”. Eight people spent 48 hours in downtown Joburg, traveling around on public transport and accomplishing various “missions” assigned by our hosts. In addition to carrying out the missions, we slept in dorm-style rooms at Curiocity Backpackers in Maboneng, hung out on the 52nd floor of Ponte City, drank copious quantities of Black Label on a pub crawl, and laughed a lot.

Some of you will probably feel cheated when you open this, thinking that I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro myself. Sorry to disappoint you. While I am an adventurous person and I think Kilimanjaro is beautiful (I’ve seen it from afar), I’m not particularly interested in climbing it. I’m content with hiking up smaller mountains, as I did in Lesotho.

Seventh in my series of Sandton Snapshot posts, leading up to the publication of SandtonPlaces. Browse all of the Sandton Snapshot posts.

Just off the M1 highway in Midrand, four minarets stretch into the sky behind the Dis-Chem warehouse. If you’ve traveled that stretch of road you have undoubtedly seen these minarets and wondered what the deal is. Perhaps you did some research and discovered that the minarets belong to a huge Turkish mosque, called the Nizamiye Mosque, and made a mental note to check it out.

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, my blog changed.

This is what my blog looked like yesterday. Big change today.

It’s been more than two years since I changed the design of my blog, mainly because I really liked the old design. And the last time I changed designs, in December 2011, was a very pivotal point in my life. I guess my old blog reminded me of that. I subconsciously struggled to let it go. But today was time.

Sixth in my series of Sandton Snapshot posts, leading up to the publication of SandtonPlaces. Browse all of the Sandton Snapshot posts.

South Africans like meat. In my experience this stereotype generally applies across races, genders, colors and creeds. Hence, quality vegetarian cuisine is scarce in South Africa and the vegetarian restaurants that do exist tend to remain best-kept secrets. I myself am not a vegetarian. I don’t eat tons of meat but I’m not willing to give up the occasional burger, chicken leg, or chorizo-laced pizza. But I do enjoy vegetarian food and I’m dismayed that it took me nearly four years to discover the best vegetarian restaurant in South Africa. It’s more than vegetarian, in fact – it’s vegan. That means no meat, no eggs, no dairy. It’s also mostly “raw”, meaning the majority of the food is uncooked or minimally cooked. The restaurant I speak of is the Leafy Greens Café.

On August 8, 2010, I published my first blog post from South Africa. The first photo in that post was a picture of a hadeda in my back yard.

A hadeda at the Lucky 5 Star – my first South African blog photo.

Third post in my Melville Snapshot series. Read posts 1 and 2.

When I first started this blog in June 2010, hardly anyone read it. I blogged mostly for myself and my close friends and family who were curious about my new life in South Africa.