Nervous Excitement

Tomorrow we leave for Louis Trichardt, a city in the Limpopo Province (which, technically, was renamed Makhado in 2002). It's about a five or six hour drive. The wedding is actually in Levubu, close to the Mozambique and Zimbabwe borders, and is an area historically populated by the Venda people. Interestingly, it is also the hub of South Africa's sub-tropical farming: guavas, litchis, papayas, bananas, avocados and macadamia nuts are commercially produced there.

We will be going to our first South African wedding. I'm so excited. I know that I have to dress up, I know the wedding ceremony will be in Afrikaans, but other than that I have no idea what to expect. I don't know how different weddings are here from American weddings (although, secretly, I hope they're less lavish and more about the words of the ceremony than the "stuff" of the ceremony).

But there's also this part of me that wonders if I'll commit some awful sort of social blunder... like showing up for a high school graduation in your underwear or something equally embarrassing. I wish that, when I moved here to South Africa, someone had handed me a cultural manual that covered every situation I could possibly encounter.

I'll let you know how the weekend goes...