As Matt said over the weekend, “our home has become a Dave & Busters.” People (mainly kids) stop by for help with homework, to eat snacks, watch movies on the laptop, play UNO, read our magazines and even ask for legal assistance. Although it can get annoying from time to time, it’s fun for the most part. The high school closed yesterday for the term break and the primary school is closed today for Human Rights Day (in recognition of the Sharpeville massacre of 1960, when peaceful protesters were killed, leading to international sanctions against South Africa), so it should be a quiet day.
In other news, we saw a cobra with its neck expanded to form the hood in our yard yesterday. We almost walked right by it without noticing. Instead of being properly freaked out, we ran inside to grab our camera. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), we were unable to find it again when we went back out. Also, Sara saw a large family of baboons on her run yesterday. Usually, our animal viewing is limited to cows and goats (which are everywhere!).
Friday we leave for Pretoria for a week of training. Saturday the 24th marks the one year anniversary of our swearing-in as volunteers, which is hard to believe. So next week is our midpoint training. After training, we leave for a 3-day weekend for the half-marathon, and then we have a week of travelling in Cape Town. In other words, our next three weeks should be, in a word, awesome.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Life
We have been very busy lately and apologize for not updating our blog. We apologize to our loyal readers and hopefully this post will bring us all up to date. For starters, we are still teaching Reading at the Primary School. We are falling into a routine with the kids in Grades 4-7 and loving every minute of it. Well, nearly every minute.
A couple of weeks from now is the end of Term 1, and there will be a two week break. We will be spending our break in Pretoria (for a week of training and our mid-service doctors’ appointments), then off to the half marathon and finally a week in Cape Town. So as we’re wine tasting, relaxing by the beach or strolling through the markets, we’ll be thinking of you guys!
Two doors down from our house are numerous houses where teachers stay during the week. One of the high school teachers has a daughter and son who we spend a lot of time playing with. The girl is 9 and one of the best students in Matt’s Grade 4 class. Her brother Junior is in Grade R (kindergarten) but he’s only 3. The primary school principal permits him to attend Grade R as a courtesy to the high school teacher. 2-3 afternoons per week we play ball or Frisbee with them, and it’s gotten to the point where Junior runs screaming into Sara’s arms when we see him in the morning at school.
Matt’s chess club has also been very successful. It’s for the boys at the high school and it meets every Wednesday afternoon and Saturdays when Matt is at site. Today, they had a tournament and it was a big hit. About 25 boys participated. All of the boys who play are boarders who come from bigger towns. So, the next step is to try to involve some of the boys who live in the local community.
Sara has been busy with her three girls clubs. Currently, she is holding girls clubs for the high school boarding students (grades 8-12), but she is thinking about starting a fourth club for the local grade seven girls. The problem is finding a time to meet since many of them live very far from school. The purpose of the clubs is to teach life skills and also just to be (hopefully) a female role model. The girls have SO many questions about love and relationships, so that’s been our main topic thus far. We’ll eventually discuss topics such as self-esteem, dealing with parents, peer pressure and premarital sex as well.
We’ve also been busy helping students with homework. High school students are asking us for help more and more, and it’s not unusual for us to get a knock (or several) on our door requesting our assistance. We have made it clear that while we can help with English and Life Orientation homework, they do not want to ask us for help with physics.
So all in all, life is still good here on the mountain. We are slowly coming to terms with the fact that winter is coming once again, but at least we know that we won’t have water dripping on us during the nights! We will try to be better about updating our blog in the future, and we hope all is well with all of you.
A couple of weeks from now is the end of Term 1, and there will be a two week break. We will be spending our break in Pretoria (for a week of training and our mid-service doctors’ appointments), then off to the half marathon and finally a week in Cape Town. So as we’re wine tasting, relaxing by the beach or strolling through the markets, we’ll be thinking of you guys!
Two doors down from our house are numerous houses where teachers stay during the week. One of the high school teachers has a daughter and son who we spend a lot of time playing with. The girl is 9 and one of the best students in Matt’s Grade 4 class. Her brother Junior is in Grade R (kindergarten) but he’s only 3. The primary school principal permits him to attend Grade R as a courtesy to the high school teacher. 2-3 afternoons per week we play ball or Frisbee with them, and it’s gotten to the point where Junior runs screaming into Sara’s arms when we see him in the morning at school.
Matt’s chess club has also been very successful. It’s for the boys at the high school and it meets every Wednesday afternoon and Saturdays when Matt is at site. Today, they had a tournament and it was a big hit. About 25 boys participated. All of the boys who play are boarders who come from bigger towns. So, the next step is to try to involve some of the boys who live in the local community.
Sara has been busy with her three girls clubs. Currently, she is holding girls clubs for the high school boarding students (grades 8-12), but she is thinking about starting a fourth club for the local grade seven girls. The problem is finding a time to meet since many of them live very far from school. The purpose of the clubs is to teach life skills and also just to be (hopefully) a female role model. The girls have SO many questions about love and relationships, so that’s been our main topic thus far. We’ll eventually discuss topics such as self-esteem, dealing with parents, peer pressure and premarital sex as well.
We’ve also been busy helping students with homework. High school students are asking us for help more and more, and it’s not unusual for us to get a knock (or several) on our door requesting our assistance. We have made it clear that while we can help with English and Life Orientation homework, they do not want to ask us for help with physics.
So all in all, life is still good here on the mountain. We are slowly coming to terms with the fact that winter is coming once again, but at least we know that we won’t have water dripping on us during the nights! We will try to be better about updating our blog in the future, and we hope all is well with all of you.
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