Hey everyone!
My internet has been out for over a week and a half, so sorry about the delay again. I really hope it starts working soon, I guess that’s what you get for studying abroad in Africa! The last week and a half has had a lot of long days at the library, but at least it is a nice library here.
On Valentine’s Day, the girls in the house went out to dinner in Observatory. We went to a Chinese/sushi place. For about 12 dollars it was all you can eat and you could just keep ordering until you were full. It was delicious, but they had a lot of rules for the menu. You had to finish everything on your plate or else they charged you for what was left on the plate! They also had a lot of rules on things like sharing and carry out etc. Though it was really good, I was kind of afraid I was going to get charged extra for everything I do.
I have had volleyball twice a week too. It’s going really well and I like the team and coaches. It’s difficult learning their rotation because every team plays differently, but I’m getting the hang of it I think. I’m not sure what team I’ll be on yet or what position I will be playing. They have had me had both outside hitter and utility (right-side). I have really never played utility before, so the first few times they put me there I actually thought they were kidding. I’m also really not used to blocking because I never really had to do it with my height, but they are all for me doing it here! I feel sort of stupid doing it sometimes because I can barely get over the net, but it actually works some of the time. Who knew!
School is going well, but it’s pretty difficult and a lot of work. The semester is only 12 weeks long plus finals and since I’m already almost at the end of the 3rd week, I think it’s going to go really fast. We have a few weeks of finals and finals are worth anywhere for 40-60% of out grade, so it makes sense that they give us lots of study time.
I have also started volunteering with SHAWCO. I’m tutoring/teaching 7th graders every Wednesday for 3 hours in the township of Khayelitsha. Their native language is Xhosa, but their English is good too. They speak in Xhosa to each other every once in awhile and I just assume they are talking about me, which is fine. The first time went much better than I expected. There are three 7th grade tutors in the same room each with our own group of kids. I had around 8 kids and I was so surprised how focused they were. I know that after a full day of school I wouldn’t have been focused to do more learning in 7th grade. We did adjectives and place values. They did ok with the lesson. They are much better at math than English. They love to read though and everyone fights over whose turn to read it is. My second time at SHAWCO was a little more difficult, but I know there will be days like that. I had 12 students to myself this time which was harder to control and just very loud. They were doing prime numbers, but really most of the kids were just concentrating on coloring in the numbers. . It was so hot in the classroom that whatever kept them sitting still was fine with me. We were also trying to think of healthy things to eat for breakfast, lunch, snack and dinner. None of the kids knew what a snack was and when I explained that it was what you eat between meals when you’re hungry, they just looked at me funny. I realized that they don’t know what a snack is because they are lucky if they have enough food for 2 or 3 meals a day, let alone extra. They aren’t really even close to what the 7th grade level in the U.S. is like and they don’t look like they are 12 or 13 either, but they are.
This week I also had orientation for volunteering at the hospital. I’m planning to volunteer there for 3 hours every Monday. The hospital is a children’s hospital in Rondebosch. Kids from all over the world come to the hospital, so a lot of their parents aren’t around. I’ll mostly just be hanging out with the kids and playing with them to keep their minds off of being in the hospital. I’ll work in whatever unit needs me for the day. I’m excited to start volunteering and I think it will be a very different experience than volunteering at the hospital at Iowa. A lot of the kids are really poor and have never even seen toys. They told us we can’t just give a kid a toy because most of them won’t know what to do with it. We are going to have to teach the kids how to play with the toy and even show the parents if they are there, because they probably haven’t seen toys either.
Last Friday, we had our first indoor intramural soccer game and we won. Our team name is the Mangbro’s (we eat a lot of fruit here, especially mango’s). I’m on the team with a lot of the guys in the house who have played soccer a lot and even in college. There is another girl housemate on the team and it looks like we are the only 2 girls in the whole league! It’s really different playing against bigger and faster guys, but I have been sort of getting the hang of it. There was a huge crowd at the game and people booed when I was knocked down, so that’s always fun. I’ll have a soccer game once a week during the afternoon.
Last Saturday was definitely one of my favorite days here so far. We took the minibus in the morning to the Old Biscuit Mill for a food market. There were lots of vendors and tons of amazing food. I got an ostrich burger and it was so good!! I also got lemon ice cream and a smoothie. I think we all could have walked around all day trying food and I definitely want to go back on a lot of Saturday’s. Since it was probably the hottest day so far, we decided to finally go to the beach! I can’t believe it took me that long to go! We took the train from the Old Biscuit Mill to Fish Hook beach. The train ride was probably one of the more entertaining ones I have been on. A church got on about 15 minutes into the ride and for the next 45 minutes sung church songs. Between songs one of the men would give a sermon. The songs actually sounded really good and the sermon was interesting, so we decided that it counted for mass for the week (right mom?!).
The beach was so good! As I said it was a really hot day, but the beach was windy so you were never really hot, just the perfect temperature all of the time. I knew that Fish Hook is warmer than a lot of the beaches here because it’s on the Indian Ocean, but I still expected it to be cold. It was actually just about the perfect temperature though! It was warm enough to swim in, but cold enough to be really refreshing. Much better than I expected! Fish Hook isn’t really a place for surfing, but there were enough waves that it was fun just to hang out in them.
On Sunday some of us went to the mall to see “Valentine’s Day.” We all really liked it and it was probably the only really American thing that I have done since I have been here. I think we all sort of forgot we were in South Africa while we were there. The movie theater makes you reserve seats, so no movie days!!
This week we’re also trying to figure out what to do for spring break which is coming up in less than a month already! Be thankful you guys have internet!
Cheers!
Megan
No comments:
Post a Comment