Track Meet

Today I experienced theeee most incredible things in the world. Today was Christian Davids Track Meet that they’ve been preparing for over the last couple of months. It was against two other schools and it was just the greatest experience ever. This is how it all went down…

            We all arrived at the school around 7:45a.m. which meant leaving the house at 6:30 a.m. (it’s a really long walk) and I must say that getting out of bed was a challenge and I almost decided not to go :-/ but boy am I so happy that I went. At about 8:30 three really large buses, you know the charter kind, not the school bus kind cause they don’t have those here in South Africa came and we loaded about 200 kids up. Some dressed in their track uniforms ready to compete, others dressed in their school uniforms ready to be supportive spectators. After a 45 minute bus ride filled with lots of songs being sung in Afrikaans and SOO many SUPER excited kids yelling out their excitement we made it to the university! Yes that’s right our track meet was held at a University in Cape Town which was so exciting for the kids. You see today was their first time doing the events on a real track and not just around the school yard where they had to run 10 laps to equal 1 normal lap! So really if you think about it they were really coming in as the underdogs..

            Upon arriving we got everyone in positiong.. spectators in the stands, athletes on the fields, teachers at the tables ready to record times and volunteers standing on guard ready to conquire the world aka keep the kids in control and 100% ready to smash anyone who was gonna cause any problems. Before the events started the athletes did a wonderful parade around the track, marching with flags and such while music played and got everyone excited. Then they formed a nice 75 in the middle of the field because this year is the 75^th birthday of their school. Then the different events started and that’s when I got all emotional. WHY? Because I’ve never seen kids look so incredibly happy despite their circumstances. This track meet today really was such a huge opportunity for each of them, an opportunity that kids at home take for granted and don’t even really think about as an opportunity. WHY ELSE? Because these kids ran barefoot on a hot track around and around and they didn’t complain a bit!! They were just so excited for the chance to compete. And turns out they were DANG GOOD!! Needless to say we WON by a whole lot!!! Like over 100 points!! Such a success for the kids. A great ego booster and just a really happy ending to such a great opportunity. I am so happy I got to be apart of such a great experience like that!

Slides

Our playground has 1 slide... No more, no less. Which means that one slide becomes caos during play time. Elbows are thrown. Kids are slammed into the ground. Tears are shed. Here's a video! Enjoy!

Week 5

What an eventful week this has been!! In all honestly my work at the crèche has been the least eventful thing that happened this week. It was just all normal and stuff. We learned about our tongues and how they can taste things. The kids got to sample all sorts of fun stuff and all sorts of gross stuff. Some of the things the kids loved to taste were: sugar, cake icing, meabus( some African something that looks like a small, square pretzel but it’s chewy and sweet), coconut, hard candies, and chocolate. The things the kids hated were: corn flour, salt, and vinegar. In fact after we put these things in there mouths they often refused to let us put anything else in like the good stuff. Poor things but at least now they know what their tongues do!! They also colored pictures of their tongues and I attempted to teach them the song “I like to eat”. On Friday we had devotion once again and I’ve decided that might be my favorite day of the week. There’s just something tooooo cute about little ones singing songs about Jesus. I even have my favorite song! It’s called “Father Abraham had many Sons” in all honesty it’s the actions that really get me. Ha ha.

            

This week I also made my way over to Christian David’s Primary School where the teaching program of DTR takes places. Christian David’s school has grades 1-7 but students ranging in age up to 17. When you don’t pass your classes here in South Africa they just hold you back. Literally there is no limit. For example it’s quite common for a 14 year old to be in grade 4. But I figure kudos to them for staying in school and not giving up or running away. The classes are extremely over crowded, like were talking an average of 45 kids in each classroom and their resources are limited, but they make do. Principal Mike runs things really well and outside of school he’s the greatest, but while at school he is stern and intimidates even me. He has to be that way so that the kids won’t try to rule the roost any more than they do. While I was there this week I was tackled by kids, told my name is a boys name and witnessed a stabbing. Mainly the stabbing was the most intense of the previous three, but getting told my name was a boys name was a real blow to the self-esteem. Here’s what happened…. 2 boys around the age of 12 start yelling at each other in Cossa… Then they get REAL upset which leads to punching. Next thing I know Brooke and Molly are right in the middle trying to hold the kids apart.. Then a pencil comes flying out of no where and goes right into the kids back. TWICE. Penetrating at least 1 ½ deep. It was intense. And that was only 1 of the 3 fights that took place that day. Needless to say Principal Mike was not happy. The kids really are great though! Here’s some pictures:

            Remember when I got stung by a Jellyfish and was real upset because I didn’t even get to see it!! Well this week while enjoying a lovely walk on the beach with Kelsey going into Muizenberg I found one! Or should I say HUNDREDS! It really made walking quite difficult! But I got a picture of the devilish things and then I made it my personal responsibility to step on as many as a could. Revenge isn’t nice people. It’s not nice at all.

Also this week (I told you it’s been an eventful week) there was a breakout of influenza among the volunteers. Each night this week there has been at least one person throwing up in the bathroom. This particular strain of the fluzy seems to be lasting approximately 24 hours and then it moves on to the next victim. It’s symptoms include fever, aches and a very upset tummy. LUCKILY I have not been hit by it yet!! And I’m really hoping I can escape it. I’ve been eating Airborne like a crazy person, drinking lots of fluids and have been getting plenty of sleep. Hopefully all of this can keep me in the safe zone! I REFUSE TO GET SICK!! Especially right before my Safari!! Oh did I mention I booked my safari this week?! Well I did and I couldn’t be more excited! I knew that scrubbing that crack house with urine on the walls would pay off! But more on that Safari next week!

Oh check out these darling kids!! How am I ever going to leave them behind..

Week 4

Week 4 is done and over. What did we do this week? We learned about our NOSE!! We talked about how you use your nose to smell and that how things smell effect your taste buds! Overall the kids loved it. We colored pictures of our noses, smelt all sort of things to smell and pasted magazine pictures on paper of things that the kids thought would smell good and bad. It was pretty funny to see what the kids thought of certain things. The boys typically thought that flowers smelt bad, while dirty tennis shoes smelt good where the girl’s were the complete opposite. I guess that shouldn’t really surprise anyone though. I thought that since we would be talking about noses that their would be an increase in the amount of “gold digging” among the kids, but I don’t think they even made that connection! Thank goodness!

My little boys started building guns out of legos this week. Now at home when I teach pre-school I let the kids build guns as long as the only shoot “monsters” and that they don’t shoot there friends. However, I don’t let these boys build guns, or at least I try to stop them because it’s just different here. For starters the first time I saw a little boy with a lego gun he had it held to another little boys head and he was yelling “POW POW POW”. That was when I drew the line and made the rule NO GUNS ALLOWED!! Because in all reality these little kids live in a township of 6,000 people with about 6 different gangs within the township. Gangs that run around and really shot people. So when these little boys are holding lego guns to other little boys heads they are just acting out what they see in real life. So I think I decided I was going to make it my mission to ban guns from the classroom, however I quickly learned that me trying to take the guns away or saying “No guns! No guns!” only results in them laughing at me and then having more kids build guns just to come up to me and say “Look Teachar! Guns!”. Haha dang 2 year olds. But I will not give up!

On Friday when I arrived at the school I found teachers laying down blankets in the main hallway which only means one thing… Assembly! I got pretty excited because our last assembly on Valentines day was such a hoot! I loved it. But on Friday it was for Devotion. I wasn’t really sure how it was gonna go down, but basically they packed all the kid into the hallway and then sang all sorts of Love Jesus songs and then they prayed! Cutest thing in the world. I won’t lie I teared up a bit, because even though these kids have practically nothing they are still soooooo happy and thankful for all that they have!

 This is Brenda above. She's white and she loves me because we have matching hair :-)

 This is just the most perfect video of the guns situation :-)

Meet AyaBonga

Meet AyaBonga.

She is South Africa's Next Top Model. 

haha you gotta watch this video. You will die of laughter. 

Week 3

Ladies and Gents I can’t believe I just finished my 3^rd week and am about to start my 4^th! Ya’ll should probably just prepare to hear something like that at the start of everyone of my weekly posts because time is literally flying. So this week at the crèche we learned all about our EARS!! I must say it was much more successful then the eyes went last week. Less poking if you know what I mean. Haha. We mainly talked about how ears are used for listening and how everyone needed to really practice using there’s. J For our crafts we colored pictures of ears and then every day we practiced wiggling our ears. The kids were so funny trying to do this and when I tried they thought it was just about the funniest thing they’ve ever seen.

            This week I also got to teach all by myself for the first time. I was in no way alone in the room with the kids because that would probably result in the kids attacking me and then I would probably get hog tied by little Wuchen, but I got to run everything by myself. It’s kind of a huge deal because it means that Teacher Beverly is finally starting to trust me! It was exhausting though, I have no idea how Teacher Beverly does it when she is all alone. There is so much to do like teaching, passing out supplies, cutting A LOT of fruit, serving and cleaning up 2 meals, and ensuring that no one kills each other over toy cars. Needless to say we need more volunteers, especially in the childcare program.

            This week on Friday we weren’t able to go the crèche and work because there was a riot happening in the Townships. Basically there is a board of trustee’s in the community who are responsible for lots of money, and some of that money is supposed to trickle down into Capricorn Township as long as the people who live in the township abide by certain rules or laws. I have no idea what these laws are, but I do know that apparently the money has not been trickling down. Therefore the people of the township are really mad and they want there money. So on Friday they had a HUGE RIOT. Okay I didn’t personally see it, because we weren’t allowed anywhere near the township but we were told that it would not be safe for us to be walking anywhere near that general area. It was nice to have a day off, but honestly the whole time I kept thinking about whether or not my little ones were safe and stuff. I’m looking forward to tomorrow to find out and make sure they are okay!

           

  Overall it was a great week at the crèche! I can’t wait for the rest, but please time SLOOOOW DOOOWWWN. It’s unfortunate that the South African government will kick me out after 90 days. That’s all for now. Cheers!

Poukie & Hake

I know that some of you may not believe this post when you read it, but I’d like to start by saying that everything I am saying is 100% truth and that no stretching of the truth has been done here.

            Now that I’ve said that I’d like to start by saying that I officially made it 2 ½ weeks in South Africa without having to eat anything outside of my comfort zone. Now we all know that I’m a very picky eater when it comes to meats. I’ll eat ANY fruit or vegetable out there, but when it comes to meat I’m a strictly chicken, turkey and ground beef kinda girl. Well when I decided to come to South Africa I knew that there would be things I’d have to eat that were outside of my “comfort zone” but after being here 2 ½ weeks and not having to eat anything that I don’t eat at home I thought I was good to go. Well all of that went down hill Wednesday night when I went to scoop up some Stew to be served over rice and I found GIANT BONES in the pot. No joke, giant bones people. Bones that weren’t your typical like straight bones, these were bones that resembled vertebrae. Like the kind one would have in say your neck or back. I instantly was like “WHAT THE HECK ARE BONES DOING IN THIS STEW?!?” and all my fellow volunteers looked at me like I was crazy and told me it was for flavor. Huh. I’m pretty sure we have seasonings that get ya the same result. But I told myself I could do it and scooped up some Stew on rice being very careful not to get any bones in the mix, swallowed all my fears and then literally swallowed the food.

            So tonight (Thursday) I went over to the Hawthorn’s like I do on Thursdays for dinner and Institute. After finishing with the computer upstairs I walk into the kitchen and hear “Come on over to the table we’re having fish for dinner”. Instantly I freeze, because as we all know I don’t eat fish, heck I’m terrified of them when there alive, so there’s no way I’m putting it in my mouth. Let alone the past experiences that I’ve had with seafood. Like crab for example. :-/ So in my mind I quickly think “oooohhh man” And it was in that second that I realized that I would in fact be eating fish for the first time in my life that night. So I did. And I did it like a champ. I did tell Michelle that I had never eaten fish before which completely shocked everyone, but she told me it was Hake (or something like that) and that it didn’t have bones, but if I were to find one I shouldn’t try to swallow it because I would choke. Ha ha. Comforting right? But I dished up a serving and ate it like a champ. It kills me to say this but it wasn’t bad at all. I actually quite enjoyed it!

            Now back to the bones in the stew story for a second. At dinner I brought up the bones in the stew and was told that it’s a quite common dish here in South Africa called Poukie. I brought up how the bones looked like vertebrae and was then informed that it would look like vertebrae because Poukie is meat from the neck of a lamb. And that when you cook the stew you put the entire neck in, and then as it cooks the meat falls off. GROSS. I mean really vertebrae in stew? That’s just too much. But then on Sunday the Hawthorn’s made Poukie for me to try again and I ate it and I actually enjoyed it! What is this world coming too?!? Crazy right.

            Anyways, I definitely have eaten things I never thought I would. And I handled it all like a champ. I feel quite proud of myself. Hence the blog post about it. I’m sure some of you will be quite shocked. That’s all for now!