Vuvuzelas

Hello everyone,

I hope you are all doing well. I am doing pretty good. It has become ice cold here in the past two weeks. I am in class right now and I can almost see my breath. Everyday when I get home from work I spend about 2 hours doing various things to try and get myself warm again, usually without success for more than a few minutes. I think I am going to walk into town and buy a fleece after work today, I have been putting this off for quite some time, but I don't think I can take the cold anymore.

Two weekends ago I made my way to Durban with Katie, Sarah, and our South African family, the Josephs. It was an 8 hour drive to get there, although I don't remember much of it because I was out cold. It was such nice weather there. We only had one full day there before we had to return to Kroonstad, which we of course voted to spend at the beach. The water was soooo nice. It was almost the same temperature as the air. I was so swimming deprived that I spent about 3 hours riding the waves, which were also the perfect size. At about the 2 hour mark the lifeguards came out to see if I was okay. I said yes and that I just really like swimming. They joined me for about 15 minutes, then said they were tired and went back in...not really the most reassuring feeling that I could outlast the lifeguards by a longshot. We also went to the largest mall in the southern hemisphere, Gateway. That was pretty cool to see, I don't know if it is bigger than the Mall of America, but it certainly was not as overwhelming as the Mall of America. Part of it is outside and they have waterslides instead of a theme park, which I liked but it doesn't really make a ton of sense because who wants to be wet at a mall? Well, I kind of did, but I doubt many people would share that sentiment with me. Durban was definitely cool, I am sure we will return in the future.

As many of you know, Friday night was the opening match for the World Cup. We decided to go out to the township that my students are from and that Sarah and Katie teach in to watch the game. Soccer is stereotypically the "black" sport here, and the township is all blacks, so it seemed like the most logical place to go. We went to a tavern that was showing the game. It was really fun, although I got a pretty bad headache from blowing in the vuvuzelas and having them blown at me. I know these noise makers have been quite the controversy, but in case you don't know what they are, they are long horns and they make the bee-like buzzing sound when watching the game on tv. Needless to say, I could not hear much the rest of the night my ears were ringing so much. I think I will have to get earplugs for the game I am going to. It is funny thing here because there are commercials that jokingly measure how many decibals a vuvuzela makes when you blow in it. In the commercials, and in reality, they are loud enough to cause hearing damage, and this makes the crowds go wild with happiness. Perfect.

Plans for the upcoming week: I am going to Sowetto, the township outside of Johannesburg where Soccer City is located, to watch the South Africa vs. France (I think?) game this Saturday at a big public viewing stadium. Next week the holiday activities with the kids start so I am mostly planning on resting this weekend to get my energy up to deal with 300 children. The rest of my plans are a mystery.

Talk to you later!

Kelly

Mirror

So Johannesburg was a blast last weekend. It is such a cool looking city. It is built on rolling hills, and although it is gigantic, it doesn't feel overwhelming, which is nice. The city is decked out for the World Cup. Any space that could have a huge poster hung on it was sure to have one and they just stuck giant soccerballs at the top of most of the buildings. I got to see the outside of the new stadium there too which was really cool. We were also supposed to go to the apartheid museum while we were there, but it was closed. Instead we went to Constitutional Hill, which was also really cool. It used to be a prison during apartheid for both black and white people, men and women. The current supreme court is located there too, although they left much of the old prison in tact. It was really interesting, but I will not bore you with the details of the museum. I will just say that if you ever find yourself in South Africa, pay a visit.

As I said in my last post, I was mainly in Johannesburg for a retreat and for reflection over the past two months. Let me tell you, if I reflected any more, I am sure that I would've actually turned into a mirror. It was really nice, though, and very relaxing. Everything was about being peaceful and soothing. We had an avacado tree growing in our back yard. Naturally we were on a ladder within about an hour trying to get them down. We eventually had to climb up on the roof and walls to reach them, we got about 8 in the end. Now we have delicious guacamole in our fridge. I still don't understand my body's relationship with avacados, however. I know I am mildly allergic to them when I just eat them by themselves, especially if they are not ripe. But for some reason I can eat tons of guacamole without any problems. Katie, coincidently enough, has very similar allergies as me. She cannot eat melons of any kind and avacados bother her too. She is more allergic to these things than me, but it did make me feel a little better that there might actually be some rational behind this problem.

We are friends with an Indian family here, the Josephs, who have basically integrated us into their family as daughters. We went there this past weekend for food and games and I had the most delicious thing. It was fish brayani, and the fish was baracuda. No joke, I thought I was eating pork for about 10 minutes because the baracuda was so different than other types of fish. They are also taking us to Durban with them this weekend. We leave at 4 a.m. tomorrow morning and it is about an 8 hour drive. We will get back in the middle of the night on Sunday. Hopefully I will be able to sleep away most of the driving. I don't know exactly what we are doing there, but knowing the Josephs, food will be a huge part of the weekend. My only goal is to go swimming in the ocean. The water is supposed to be a swimmable temperature, which is all I am looking for.

Other than that, things are going good here. I realized yesterday that the computers in my classroom did not have anti-virus protection for the past week. I installed some yesterday and of course all of the computers had viruses because my students were using the internet for a week and I have been moving files between the computers. The computers make a loud beeping sound when a detection is found, which is pretty funny because now everything is quiet except for this symphony of beeps that resonates through the computers for about an hour.

Write to me!

Kelly

Big Fish

Hello,

I have decided to try and post on here once every two weeks. I was going to do once a week, but I am quickly discovering that I don't have enough to write about every week and I don't want the blog to become a burden otherwise I might just stop.

The computer class is still going well. Most of the students will hopefully be taking the Microsoft Word test this week. I am nervous about their ability to pass, but I guess that is pretty normal for a teacher. I wish I could just have one student take it so I can see how they do. Now we are starting to learn Internet Explorer. We are getting the internet upstairs this week, hopefully, so they will be able to start practicing soon. The internet is proving to be more difficult to explain, and I don't know if it is because it is more complicated subject matter or I just don't understand things as well. So many of my students ask me what HTML and http mean and I don't know what to tell them. Even if I can give them an answer, I am still using words they don't know and I just don't know how to make it more simple. It is really hard to explain more complex things when the basics are missing. Slowly but surely we will get there though.

Sarah, Katie, and I took a roadtrip to Parys yesterday. It is a fun little town. There are a ton of antique shops, which I found quite odd considering Kroonstad has none and it is a bigger town than Parys. We ate at a fabulous restaurant for lunch, although the portions were a little on the small side. I had raw warthog with vinegrette ice cream. The warthog was delicious, the ice cream was weird. We went down to the river afterwards. I really wanted to swim until I saw what the fishermen were pulling out of the water. There were bunches of huge fish hanging in all of the trees. I asked one of the fisherman what kind of fish they were catching and he said cod. Perhaps I misunderstood him, or maybe I don't know how big a cod is, but they looked too big to me to be cod. Swimming would've been fun, but I would have for sure been freaked out knowing there were so many big things swimming next to me that I could not see.

Next weekend we are going to Johannesburg for an orientation thing. I think they are just going to give us some general information on South Africa and then see how we are doing. I am pretty sure we will be able to pick up our World Cup tickets there too. I will be happy to have those in our hands, I still have a sinking feeling that we did something wrong when we bought them.

Hope everyone is well!

Kelly

Road Trip

Hello,

I think winter has officially arrived in Kroonstad. The days are in the 50s and the nights get down to the 30s/40s. I love it, my roommates are diggin' it so much. The weather here is so funny, it will go from clouds as far as you can see to completely sunny in ten minutes flat. I don't know how it happens, but it does.

Sarah, Katie, and I took our first road trip last weekend. It was between Paris and Welkom. We decided on Welkom because they have a movie theatre and the weather wasn't promising enough for Paris, which is a little more of an outdoors place. I was also the driver, so this was my first time driving in 5th gear, which was a nice gear, still a little intimidating though when I look down and see my spedometer reading 100. We had some delicious fish and chips for lunch. I have become completely addicted to putting vinegar on fries and will do just about anything to get my hands on the duo. After that we went and saw the "Blind Side." I was pulling for "Alica in Wonderland" but the roommates weren't feeling the dark humor of Johnny Depp that day. The movie was good, gave me the warm and fuzzies.

After that, we tried to find the mall that was supposed to be nearby. We asked 2 people where it was. The first told us it was behind the building a bit, the second told us it was behind the building but it was still being built. We decided to just go for a walk instead and no joke, within probably 3 blocks we had found a big mall. I don't know what those people were thinking. We got some cheesecake at a place and it was one of the more nasty things I have ever eaten. It was still frozen from being in the box it came in and it was yucky strawberries and the ice cream was this nasty cheap stuff that we have accidentally bought twice at the grocery store. So, Welkom was okay, but I don't think we will be going back any time soon.

My computer class is going good. The students are learning really fast for the most part. Slowly but surely they are discovering the fun features such as games and music on the computer. At first I told them class time wasn't for playing games, then I thought about it more and now I can't decide. They are still learning how to open and use programs, even if they are not the most useful or complex ones to discover.

My boss is trying to open a secondary school on the property for next year. This keeps getting brought up to me in passing, even though I can't figure out why it isn't more the center of conversation. I got to go through a bunch of catalogues last week and try to see how much it would cost to get it stocked with supplies. Funding also came through for the community gardening project last week. This means that in August or September I will go away for 2 weeks and get trained by a bunch of farmers how to grow things. It will be cool, although I am a little nervous to have people's main food source left in my hands.

That is about all from me. Let me know how you are doing!

Kelly

P.S. If you are interested, here is a link to the NDMV newsletter:

http://www.ndmva.org/Media/HumanKind/Human%20Kind_Spring2010.pdf

Enjoy!

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

Takin' Care of Business

Hello hello.

Figured it was about time for another post. I will try to do one a week, depending on how many stories I have that week it could be a little more or less frequent.

Last week was my first week of work. I would say things went pretty well. My boss, Zunelle, is cool and quite funny. She was often stressed or nervous so I felt like I needed to do damage control to lighten her load, but then 2 seconds later she would be perfectly fine. It is so weird, I never know what to expect when I run into her. Starting tomorrow I will be teaching a computer class to about 17 youth (youth is my age over here) for the next month or so. I have one class in the morning and another in the afternoon. The class is actually a tutorial on the computer, I am just there as a bonus feature. Two other classes are also starting next week, sewing and marimbas. I will not be in the rooms during those classes, but I will check up on them every once and awhile. Hopefully I can learn a little marimbas in my spare time. And I might actually learn some real sewing techniques from the sewing instructor too, instead of my current strategy of just getting things together in whatever way works.

My boss also wants to get a secondary school on the property opened by January. I am helping her a little bit, mainly by sitting there and listening to her talk about what needs to be done, and then agreeing with her when she is done. Top notch worker ;) When she was going over my job description with me she said she wanted me to work with her because I was an environmental studies major. I asked her why and she said she wanted me to help start a community garden eventually (which I am completely unqualified to do). One of her follow up questions was, "you do like the earth, don't you?" The simple answer of "yes" is why I currently have the job I do.

In case anyone is interested, here is a short list of the creatures I have seen thus far: a bunny, a dead bat, parrots, a snake and mouse (unfortunately for the mouse, found together), spinghare (maybe, I have no confirmation of this sighting yet), small lizards, peacocks, and I have also met a variety of chickens and cows. Pretty cool, however, maybe not quite the safari people think I am on. There are more birds and insects on that list, but I will spare you the uninteresting details.

So there are many people here who are Afrikaans, which means they are most likely white and of Dutch descent. The easiest way to spot one, though, is by the fashion. Men wear high-waisted shorts that show off a lot of leg, shirts usually tucked in, high socks, and big boots. That is what's in. It is so funny because sometimes it is easy to forget that I am not in America, especially at the grocery stores, and then I look around and usually this funny sight is what puts me back in South Africa. Although they dress really funny, Afrikaaners can dance. Sarah's boss introduced us to some people our age. The boys who were out with us showed us how to dance, and it is crazy. It is super structured, the guy does all the leading, there is spinning and dipping and all of this is done to pop music. I am pretty awful at it and the person I was dancing with told me only to watch his feet...because I kept stepping on his toes, oops. It is fun, but definitely easy to make a fool out of oneself.

More next week,

Kelly

Give me the Creeps

Sarah and I moved into the house earlier this week. We were there for no longer than an hour before we were sure someone was trying to break in. We were watching a movie when all of a sudden we heard someone coughing and then we heard talking right outside of our living room window. No one told us anyone was going to be on the property so naturally we assumed we were about to be robbed. I ran into my room to call the sisters and they said they did not know of anyone who should be there. We waited about 15 minutes to hear back from them and just continued to watch the movie in the meantime because we figured running and hiding wasn't going to do any good. After a series of phone calls, we were informed that there were security people on the premises during the night, so no need to worry. We still here them all the time and it is just a little creepy, but sometimes we see them out the window and they wave to us, which was nice but we decided to start shutting the curtains earlier because it still was a bit odd.

So the building I will be working in is completely haunted. It is also on the same property as my house, so I am not completely convinced the house isn't haunted. We didn't actually start work this week because the nuns decided we needed another week to rest up, but we did get a tour of the building. It used to be a building where the sisters would stay, and I think go to school. Then it was taken over by the military and was basically destroyed. After that, satanic worshipers moved in. Half of the building is renovated and looks really good, the other half is still in rough shape and the reminants of its history are still there. First, when we were walking from the new part to the old part we came into a stairwell and there was a pigeon trapped inbetween stair levels. Then, just chillin' on the window, there was a spider big enough to eat pigeons. Seriously, straight out of a horror movie! After letting the bird out, we continued on our way. It was a long hallway with many rooms on both sides of the hall. All the windows had been broken and a lot of the walls were damaged from people stealing the copper pipes. Then we walked into a room at the end of the hallway, there were old burn marks all over the floor and grafitti saying things like "Satanists were here" written all over the walls. The wind blows straight through the building and makes the eeriest sound. It was super creepy. The upside to all of this was that we went back to the new part and discovered that we have wild peakocks that live on our property. I saw a mom and 3 babies walking in and out of the old rooms. They seemed fine with it which eased my nerves a little bit. Sarah and I did get a little spooked later that night and Sarah was awake until the sun came up the next day. I slept fine, as usual, sleep is sleep and worrying isn't going to get in the way.

Katie (the third volunteer) just landed in Johannesburg a couple hours ago, so I am excited to see her in a couple of days. I will put up pictures as soon as I get a working computer that I can upload them to, which will probably take a couple of weeks at best. I am going out on the town tonight, first night out and about. Sarah and I are getting a little ansy sitting alone in our house, only talking to each other and people who are either significantly older or younger than us during our days.

I have also given up all of my eating restrictions. Within the first day I had to refuse food twice because it was made out of pork. I decided it wasn't worth the hastle and gave in on a piece of sausage. I know many of you have been waiting for this for a long time. No longer will ordering pizza be a headache. I am still not able to buy any pig/non-fish water animal products, but I am able to eat them when they are put in front of me, which is a good first step.

Hope everyone is well!

Kelly