Check-In

Hey guys! Sorry I haven’t written in a while. We’ve been having terrible storms and our service has not been dependable! Haha! We have been having these really intense rain/thunder/lightning storms; it’s been pretty cool actually. This place is a nature photographer’s dream! Can’t wait until we get our package with our camera charger so that we can actually take photos! We have been spending a lot of time chasing leaks in our house and placing pots and pans strategically! We had over 20 when we first moved in (including one of each of our heads and one at my feet over the bed!) Our host mom Mrs. Makola paid the neighbor boy (her nephew) to repair them with material and tar, so we were hoping to be done with it. However, unfortunately that’s not the case! We now only have 8 leaks in the roof (only one over the bed now instead of 3.) We will speak with Mrs. Makola to see if there is anything we can do. However at this point it’s not really a big problem, we know where to put the pans when it starts to rain and it’s just a matter of getting up a few times throughout the night to make sure they are catching all the water. Leaves us with some sleepless nights however with a tin roof, we don’t get much sleep when it’s raining anyway. We have been settling in nicely at our schools and our house. Everything is going very smoothly. We are looking forward to our vacation that we have planned in Dec. Starting on Nov. 24 we have IST (In-Service Training) where we will go back to Polokwane and meet up with our cohort! (I’m excited to my girl group!) We’ll stay there until December 4^th. Between the 24^th and the 28^th we will have a co-worker from our school with us so that should be fun! After IST we are coming back home for a few weeks. On the 19^th we’ll be heading back to Magongoa (where we lived for PST) to see our Uncle get married. It’s a big family function and we/they are really excited that we are going! It should be really fun! We even get new traditional outfits! (This time she said they would be nice haha! As opposed to the ones they had to give us for the family function.)  We’re really excited about it! Then after Magongoa we are heading to the Drakensburg Mountains with Marie (my bff) and her boyfriend (who’s visiting from Cali; Aaron) where we will start out 60K hike through the mountains. We are doing something called “slack packing.” For those of you that don’t know, it just means we will be staying in a nice cabin instead of camping. So the trail leads us from cabin to cabin. We’re really looking forward to it! After the backpacking trip we’ll head to a really nice resort right on the beach outside of Durban. We definitely had to splurge when it came to this hotel but we’ve been saving and are able to pay for all of it without touching our money from home. :D We’ll spend new year’s eve/day there with Marie and Aaron.  After that we’ll separate from Marie and Aaron and Eric and I will head to one of our friends’ houses outside of Durban. We call her Aunty. She works for the Peace Corps and we bonded a lot during training. She is from Kwazulu-Natal and her grandmother does a lot of traditional beading work. She has invited me to come and visit to learn the tricks of the trade! I’m so beyond excited about this! It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity for me! I’m so thrilled! To learn from a “gogo” as we call them, the traditional beading of Kwazulu (which for those of you not in the beading world, is WORLD famous and absolutely amazing!) It should be a pretty amazing trip! As for now we are busy at our schools working on our projects. I have been accepted to the Mother Bear projects which means that over 300 crocheted/knitted teddy bears are on their way to my post box right now so that I can give them to the learners at my school (only Kindergarten, Grade 1 and Grade 2 qualify for the program) so I’m pretty excited about that! The kids here don’t have toys to play with and usually end up just playing with tin cans that they turn into cars with wires. This is great! But I’m excited to give them their first stuffed animals! It will really make an impact on them! I’m currently in the process of writing my applications to Darien Book Aid and Biblionef which are both programs that provide reading materials for the schools free of charge. I look forward to finishing the organization of the library so that I can submit my applications. Overall everything is going fantastic! We absolutely love it here and couldn’t ask for a better placement! 

The bugs grow pretty big here!

I'm totally in love with these jacuranda trees! they are everywhere!

Lesson planning!

More Jacuranda

This is how we heat our water (for boiling/drinking and bathing)

Some jewelry I made last weekend :D

Got our Hammock up and swinging! 

Trying to catch some rain!

Library fun!

A picture of Marie and I from a few months ago.