The Poor Volunteers

Hi everyone,

I completed my first week of computer training this week. I think things went pretty well. I have 17 dedicated students, 9 in the morning, 8 in the afternoon. Last week we were learning how to type. Things were going pretty well, by Thursday almost all of them had learned the home row + T, I, E, and N if they were really cruising. Good time for a weekend though because everyone was getting pretty frustrated trying to reach the goals by the end of the week. There wasn't really much I could do and my main teaching method became sending people on 5 minute walks when I thought their patience had run out.

We had the sisters (6 of them) over for dinner last week. We were telling them a story about how we could not decide to buy these 1/2 priced mushrooms or not because they were really cheap, but they would put us even more over our budget and we had already bought mushrooms for the week. The sisters interpreted this as us not having enough money/food because it was such a silly decision that we were playing up a bit. What did this get us? A big delivery of food that normally goes to the orphans and vulnerable children in the area. We have a ton of rice, oil, and thick vegetable soup now. I feel really bad about it because we were just kidding and I feel like we unintentionally stole from the poor, the opposite of the purpose of us being here.

Yesterday the sisters brought us to see the white lions that live fairly close to us. I was really excited because I thought it would be like a safari. Nope, not at all. I accidentally went to a zoo. The lions were cool and everything, but I was super uncomfortable and did not want to be there, as many of you can imagine. The lions were kept in about 1 sq. hectare of land, about 2 per plot. There were some 3 day old cubs that were hiding under a tree. Then there were 2 cubs that were 5-6 months old that were taken away from their mother and we went in the enclosure with them so we could play with them. I did not want to touch either of them, but of course I was the first person one of them came up to and latched its teeth around my ankle. That required me to smack it across the head to get it off. It was fun to go and I am grateful that the sisters took us, but it was not a cool setup for these lions. So, mixed feelings on the little adventure.

We bought World Cup tickets this weekend! We are going to the 3rd and 4th place championship game in Port Elizabeth. The tickets were a little pricey, and most of the games were sold out. It was either going to this game or going to a random game where none of us really cared about either of the teams. After much deliberation, this is what we decided on. I really want to see Brazil play, so hopefully they will make it to that game. Whoever it ends up being, I am sure it will be really fun.

That's all from my end.

Kelly