Last night, after the day described below, we came back to the hotel for a couple hours of rest and then gathered at 6 to head to dinner. 6pm really was a south african 6pm, so it was more like 6:30 by the time we had the 14 of us rounded up together. We piled into our mini vans and headed over to a restaurant called Moyo which was in a really upscale part of Jo-burg and accordingly had appropriate prices. It was pretty cool though, with authentic entertainment and face painting!

This is the group of all of us at the table, taken from my end of the table. The two guys on the left are Anil and Zack from India, Craig from Illinois is at the head of the table, in the red is Mary from Australia, Mirko from Italy, and then next to him, Shigaru from Japan and Veronica from Uraguay. Had a great time at dinner, lots of laughs and great conversation.

I mentioned they had face painting. A woman came around with paints and everyone had a design on their face...well almost everyone, I believe we had two abstainers for whatever reason. In this picture is Carolina from Mexico getting hers done. The same woman before the face painting came around with a steaming hot pot of water to wash our hands in one by one. Talk about service.

Apparently my struggle with the technology blog continues, because I can't move the stupid pictures around below, so I guess I'll just describe them. (This would be so much better if I was just programming in HTML.)

Picture 1, with the tv in the background is of Mary, Veronica (Vero-chan) and Craig with their faces painted up. In the background was a SA soccer game (they lost, much to the disgruntled noises from fans in the restaurant.)

Picture 2 is a shot from the other side of the table, and in it are people from SA, Taiwan, US, Mexico, Canada, and Australia. A great international crowd. I should also mention that this place we're sitting was in a part of the restaurant that was four floors below ground.

Picture 3 is my main course meal, a chicken Tangine. I may have to avoid ordering chicken again, I'm not such a fan of eating meat off the bone, and when it's in a stew like this, with low lighting in the restaurant, it's a little hard to tell what you're eating. I ended up putting chicken bones in my mouth and trying to chew atleast four times, which can be awkward spitting it back out.

Picture 4 is the result of too many pictures. I asked for my friends to make a surprise face, turns out they don't get surprised in India, so this is what a surprised face looks like. Carolina I thought did an admirable job of looking shocked.

Picture 5 is my dessert, one of the best I've had. It was a ginger, cinnamon, baked apricot cake, covered in a vanilla cream sauce. My new policy, which also led me to this dessert, is to rely on the advice of the waiter. This was his favorite and it worked out so far. We'll see how well that rule holds up and whether it gets applied to things other than desserts.