Not Mother's Day

No, today was Bieber Fever Day! (Mother's Day will have to wait until next week.)

If you just want to know about the photo:
This is one of the old gold mine dumps near Soweto, Johannesburg. It looked so beautiful in the afternoon light.

For the rest of the story read on:
Obviously being a teen, my daughter T is a Justin Bieber fan. When it was announced that he was coming to South Africa to perform she was over the moon. A friend of hers booked VIP tickets for them on the internet and she was all set for the big day.

The radio station that was sponsoring the concert ran a competition giving away these prized tickets for the concert. Listeners had to write in and say how they had changed somebody's life for the better. One day on the way to school T decided to write in. This is her story:

"At the end of last year I went to my aunts preschool to their end of year staff and family party. After lunch lots of little kids got into the swimming pool because it was a really hot day. I was watching my aunts half brother who is four years old when I saw a little girl disappear under the water. I didn't stop to think but got into the pool with all my clothes on and pulled her out. I only realized afterwards what I had done and started shaking. I couldn't believe I had saved her life!"

She submitted the email and then forgot all about it. The following week her friend phoned her and said: "Congratulations, I just heard on the radio that you won 4 Justin Bieber tickets!" She was so excited to say the least!


T decided to give the tickets to her brothers so that they could share this "once in a lifetime event."

Earlier this week T got news that one of her friends was not doing well with his battle against cancer. (He is a 17 year old matric pupil.) She felt really sad for him and decided that she would like to donate one of her spare tickets to someone in the Reach for a Dream programme. Unfortunately, we were too late to arrange anything but I was so touched that she had actually thought about it.

To cut a long story short, her friend who arranged the VIP ticket for her had not actually done it! Yesterday she showed Tayla the ticket she had and it was one of the cheapest seated tickets! Oh boy were we mad!

Luckily she still had one of her prize tickets for herself and decided to rather be with her brothers!

So back to Mother's Day ...

As we had been to the Bon Jovi concert last night at the same venue we knew what today would involve. The Bieber concert drew a crowd consisting mainly of minors which meant a lot more traffic around the venue as parents dropped off their kids.

Mr G and I drove the kids to the stadium which is in the south of Johannesburg, a 30 - 40 minute journey. The drop-off went well and the two of us went for a coffee before going back home. I couldn't get any interesting photos as we did not drive through town but rather round the back highway. Instead I took this photo of one of the old mine dumps that the city of gold, Egoli, is named after.

Tonight it was a repeat performance except that instead of a staggered drop-off all the parents arrived at the same time to fetch their kids, all sixty eight thousand of them! It took us an hour and a half to pick them up and get back home.

For son K and S it was their first time at a big concert and they loved the experience. For all of them it was their first time to go to Soccer City / FNB stadium

Well the day and the weekend are done and dusted and if you have read all of this you need a medal!