South Africa

Sean grew up in South Africa, and enjoys going back there on holiday. Which of these words do you think he will use when he talks about South Africa:

I was born in South Africa, so I grew up there. I moved away when I was quite young, but I always hold fond memories of going back there on holidays. It’s a lot warmer than here. It’s much nicer. [laughter] Not, not much nicer. It’s a very different sort of … country, really. So all my family’s back there, so we’d go back to visit. So whenever we do go back to visit, I just get loved by everyone, cause they never see me. But generally on a whole it’s a lot drier, it’s a lot hotter, so … there’s a lot more outdoor eating than there is back here in Britain. So, we’ll do a lot more barbecues and … go down to the beach a lot more, ‘cos beaches are nice there as opposed to here. Erm … yeah, I grew up in England, but I still really do hold to living in South Africa and being born in South Africa. So whenever I cook or whenever I do baking or anything, I will read South African cookbooks, which are in Afrikaans, which is the language of South Africa. So I’ll read them, interpret them, sort of make the language into English. So … that’s how I’ve learned, that’s how I’ve grown up.

Only my mom, my dad, my brother and my sister live in England with me. So all of my aunty, aunties, all of my uncles, my grandparents, my cousins, they all live back in South Africa. So whenever we go and visit, there’s … so much to do. So, my grandmother, she has a tennis court on … like, where she lives, there is one within her walls. So she has a tennis court and a swimming pool. So whenever I go back home, we’ll spend a lot of time just playing tennis or going swimming or … anything sort of like that. So whenever we do go back, we’ll spend a lot of time outside, there’s very little indoor activity. So we’ll be walking around a lot, we’ll be seeing everything that there is to see in South Africa, which – There is a lot, so … we’ll go out, we’ll go just walking for a couple of days and come back home and it’s lovely.

OK, so there’s … a lot of sort of … plants. So there’s a lot of different flowers, trees and there’s a whole different sort of variety of animals. So it’s a lot more wild than here in Britain, ‘cos they don’t really want to encroach on the natural culture. Because my parents don’t live in a built-up – , my grandparents don’t live in a built-up city, they live more rurally. So they’re a lot more out of the way of the city, so there’s a lot more to go out where there’s not been big construction or anything similar to that. So we’ll go out just into the brush, as they call it [laughter]. So – or the bush … either one. So the brush. We’ll just go walking, see – A lot of the plants don’t get a lot of water, so they’re l-, all quite dry, so a lot of the plant life is just dry grass or dry bushes and it’s a totally different sort of style to the wetness of Britain.

South Africa

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