World Cup and Birthday...aka, what a month!

Hello,

Man, I have a lot of stuff to update on here. I was going to post information last weekend, then the power went out for 2 days, so that wasn't going to happen. Some thieves decided taking an ax to the power lines and taking the cable was a good idea. Well, actually, the more I thought about it, the more I decided it was the perfect crime, minus the risk of getting electricuted. They cut the wires, then everyone goes crazy and isn't paying attention to them. At the same time everything goes dark, so no one can see them. The land phones and tvs don't work so it is difficult to communicate about them. The list goes on, but it really is a pretty clever thing to steal if you are into that business.

Anyways, I will start with the World Cup adventure. It was pretty awesome, as you can probably imagine. We took an overnight bus to and from Port Elizabeth, which is about a 12 hour ride. I only remember a couple of hours of the trip because I was dead asleep. We got there and went to our B&B. It turned out to just be this nice family that runs a B&B for extra money and because they like meeting tourists. They were super nice and helped us find all the answers we needed about everything. Our first order of business after dropping off our things was to get food. We walked to a nearby cafe that was attached to an aquarium. No joke, the entire Uruguay team was there looking at fish!!! There was security all around, and we asked if we were still allowed to go in to get food and they said yes. That sealed the deal for sure. While we were waiting for our food, the entire team walked past us. We tried talking to them, but they mostly just ignored us. Then Sarah chased them down and got her picture taken with a couple of them. I was already cheering for them, Katie was for Germany, and after that incident, Sarah swung my direction.

We spent the next day or so doing various activities such as swimming (wicked cold, but super cool waves), eating sushi, and generally walking around. On the day of the game, I drug Sarah and Katie to the new Twilight movie with me. We went in and everything was normal outside, then when we came out, the entire town had transformed into a World Cup monster! Everyone had flags, face paint, vuvuzelas, etc. We ran home, got changed, got on a shuttle, and were off to the game. Most of the audience was for Germany (boo). We got some yummy dinner for just $2 outside of the stadium. While we were waiting in line, some people tried to steal things from Katie's pocket. It was a pair of men. One came up to her and started begging for food, the other used the distraction to unzip her pocket and try to get her things (which included her wallet and passport). They must have been watching her for awhile. I was luckily standing behind her and saw the thief. I grabbed his hand and yelled "What are you doing?!" He tried to tell me that he had just dropped something. I told him I wasn't stupid and told him to get away from us, perhaps using a little harsher language than I am reporting here. After that, we went in. It was super cool inside. The design was really nice. And even though we had cheap seats, they were actually pretty good. We could still see everything. Certainly not worth an extra $200 for the good seats. The vuvuzelas were not that bad inside, the acoustics made the sound go away pretty well and the people around us were pretty tame. I don't know who watched the game, but it was pretty exciting to sit through. It stayed pretty even, constantly getting both sides' hopes up and then crushing them. Just what I wanted: suspense!

Getting home was quite a fiasco. The line to get back on the shuttle was forever long. We were in it for at least an hour and a half, if not longer. To try and pass time, Sarah dared Katie. The bet: Sing the U.S. national anthem as loud as you can, not telling anyone around you why you are doing it besides that you just have a lot of pride. The reward was $50, I said I would put in an additional $20. I don't think Sarah thought Katie would take the bet, I wasn't so sure. Well, Katie did it. It was super funny. Right in the middle of a bunch of German fans, Katie just starts belting out the most out of tune rendition of the national anthem. The funny thing was that there were some Americans standing pretty close behind us (we had actually run into them the night before when we were out and they were super annoying, we didn't even talk to them...alcohol, cowboy hats, big hair if that gives you any perspective on the situation). They starting singing along with Katie, except they were doing it in all seriousness, then they messed up the lyrics. Katie held her own, though, and just sang regardless of the others. It was hilarious.

So those are the highlights from the World Cup adventure. It was a fun time for sure. Now on to my birthday...

Katie and Sarah had all kinds of fun things planned for my birthday. Because my birthday fell on a Thursday, it was only natural that it should be a 2 day celebration. The first night, it was just the 3 of us. The theme for the party: neon-fabulous! Excellent start. This required the three of us to deck out in everything neon, including nail polish, bling earrings, and I even got a nice orange boa. For dinner: homemade sushi! A few ingredients were substituted, rice paper for seaweed, hot mustard for wasabe. Nonetheless, they turned out wonderfully. We packed ourselves full of those, rested for awhile, then went into town to get dessert from my favorite place.

The next night, other people came over. Just a few of our friends to hang out and play games and stuff. Our friend Rudy got me the world's coolest cake. It was a sheet cake (he deduced that that would be enough for 3 girls...), the top of it was the South African Flag and the bottom was the American flag. It was so pretty. Also came with 23 relighting candles. I ate way too much cake, then I got super thirsty and drank a big glass of milk. About 10 minutes later I was completely nausious. That is when Sarah told me the milk was rotten. This is not the first time I have drank a lot of rotton milk unknowingly. After a rough hour that ended with me losing all of the cake behind a tree, I was up and running again, ready for games. It was really fun; I was dead tired by the end of the night.

Alright, I think that pretty well wraps up the highlights of the past couple of weeks. A new computer class started this week. I just have one class now that is for a longer period of time, 9-3 each day. Today we learned how to save documents. Although this may seem like an easy thing, it is actually the most confusing thing for students to undertand. I am for real teaching now too, not just assisting a computer program. All this means is that if they do not understand, it is 100% on me. I think they will get the hang of it soon though, I am not worried. The concept of there being folders within folders and files are all over the place in those folders is just a bit difficult. They are fun though, there are 11 of them who are very serious about learning how to use a computer, which is all I care about.

Love ya,
Kelly

Kids All Around

Yo,

Sorry for the lapse of updates for the past few weeks. As predicted, the kids sucked all of the energy out of me and the thought of having to write a blog update just became too much, even though it doesn’t take long to do at all.

The holiday activities went pretty well. We never quite had 300 kids show up, but there were about 200, then towards the end numbers dwindled a little bit, more like 150. Our organization gradually decreased by the end too. The first couple of days we were really organized; every group had a letter and they rotated at specific times. By the end, we had a vague idea of what we were going to do that day, but we would mostly just give the kids a bunch of balls and tell them generally where to go and not to cause too much trouble. One thing I do not miss in life is being in the 9th grade. I think it might be a universal fact that all 9th grade girls are mean and have the biggest attitudes ever. Every single thing we did they were just not having it. We heard that some of the older students didn’t want to attend the program anymore and the parents started lying to them, saying that if they kept going we were going to give them KFC on the last day. Man were those kids disappointed when they got a bowl of rice and some meaty soup that day for lunch. Overall it went pretty well though.

We are off to Port Elizabeth for the soccer game this Thursday. I keep forgetting about the trip because it seems weird that the World Cup is coming to an end. Unfortunately I don’t really care about any of the teams that are still in it that much. I was really hoping that Ghana would make it. I didn’t see the game that knocked them out, but I heard the refereeing was not so great and that they should have won. I think I am just going to root for the team that has the best looking players since I don’t really have much more to go off of. I don’t know who this is at the time, I looked at the team members and honestly none of the teams were that impressive. All I can say is that Germany is definitely out of the contest. Maybe I will just wear a bunch of South African stuff and just go as a general supporter of the World Cup.

The sad part of the past couple of weeks is that I finished Harry Potter. I was hoping it would last a little longer because it was such a nice thing to sit down and read at night. Despite the series’ length, it did not last as long as I had hoped. It was really good though, I was quite pleased with the last book; I was a little worried I wouldn’t like it because those types of series are so hard to write a good ending to. I have moved on to some of the American classics that I never read in school for one reason or another. I am currently working on “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.” All this book is teaching me is that I have the reading comprehension of a 2nd grader. I have to read everything twice and I still barely know what is going on…and this book is supposed to be for children.

I am not really sure what the plan is for the week at work. I might be helping some of the sewing ladies make chair covers, but I don’t really want to help them because this is work for them that they will get paid for and I don’t want to take that away from any of them. I also am less qualified than any of them at sewing considering I am just a self-taught person who probably does most things technically incorrectly. I think we are going to run the computer class again. We are waiting for a program that is being designed elsewhere currently. I will actually be the teacher for this round of students instead of an assistant to a computer program. I am much happier about this because I often felt like I could explain things better than the program. I think we are going to do this old school with textbooks and lectures this time, then have the students do different exercises on the computer during the afternoon. So instead of having a morning and afternoon session we will just have one class who will be there all day. I know that is a long day, but several students said on their evaluations that class should have been longer. I guess when you are traveling an hour + to get to class, it makes sense to have a longer class. They will get more out of the class too because they will practice with the programs more. We shall see, it would be good to get another round of students started though because there is currently a pretty big waiting list that is only going to get longer with time.

Well that is all from my end. Happy 4th of July! I am so jealous that everyone got to see fireworks but me : ( I lit off some sparklers, but that was the extent of fireworks in my life. We had people over and made some 4th of July foods, but nothing too extravagant. It is hard to get people excited about America’s independence day here, mostly our friends were just humoring us, but I still appreciated their efforts to support us.

Peace,
Kelly