Getting Ready for Day Two

Good Morning (7am in Joburg). Erik here. That's Gabriel in the photo above. You'll hear from him later. Also, Sandra is going to blog today. I'll leave it to her to tell you about the girls. Just let me say that our first day was, as Jaime described it, wonderful. It was also very emotional. These girls have been through so much, and it was heart-wrenching to hear some of their stories yesterday. More from Sandra in a bit.

We haven't seen much of Joburg yet, just the hotel, the computer lab, and the immense mall that has a statue of Nelson Mandela in the courtyard that looks about 400 feet tall. I've been told over and over not to take my camera out in public, so I can't get any shots of the statue. Every time Sandra walks out the front door of the hotel to come meet us in the patio, the doormen frantically ask here where she is going. They beg her not to go on the sidewalk. For the life of me, I can' t figure that out. I keep hearing that it is unsafe, but where we are, there are no people on the streets. We didn't go out last night because we wanted Sandra and Gabriel to sleep. Bernita will take us to a restaurant tonight, then we'll head to the SOS orphanage tomorrow to visit the staff and see where the girls live. We have a huge gala event tomorrow night with about 60 very high-profile heads-of-education, local officials, Pearson people, etc. I am the MC. We'll also go out on Thursday and Friday, so we'll have more to report on our reflections of Joburg. And, I promise to get Andy to blog (I SWEAR!).

One last thing. I just found out that I could change the settings on this blog and allow anyone to leave a comment...without having to have a Google account. So, if you're so inclined, leave us some comments! We love them, and it makes us feel connected.

More from Sandra in a couple of hours.

E