Table Mountain!

Moi on top of Table Mountain.  Man, it was so amazing to finally be at the top looking down after looking up at it every day since I arrived!  Making it to the top of Table Mountain is just one of those things you can't leave South Africa without doing.  After school on Friday, the other volunteers and I went straight to the place where we were going to start hiking and got to it.  We were accompanied by one older and experienced guide, as well as a cute young French guy who was training to be a guide.  We all stayed overnight part way up the mountain (after about a 2 hour hike) and finished in the morning with another 2 hour (ish) hike.  It wasn't as strenuous as I imagined it would be , but I definitely broke a sweat and got my heart pumping.  The hike down was probably harder than the hike up actually.  Imagine walking down a windy stone staircase with extra tall, uneven steps.  I slipped at one point and about 4 people actually slipped in the same spot, which goes to show that certain sports were just plain tricky.   

You might be wondering why I'm wearing a dress in the picture above after I just said I hiked up the mountain...Long story short, I had my change of clothes ready, but when we came back home to pick up our things after school, we were running late, so I haphazardly grabbed my stuff and decided to just change later.  I didn't really consider the fact that there wouldn't really be another opportunity or place to change before the hike.  Also, I forgot to pack a shirt haha, so that was the end of that!  Anyway, I basically pulled on sweatpants over the dress, wore a sweatshirt on top, and was good to go, but when I took off my top layers, people were so confused!!  Oh well, my lapse in judgement made for some laughs and at least I arrived at the top in style (or at least a moment of style where I briefly took off my other layers to take the picture above haha).  

Anyway, what else was memorable about the hike?  hmm...oh yeah, there was stream water at various points along the trail, often in the form of mini waterfalls, and I used this little polka dot mug to drink every chance I got because the guide said right from the beginning that it was perfectly fine to drink.  The water was of questionable color (yellowish), but tasted fresh and sort of sweet.  Someone said it tasted like nature and I agree.  It felt so cool to drink pure, untreated mountain water.  I felt like I was in the movie Holes or something.  Something else that I will probably not forget any time soon was the trail mix that one of the guys packed for the hike- M&Ms, peanuts, and raisins.  He said that everything tastes amazing after you spend a few hours hiking and it is a 100% true phenomenon haha, but really, it was delicious.  All around, it was a beautiful start to the weekend!!  

My weekend...

Alright, before I start on the new stuff, I think I'll rewind to one blogworthy event that didn't make it into past posts.  This past week, one of the girls who I tutored at the Masi Library gave me a typed out thank you note:  "Hi Cindy, I want to thank you for being a great teacher, friend and a sister.  I won't forget your smile, love, and care and I wish my teacher would explain things the way you do [< that was my favorite line of the whole thing].  I was very lucky to meet a wonderful person like you, I will miss you."  CUTE.  Needless to say, that note made my day.

Anyway, on to Friday night.  We all went to this market in Muizenberg that I don't know the name of, so I'm just gonna call it Muizenberg Market.  Muizenberg's claim to fame is that it is one of the main surfing destinations around Cape Town, but we went there at night so no surfing.  Anyway, the market is the place to be if you are hungry.  So many foods to choose from.  I got three samosas (potato & butternut, chicken, and bacon & spinach) for the equivalent of like a dollar and 50 cents, a vegetable spring roll, a chicken risotto (< the most delicious meal ever, one of those ones where when you bring it back to the table, everyone all of a sudden looks 10x hungrier and goes: what did YOU get?!), and the coup de gras: a waffle with strawberry icecream, banana, chocolate, and whipped cream.  YES.

After that, all of the volunteers went to this place called the Melting Pot to listen to some blues kind of music.  The girl who opened for the night was sooo talented.  Beautiful voice.  Played both acoustic and electric guitar.  The whole atmosphere of the place was really relaxed.  The tables were lit with candles stuffed into bottles, with the wax dripping all down the sides and you could see the shadows of the instruments flickering on the ceiling.  Cool.  Anyway, someone else that met us at the Melting Pot to hang out was a British volunteer (my age) who was staying the night at my host family's house.  Long story short:  She meant to stay for about a week, but plans changed and she could only stay for a night.  We were basically friends for a span of 12 hours, but it was action-packed because not only did we jam to music at the Melting Pot, she, my host family, and I went to this place called Olympia Cafe for breakfast the next morning.  It was in Kalk Bay (from a previous blog).  I had a divine mushroom, mozzarella, avo, and tomato omelette.  I don't think I'd ever had an avocado (besides in guacamole) before coming to S.A.  and I realize that I have really been missing out!  Also, since my host family cooks so much with mushrooms, I am now a fan of those as well, whereas before I came here, I would just avoid them.  Happy I'm broadening my food horizons haha.  

After the cafe, I got dropped off at the train station and rode in to Cape Town on the train with some friends.  We went to a few markets (sort of the main one: Greenmarket Square, which is outdoors and the African Women's Market, which is inside) with the goal of doing some serious shopping for people back home. The cool thing about these markets is that you can bargain for prices.  I am terrible at it and get swindled more often than not, but sometimes I'll get a buck or two off.  There are a number of strategies shopkeepers will use to try to get you to buy their stuff and spend your money, including guilt trips, bullying, or making you laugh.  Example:  I asked one woman for 10 bracelets for 70 rand.  She raised her eyebrows and said there is no way they are worth that little, so she went up to 85 rand.  I hesitated.  She said please (guilt trip technique).  I hesitated again.  She got mad and said firmly just gimme 85 rand (bullying technique).  I hesitated some more, so she said 80 in the same pleading sort of voice as she did when she said please (back to the guilt trip technique).  I said ok.  I think my indecisiveness is almost an asset because I can sometimes wear the shopkeepers down just by taking so long to respond to the prices they give me.  I think they assume they've gone too high and go lower just to get me to say something haha.  My host family told me that they totally take advantage of Americans, but if they hear in your accent that you are South African, they aren't nearly as pushy because they know that you know their game.  

Anyway, last but not least, today I went wine tasting with my host mom at a gorgeous vineyard called Constantia.  We were not serious about it at all and had a grand old time sticking out our pinkies, holding the stems of our glasses, pursing our lips, laughing about how unsophisticated we are, etc. etc.  All I know is that I much prefer white wine to red.  But anyway, I'd better get to bed- back to school tomorrow!    

Kleinberg

For the last three days, I've been getting used to life at Kleinberg and trying to find out how I can be of use.  At first, I didn't feel like I was helping at all, but lately, I've been doing little things make the day go more smoothly, like setting up the room at the beginning of class, checking off their classwork, etc. etc.  Also, I just started doing some small group work with the kids who are taking a little longer to grasp the things we are learning.  There is one girl who is always fidgeting around in her chair and chewing on her pencil and looking very distracted, but I took her to the back of the room today and helped her one-on-one with adding and she did really well.  It really makes me wish the class sizes were smaller and each kid could get more attention...but the teachers do really well with the challenge and I'm glad to help out.  Tomorrow, we are going to start regularly working one-on-one on reading with 4th and 5th graders with a program called Help2Read.  I've spent most of these past few days in the same 1st grade class I mentioned in my last blog.  I'm starting to feel more and more comfortable in this particular class, so I think it is where I will stay.  I did visit a 2nd grade class yesterday, but there is something about this 1st grade class that makes me want to stay, so I'll go with my gut.  The kids are adorable.  One of them told me I was a nice teacher, which was cute.  Another one of them always takes the opportunity in those free moments when we are switching between activities or the teacher is quickly marking down the attendance to ask me questions.  This morning, I knelt down to help him with his handwriting and right when I was about to get up he asked me what grade I was in.  He just chooses the most random moments haha.  Also, you can barely walk around the school without getting hugs from half the kids you see.  Bottom line- these kids are very affectionate.  Don't get me wrong- it can be exhausting trying to get certain kids to concentrate when they just don't want to, but the cute moments have the uncanny ability to restore your patience and happiness in an instant.  <3
I suppose I could write a bit more about the logistics of my day:  I wake up at around 6:30 every morning and get picked up at 7:30.  A few other people get picked up and we arrive at school around 7:50.  That usually leaves us with about 5 minutes or so to chill in the staffroom before heading to the classrooms.  During the day, we have two 20 minute breaks- one at 10 and one at 12:20.  All of the teachers share their food with each other and with us, so everyone just samples everyone else's food.  I love that.  As for end time, I was surprised to find out that Grades 1 and 2 get out at 1:15 and Grade 3 and up get out at 2:15, rather than everyone at the same time.  Anyway, that means that I'm one of the early ones.  :)

Ocean View/ Mandela Day

Alright, so now, the Worldteach program has moved on to its second phase, which is working at actual schools in a town called Ocean View.  One of the other volunteer's host families hosted a braai (BBQ) on Saturday night at their house in Ocean View, so we sort of kicked off the transition then.  When you are invited to a braai, the custom is to basically bring the equivalent of what you're going to eat and drink (or more).  Everyone ends up sharing everything, so its basically a potluck every time.  I brought some juice, chicken, and ostrich burgers :).  Anyway, now that was a party.  Karaoke (99% Whitney Houston hahaha), dancing, talking, eating, drinking, being merry, etc. etc.  His host family was very welcoming and it wasn't hard for all of us (volunteers, host family, extended family, family friends) to just have fun together.

FYI, a defining feature of Ocean View is that it is almost entirely a "coloured" community.  Coloured doesn't have the same connotation here as it does in America.  It doesn't apply to anyone who is not white, like it does in the states.  It is basically the label for anyone who isn't entirely black or entirely white.  You could be a mix of both.  You could be Indian.  It doesn't make much sense- it's a product of apartheid.  If you are coloured, chances are you speak Afrikaans.  Therefore, coloured people tend to have cool accents- complete with rolling r's and a slight variation in most vowel sounds (the sound aye is now oye e.g. eight is pronounced more like oyt).  I got to hear the accent all day long today because like I said, we've now moved on to working at schools in Ocean View.  I'm at Kleinberg Primary (in Afrikaans: Klein= small, berg=mountain), where I'll be for the next month.  It was my first day and it  also coincidentally happened to be Mandela Day.  The school got together for an assembly in the courtyard right at the start of the day and we sang the National Anthem (well they did- I don't know it!)  and then Happy Birthday to Nelson Mandela, which was cute.  It was quite a sight to see all of the students together in the courtyard.  First of all, there are about 1000 students, about 40 to a class (I spent the day in a 1st grade class with 39 students!), which is chaotic, but there aren't enough funds to hire additional teachers.  Something else I noticed was that there was not one white child in that crowd!  Odd, to see, but I know that apartheid really wasn't that long ago and the racial makeup of many communities and schools will reflect that to some degree.

For anyone who doesn't know, Mandela day is Nelson Mandela's birthday and the tradition is for everyone to do 67 minutes of service to the community as a gesture of respect for Mandela's 67 years of fighting for a better South Africa/ world.  (When I got home from school, I spent my 67 minutes baking cupcakes with my youngest host sister for the Worldteach program directors, the principal and teachers at Kleinberg, and some of the people on our street.)  

Catching up...

I felt like I hadn't blogged in a long time so I thought I'd fit one in tonight.  I helped run two workshops this week where we had the students sign up for email addresses because most of them don't have one.  Some of them gave me their emails today to keep in touch (because today was our last day at the Masi Library), which made me feel like I'd done my job in getting them excited about actually using their emails.  I think it was a useful workshop because once you get into college, you'd better know how to sign in, sign out, send an email, etc. because they really flood you with messages once you get into college!  Anyway, I hope they got something out of it.  The students said they mainly use computers about once a week or so for researching information for school assignments.  It makes me kind of ashamed that I'm on the computer and Facebook so much!!  Anyways, the weather has been absolutely gorgeous the past few days- like those comfortably warm (not hot) stretches you get in the summertime back home.  and it's winter here!  I watched the sunset on the beach today with waves crashing and people surfing.  So cool.  The Masi kids (I keep calling them kids, but I just want to clarify now that they are high school students) showed us around the township today.  Most of the time, we stick close to the library and don't go walking around, so it was great to get out on such a beautiful day.  Some of the students showed us their homes- made of wooden planks and sheet metal, but none of us really paid attention to that.  We were just happy to be trusted enough to be invited inside and shown around/ introduced to families.  Other than that, we were shown this place with no name, simply referred to as "the Chinese shop,"  which is like a clothing store run by Chinese people in the middle of this South African township.  Definitely the only Asian person I've seen in weeks.  We also walked by some shibeens (basically like township bars), other shops, and the one internet cafe in town.  For those of you who don't know, an internet cafe is a place that charges hourly for the use of their computers.  It wasn't open for business at the time we walked in because the electricity was down.  Rolling blackouts happen fairly regularly in South Africa (to conserve energy).  Anyway, it was a really informative hour that we spend wandering around.  We also had a drumming workshop this afternoon.  The people who ran the workshop barely said a word the whole time- just sort of demonstrated a beat and next thing you knew the entire room was going.  Kind of impossible not to smile haha.  The Masi kids are ridiculously energetic- yelling and clapping and making all kinds of noise that somehow just blended right in with the music.  Also, I should mention that their rhythm is flipping impeccable.  I'm so jealous.  It was definitely another one of those times where I thought wow, there's no doubt about it- I AM in Africa.  Anyway, we also did awards and I've never seen people cheer so enthusiastically for every single person who got their certificate.  It was just a happy day.  I took pictures with a bunch of people and this is one of me and a girl named Amanda who was in my mentoring group.  (Each Worldteach volunteer was put with 5 or 6 mentees.)  Amanda, by the way, is a full on traditional Xhosa name.  The Masi kids were amazed that it was also a completely common name in America.

Porter's Pigs/ Robben Island

Ok, I'm gonna try to make this a quick one although I'm sure it will be a novel like always.  So yeah, on Saturday morning, the Waltons took me to this farmer's market type place called Porter's Pigs.  It was one of my favorite things that I've done so far.  There were booths with all different types of foods to sample.  I sampled: fudge, honey (above), lemon curd, dried fruit, and biltong (the South African version of beef jerky, with your choice of beef or springbok, which is a type of antelope).  Great place.  Also, I had pancakes for breakfast and just to clarify, here, a pancakes are long, thin, and rolled up, like crepes.  Mine had sugar, cinnamon, and lemon juice inside.  Delicious.  Here, the pancakes we think of are called flapjacks or crumpets.  Hilarious.  It just never ends haha.

Yeah, so it was 70 degrees that morning we went to Porter's Pigs.  Ok, let's just stop for a moment and reflect...It is WINTER here.  Hahahaha.  Beautiful.  fun fact: 70 degrees Fahrenheit is 21 degrees Celsius.  :)  

Anyways, so today I went to Robben Island, which is the location one of the many prisons Nelson Mandela was incarcerated in.  (He was at this one the longest- for 18 years.)  We took a ferry out to it and one non-history related fact that I learned was that people actually live on the island today- not many, but a hundred or two, mostly people who do tours and everything.  The island has its own primary school, church, supermarket, health clinic- all for the tiny community that lives there.  Once the kids graduate from primary school, they take the ferry to the mainland and back every day for high school and then university.  Anyway, yes we saw Mandela's cell.  We learned that him and the other political leaders who were imprisoned there basically planned the new democratic South Africa during meals and during their brief breaks from working at the lime quarries morning til night.  Whoa. 

Look at this thing...

So, my host family and I were watching American Idol when all of a sudden the topic of spiders came up and they asked me what size spiders typically are in America.  I told them they really are really aren't that big, so they informed me that they'd seen one in their kitchen this morning- a 'wolf spider'- and joked that I should catch it for them.  So we went upstairs.  I was the last one there and they were all gathered around the corner of the kitchen looking up near the ceiling.  I couldn't really see it because my view was blocked by the top of the cabinets.  My anticipation was pretty high because everyone else was flipping out, so I just inched over little by little and when I finally saw the thing, there was a definite increase in heart rate haha- it was BIG.  Oh well, I can't say that I'm surprised that African spiders are much more intense than American ones.  P.S.  We ate ostrich again for dinner tonight.  It is a regular dish here haha.  

One more thing...

Oops, I forget to say: Happy Fourth of July!  Yesterday, despite that it wasn't actually the 4th yet, we celebrated with a braai (that's what they called BBQs around here).  It was absolutely delicious.  I also had a great time partaking in off-key renditions of almost every America song you could think of.  :)

My latest escapades...

Wow I haven't written a blog in a while!  I thought I would give an update on what I've been up to lately.  On Friday night, I went to some bar to listen to the program director's wife's brother play jazz.  I ended up playing a couple games of pool with some locals, which I was nervous about at first since I'm terrible at pool, but I really enjoyed myself.  I talked to some guy that looked exactly like Spencer Pratt from the Hills and another who said he was in some special forces section of the South African Navy (or so he claimed haha).  My friend and I beat the navy guy and some 15-year old kid, then lost to Spencer and his father.  Starting that night, I spent the whole weekend with four or five volunteers who are staying in their own house in Kommetjie (which is pronounced Kommie-kee by the way, apparently the tj makes a k sound- go figure! haha).  The house is like a palace.  Plus, it was nice to hang out for a few days with the other volunteers that I don't see as much.  On Saturday morning, we hiked up to the top of Slangkop Mountain and stayed up there for a little while just enjoying the view and a rare few minutes of sunshine that came along as sat and rested after our hike.  We just walked, but it was so steep that it didn't take long for me to break a sweat.  I picked the wild flower in the picture on the walk back.  Oh and on Sunday, I went out on a sailboat!  So awesome.  Other than that, our first day of work was today!  We are working in the Masiphumelele Library with this program called Ikumva Youth.  It is so much like the Upward Bound program.  Basically, each of the volunteers is running one or two workshops over the next two weeks on all kinds of topics.  Today, I helped run a study skills workshop.  (Next week, I'm doing a workshop on blogging.)  The study skills one went really well.  The other volunteers that worked on it with me were really on top of their game, so it went pretty smoothly.  One piece of feedback that we received though was to speak louder, more slowly and more clearly.  There were 60 students in the workshop in a large room and I now know that I need to work on projecting my voice because wow, is it hard to get the attention of 60 people when you take a break or do an activity and then go to start talking again.  Also, English is these students' second language and I'm still getting used to really enunciating and slowing down.  In our downtime, I made some smalltalk with a few of the students and once and for all asked them how to pronounce the name of their language (Xhosa).  I made them laugh with my first few tries, but I finally asked them to demonstrate in such a way that it clicked (no pun intended) and I finally got it right haha.  Anyway, something else that happened today was that I  met my mentee (yay!).  Each Worldteach volunteers gets paired with a Grade 12 student to guide them through applying for university, studying for classes, figuring out what they want for a career, working on resumes, etc. or just to talk about life.  I'm excited.  :)