Thursday, July 7, 2011

Happy July 4th America.










I hope you all have had a fun day and that you got in some good fireworks.

It is cold here in South Africa...we are smack dab in the middle of a very cold winter. Inside my house, it is usually somewhere between 40 and 55 degrees depending on how cold it is outside. I generally wear two jackets, my gloves and a hat inside. I can’t complain about that, but I do complain about washing clothes or washing my hair when it is cold. It just takes my hands a long time to warm back up. Only a few more weeks to go though and it will start to warm up again.

So speaking of a few more—I am scheduled to return to the U.S. on Sept. 16th and I’m starting to get excited about seeing friends again. Our ‘class’ of volunteers had 40+ to start with, about 1/3 of them went back early for various reasons which is common. Now people are starting to return home at the end of their service. Our group is an education group so many of the volunteers are teachers by profession. It is an odd time to end service in the middle of September if you are a teacher because school starts before that in the U.S. So if you have a job teaching, generally you want to be back before mid-September. The same is true if you are planning to go to grad school or any further education program. So already some of my fellow volunteers have started heading back to the states and more of them will go in July and August. Those of us still here are looking for jobs back in the U.S. or whatever we will do next...so if you know of something that I’d like, let me know!

I was the guest of honor at a young man’s birthday party last month. The birthday boy turned 9 and he wanted an ‘American party’. Where he got this idea, I have no clue, but he goes to an international boarding school so maybe there. We had hot dogs, punch, and cake so that part was good. There was a jumping castle—one of those inflatable things that the kids like so much. Then we played games: pin the tail on the donkey
(see my donkey that I drew!), pass the orange along a row of kids without using your hands, and then a game that I didn’t know about whereby one must find sweets buried in a bowl of flour. Very funny. It was a fun afternoon and I hope he got his wish.



























One of my least favorite things to do is go on road trips. South African road trips are a challenge to say the least. I’ve been on two since I last wrote. The first was a trip to an educational seminar. Originally it was to be 5 of us, but the number just kept growing and once a koombie (large taxi van) is involved, you can bet that you will be at least 4 hours later than you planned, it will be loud even with your ear plugs, and absolutely nothing will be organized. Sure enough, that is exactly what happened. The seminars were very good though. I attended the leadership talks and realized how much I missed the more technical aspects of work. The speakers I heard were fantastic and there were plenty of applicable things to take back to school. I also showed the teachers who were with me how to cook beef stew and chili. We had a great time doing this and comparing notes on dishes. AND I saw a Prius in the car park--the guy said that you could only get them in SA starting last year and that they were hard to come by.

The second road trip was with the grade 7 kids to an environmental camp about an hour away. It was 5 days and I think the kids learned a lot. The area was nice and was right next to the game reserve so we took a bus through the game reserve and saw a lot of antelope, buffalo, many rhino, and other assorted non-predators. The kids were great and did everything that I asked them to do without complaint. I was proud of them.

Our second term of school is over and our primary school almost got report cards issued by the end of the term. I’ve been pushing them to take responsibility for this as it is on the computer now and they’ve got to learn it sooner or later. There are several who are fantastic now and I’m sure they will be able to manage without me.

I’m still working with the teachers and kids on the computers and trying to transfer as much knowledge as I can through practice. I’m working to get them online so that they will find reasons to use the computer and at least one is pretty happy on Facebook. Email is coming so we’ll be able to keep in touch once I leave. I hope to get to the point where they can upload pictures on FB so I can still see what is happening.

I’ve got a couple of projects still going on. I’ve applied for two different lottery projects and probably won’t hear about the success of either until after I’m gone. I also applied to get 40 fruit trees from Trees For Africa. My application has just been approved so planting should happen in the next 6 weeks or so. That should be perfect—just in time for warmer weather. I'm still making paper beads and making necklaces out of them--I showed them to a community organizer so we should be able to get a project up and running by the time I leave. I still haven't finished War and Peace or Crime and Punishment...no time! But several of my friends are pretty fair cross-stitchers now if only the supplies were easier to come by.

We are just getting ready for our annual birthday party. I hope to have some great pictures to put on Facebook from that party—the kids are always such hams when the camera is out. And I’m hoping for some good pictures for a video project that I’m working on...everyone can see that when I get back and then we can move on to the next phase of life!

So Happy 4th of July and I’ll see you all soon! Karen

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