First Two Days of Working with the Children

Monday was our first actual day with the kids, there were only about 11 of them there when we were supposed to get around 50! I think the youngest was about 5 and the oldest 12. They were so much fun and seemed to really enjoy themselves! We played a few games with them and then  did a few craft activities. Some understand and speak English very well and others not so much but that doesn't seem to matter to them. Today was even better.We got a few more kids to come, the oldest being 14! They learned all about Cape Town and did a few crafts that involved Table Mountain. One thing that I have learned is that these kids love to dance and listen to Justin Bieber. They know every single word!! I'm really excited to see what tomorrow will bring. Hopefully, we get even more kids to show up. The other group has over 200 kids and they all speak a way different language than Afrikaans but thankfully of them they get interpreters which I'm sure helps a lot. This week is going by so fast; this whole trip is actually! Three weeks from tomorrow I leave to start my journey back home. This trip has definitely been an experience for my stomach -- so many strange and interesting foods. Tonight three of us went to Simply Asia and I got a type of Thai Curry. It wasn't awful but definitely not the best thing I've ever eaten. After dinner we went to McDonald's and got the BEST McFlurries. I don't even know what it was called but I will definitely be returning sometime soon to get another one. Hopefully tomorrow and the rest of the week goes well and the kids continue having fun! Here's the link to see some pictures from this past weekend at Table Mountain. Enjoy! 

http://www5.snapfish.com/snapfish/fe/l=en_US/p/dasta/Main/AlbumID=3853573026/a=5151520026_5151520026/s_c=0/s_ru=FALSE/s_se=FDR#ss=%7B%22uc%22%3A1%7D

Hell Week

This past week just FLEW by! I dubbed it Hell Week seeing as we had so much homework to do. It actually didn't take as long as I thought it would thanks to my group coming together and working as a team to get everything done. Friday, we met with the organization again to go over our activities proposal with them and they loved it! That was a huge load off of our shoulders. Grant was feeling especially nice and let us out at 3 instead of 5 so a few of us went to the little market they have in town. I may have spent a little more than I had originally planned but everything was so cool! I even learned how to barter and wasn't as bad as I thought I would be. Afterwards, we went to the Braai (Braii?) I forget how to spell it but once again I had ostrich! It's so good!! Then onto the bars to celebrate Hell Week being officially over. Now that was A LOT of fun, maybe too much fun. I celebrated a little too hard and waking up at 8am to take a bus to Cape Town was not ideal. Once we got to Cape Town we went straight up to Table Mountain which is absolutely breathtaking. I will post the pictures on Snapfish after my meeting tonight. Then after that we got to walk around Cape Town. A few of us went to the Aquarium which was so cool! One minute we were petting starfish and then we turn around and there were penguins right behind us!! It was so cool to see that. Then it was time to get back on the bus and make our way back to Stellenbosch. A few of us went out to this seafood place, I was pretty darn nervous to say the least. I've been trying to expand my horizons as much as possible so I decided to try Hake which is some type of fish. It was wonderful! I was really excited and ate almost all of it. After dinner I was a cool kid and stayed in to read my book and relax. I slept in today until about 230ish -- definition of a lazy bum. Well I gotta go to my meeting so I will try to post tomorrow after my first day with the kids! Wish me luck :) 

Pebbles Project

Hello! So I'm going to write a quick post now before I have to continue with all my homework. Last night I went to bed around 2 last night and waking up around 7:30 today so needless to say I'm exhausted especially since we had a FULL day. This morning the group I'm in (Pebbles) went to the organization to meet the coordinators. The group of nine will be looking over 47 children and have to make a plan that has 5 days. Our theme for the week is different cities and landmarks around South Africa. After doing a little planning we got to meet some of the kids. They're so cute! Unfortunately, due to a privacy clause we had to sign I cannot post any pictures on here, Facebook, or Snapfish. The children speak very little or no English but surprisingly there wasn't really a language barrier. The kids just wanted someone to hang with and show us what they were doing. After a quick tour of the facilities we went to this woman Rebecca's house where we ate lunch. She lived in one of the townships and spoke some English. She made us a traditional African Curry. I was extremely nervous because we all know that I am a picky eater. When she gave us our plates my worst fears were confirmed: it was mainly veggies and rice with a few chunks of meat. I didn't want to be rude so I attempted to eat as much as could. Everyone else loved it by the way. As we were saying our goodbyes Rebbeca started to cry because she was so happy that she had Americans come and eat in her house.It was very touching. During lunch other men and women from the township kept coming into the house to say hi and to look at us. It was a very different and humbling experience. After this we had to go back to class for another 4 or so hours which was awful. Now I'm sitting in my room doing everything but my homework.... yikes I better start that now! 

Add on to my other post

Today in class for our check in activity we had to draw our golden childhood memory and I drew, very badly I might add, a summer day at Lily Lake with the family. I'm upset that I'll miss the family reunion up there! Also, I finally finished my first paper and now I'm making my organization profile and the organization that I'll be with works with children who have fetal alcohol syndrome due to wine farmers paying their workers with alcohol in the past. Crazy crazy stuff! When I go tomorrow I'll hopefully be able to take pictures of the farm and I'll post them on Snapfish when I get the chance! :) 

First Day of LSCE

Hello :) So I've decided to write to distract myself from doing the massive amounts of homework I have to do tonight. Probably not the best idea but hey I'm really good at procrastinating! Today was the first day for my Learning Through Sustainable Community Engagement class. It last EIGHT hours with a few short breaks here and there. Surprisingly it went by fast and was very interesting. We're learning about community development and how this will help us with our volunteering next week. Grant, our teacher still really intimidates me. He's very punctual and wants us early for everything which is slightly hard for me but I'm trying! I'm exhausted after this long day but I have an even longer night ahead of me. :( I'm currently writing my paper for my class that was last week and after that I have to do two or three more things for my LCSE class. It will be worth it in the end just because it will help me with my Social Work degree but that doesn't mean I can't complain just a little bit.. Tomorrow we're going to meet with the organizations that we will be working with and they're making us lunch! I hope it's something tasty because the dinner I had was not good. I went and got Chinese and I never knew you had to ask for no vegetables because Danny usually orders when we get Chinese so I ate around the veggies and ate the chicken. Next time I'm going to ask for a fork and no veggies! It was another nice day here which I was happy about because it was pouring yesterday. Alrighty, I guess I should finally finish all my homework! 

First Week

Hello everyone! Sorry that I haven't posted in a while, it's been a pretty hectic first week. So here's what been happening since Tuesday: after Robben Island we all went to Brazen for the pub quiz, my team failed miserably even with the help from Aunt Molly. At this quiz you can win free bar tabs which includes food so I REALLY wanted to win but the South Africans know all these weird facts like who won the Canadian Grand Prix and such so we got killed. After the quiz we all hung around there for a bit and then as a group went to a few of the other bars or as they call them here the pubs. Wednesday, we all woke up and made it to class which was pretty boring. Around lunchtime is when I realized that my debit card was missing so I freaked. I ran back to my room and looked for it everywhere then checked online to make sure no one had used it; thankfully no one had. After searching ALL day I decided that it was gone and cancelled it. Two hours later I find it right outside my door in the hallway. Needless to say I was angry. So for the past few days I've been living off my American Express Card which is widely used here so I got lucky. My new debit card should be here in a few days (thanks mom). I'm just going to skip to Friday because nothing else fun happened Wednesday or Thursday. Friday option one and two all had class together up until 1:00 and then we had a lunch break but then at 1:30 option two students had our orientation for volunteering!! I was really excited to find out where and what we would actually be doing. The teacher, Grant is extremely intimidating and slightly scary. He split us up into groups, mine has nine people in it and will be volunteering somewhere called Pebbles. He didn't give us any information about it so hopefully it'll be nice. I am kinda mad though because we'll only be with the kids for 7 days and I was under the impression that we would be with them for longer but I'll take what I can get. Here we also received our course syllabus and all of our homework. This week alone I have a 4-8 page paper due, a few journal submissions, a 30 minute presentation, and two tests. I will be locked in my room all week not having a life, YAY! After that we had a Braii, which is like a BBQ. We had to bring our own meat and drinks, I brought ostrich and Black Label which is the cheap beer here. Ostrich was surprisingly very good! I was soo nervous but I'm glad I tried it. After that we went out to Catwalk which was like a techno club, so I  sat outside with a few friends who weren't into that either. Saturday was by far my favorite day! We went to Cape Point and Boulders Beach which were absolutely gorgeous. First we went to Cape Point, which is the southern most point of Africa!! It was stunning, words or pictures cannot even describe. It was quite the hike up there but it was totally worth it. Before we got there the grad assistant kept warning us about how bad the baboons are and how they love food so I was super excited to see some giant baboons but unfortunately the only ones we saw were when we on the bus and they were playing in the street. We did get to see a lot of lizards and dassies who's closet relative is the elephant even though they're tiny, furry animals! After Cape Point we went to Boulders Beach where the penguins live!! It was amazing, they're just right there in front of you! A few were just feet away, I fell in love. After about two hours there we were walking back to the bus and a few people stopped at the little stands where you can buy some really cool things and can barter the prices! We finally made it back to Stellenbosch and I decided to take a quick nap before dinner .. well that nap turned into me sleeping until 12:30 - 1:00 am so dinner was out of the question. We had a free day today so eight of us girls decided to go on a wine tasting. We went to five vineyards and paid 350 rand which is about $50! It was a lot of fun and really interesting. The vineyards were beautiful! At one you would look out the giant windows you would see the mountains and all the vineyards. When we were driving to each vineyard   I would look out the windows and see these gorgeous houses and vineyards and then see a few shacks, which were very depressing and sad. The gaps between the classes here just blow my mind. According to one of my teachers the black middle class is growing but it still just boggles my mind the way some of these people live. It makes me feel very fortunate. Tonight, we're going out to dinner with everyone so that should be fun!! I uploaded some pictures to Facebook and I am in the process of uploading the rest of Snapfish so everyone who doesn't have a Facebook can see them! Here's the link to my pictures: http://www5.snapfish.com/snapfish/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=3853573026/a=5151520026_5151520026/


Enjoy!

Cape Town/Robben Island

Hi! So today we traveled to Cape Town to visit Robben Island were Nelson Mandela was held prisoner for 27 years I think? I don't remember the exact number of years but I'm sure it's around there somewhere. It was really cool because one of our tour guides was actually a prisoner there at one point during the apartheid. He had a really amazing story, from what I remember he was in charge of the weapons that the blacks would use because they used guerrilla warfare tactics. The police found out about him and arrested and tortured him until he told where the weapons were.  He didn't seem to care at all when he was telling us this story, I came to conclusion that he was proud of what he did for his country and he should be; not many people could handle what this man went through. One of the cool things we saw while on this tour was Nelson Mandela's cell. It was extremely small and didn't even have a bed! Where we were at in Cape Town was gorgeous. I took a lot of pictures but they don't do it justice. It is simply breathtaking. Later on in the trip we get to go to Table Mountain which overlooks the coast and I heard it is beautiful so I am very excited for that. A few things that I've learned in my short time here are:

1. South Africa is beautiful

2. Rugby if life; it brought white and black people together post-apartheid

3. We are extremely blessed to live in the United States

4. Accents are the coolest thing ever 

5. Speed limits tend not to exist here

6. "Colored" is an acceptable term to call someone who is dark skinned

7. Nelson Mandela's first name is not actually Nelson

8. 70% of  the country lives in tiny tin shacks 

9. Stores close at 18 (6 pm)

10. All the cars are TINY

I've also learned other things that I can't remember right now but the thing that has affected me the most so far are the townships that the majority of the country lives in. The government said that they would either build and enclose ONE bathroom for every FIVE houses or they would give each house their own bathroom but they would have to enclose it themselves. Naturally, the public chose to each have their own bathroom but not everyone was able to afford to enclose it. I don't understand what type of government could allow this? This country has extremely high taxes but it doesn't seem to do the people any good. It just boggles my mind and it makes me feel extremely blessed to live in the United States, recession or not. Someone out there has it much worse than we do in the States and I don't think many people realize that. I hope by me being here and volunteering with the children I will be able to make a difference in at least one of their lives. 

First and Second Day!

Hello from South Africa! I made it here yesterday morning, which was surprising given my luck earlier. Yesterday I got here and right away met my roommate Jillian, we get along really well (we both love Harry Potter..). A bunch of the girls walked to the mall where I was able to buy a cell phone to use here, it's pretty old school. Then we had orientation which is when my jet lag began kicking in and I preceded to fall asleep during those sessions..whoops. I was supposed to attend the opening ceremony thingy but I fell asleep and didn't wake up soo I hope I didn't miss anything too important. I set my alarm for around 8 this morning and slept right through that and almost missed laptop registration so for tomorrow I set three different alarms to make sure I am awake on time! Today was also the first day of class, it's interesting but having class for three hours straight it very hard especially since I was exhausted! Tomorrow we're going on a field trip to Robben Island where Nelson Mandela was held prisoner along with many other political radicals so it should be very interesting. After class got out Jillian and I went back to the mall to buy other things that we were going to need and I needed cheap black flip flops that I could wear in the communal showers ..well the man tried to charge me R249 which roughly translates into $35, I think he was trying to rip me off because I'm American. Needless to say I did not buy them. An interesting thing that I learned today was that here they close all shops down at 6pm! So strange. The coolest thing about my room is when I look out my window I see the giant mountain. I'll try to figure out how to post pictures on here, if not I will upload them to a photo site. For those who don't know I have a skype number (708) 505-9096 and that is free for anyone in the United States to call if I don't answer it means my internet is disconnected because for some weird reason you pay as you go for the internet so I don't want to rack up a huge bill and have my parents kill me at the end of this. Well, that's it for now!

Flight from hell

 Let me tell you this has not been an easy journey so far but it can only go up from here! So who's ready to hear all about my wonderful time at O'Hare airport?! First, my flight on Thursday gets cancelled which was not cool but my parents rebooked me for the very next day and I got to hang with Danny and go see Bridesmaids (which by the way is hilarious). So Friday my mom and I head to O'Hare and that is when everything went downhill. According to Continental I was not booked on the 2:00 flight to Newark, even though I had a reservation and seat number. They kept insisting that I was not on that flight and in fact they had no reservation for me at all that day! Well if you can imagine I was less than thrilled and they received a few less than kind words from myself. Which they deserved because they were not too kind themselves; I was on hold for about 50 minutes so when they finally got me back on the phone I put them on hold to show them what it was like. All they say they can do is put me on the standby list and of course I don't make it so at 2:15 I head over to be put on the standby list for the next flight at 3 and the woman looks at me and said, "Mam you were supposed to be on the 2:00 flight." That was when I burst into tear of anger and frustration. I knew I was right because let's face it I usually am ;) So these very nice women put me on the next flight to Newark, New Jersey and I safety made it there. Once I get there I had to check in and I had booked aisle seats the entire time because who really wants to sit in the middle or next to the window on a 7 hour flight!? Well Continental must hate me now because they put me in the middle .. so I politely asked to be put back in my original seat  and they told me they had given it away. What little patience I actually possess was long gone and I not so nicely asked for a window seat. I am now in London and decided not to leave the airport because with my luck so far I'll get shot or mugged. So if you see this and want to entertain me because I am bored out of my mind let me know and I can call you or we can skype! Hope you all enjoyed my little rant and hopefully my next post will be all good things about South Africa!

Hello all! I've decided to keep a blog/journal well I'm abroad. For those who don't know I will be in South Africa for 6 weeks for a service learning trip. I will be studying and also volunteering with poverty stricken children. I leave today around 4 (well hopefully, dang weather) and will get to Cape Town June 11th. The internet usage in limited there, or so I've been told so I will try to get on Facebook and on my e-mail as much as possible seeing as how that and skype are my only ways to stay in contact with everyone! If you get a call from an Unknown number it's me and you should answer! Well I'll post again once I actually get to the University. See everyone in 6 weeks! :)