26 March 2009 (Day 10)

Today was our first wine tasting! It wasn’t an official group outing, but one of the host families organized it. Peter is quite the wine connoisseur and offered to take a bunch of us out tasting. We went to Rustenburg, which is right near the school I work at. We did a typical tasting (three reds, three whites) and I ended up buying a bottle of red (a Bordeaux-blend, quelle surprise). Peter knows the people at the vineyard, though, and he totally hooked us up. He took us on a tour of the facilities. We even got to try some of the grapes they were processing! I told everyone else in the group, the tour Peter gave us was like something straight out of my wine class. It was also really cool to ask questions about the wine-making process in South Africa, since I only really learned extensively about French wines.

When we got back, our family had made dinner plans without us. Another host family had other plans, so Jake, Anna, Alex, Heather and I ended up going out for dinner with Sandy. We went to a restaurant called Sosato. Their specialty is kebobs, so I had a lamb kebob sandwich and small pap balls. Pap is a traditional South Africa meal dish, sort of like polenta. These were rolled in chili and then fried, basically awesome. We also ordered three bottles of wine with our meal, and we had dessert. I ordered Koeksisters, which were fried dough with a yogurt dressing served with a scoop of ice cream. Sounds phenomenal, tasted really gross. I didn’t even finish them. I like spending time in smaller groups, though. It makes it easier to get to know people.