Settling-In

So this week has been a very nice and relaxing week. We had the week off from school (don’t ask me why because I have no idea) haha! This is our first real break since being here and it was well needed and well used. On Monday we were able to get our electrical system a little more setup. We purchased another extension cord so that we could have electricity in the bedroom as well. We also reinstalled the light bulb in the bedroom (using electrical tape instead of duct tape like Moses did) so that our light in the bedroom was actually useable (before it was flickering constantly.) We now have our cell phones and everything set up in the bedroom which is great! On Tuesday I went to another village called Ga-Nchabaleng (Ha-n-cha-bah-lang) where our friends Arianna and Stacy live. Stacy had previously purchased a Wi-Fi modem for her computer during training but came to find out that she had no service in her village from that provider (even though it’s only an hour away from us.) She posted that she was wanting to sell it and we took advantage (since it was “used” we saved over $100.) I immediately got on a taxi and headed her way. It took me 4 taxi transfers and about 2 hours but I got there! And was able to purchase it from her and hang out in her village for a few hours. Everyone keeps asking me what I mean by “taxi”, a taxi here is kind of like a 15 passenger van (they are all white with the SA flag going down the sides) and they are everywhere. It’s how people get from anywhere to anywhere else (however Afrikaners do NOT use them.) So basically every time we use them everyone is shocked to see us using them and wants to know everything about us. It’s a great opportunity to get our faces out there and obviously get where we want to go. We need to use a taxi to go anywhere as we are quite secluded and without any other form of transportation. It’s quite cheap and very convenient. We can just go out onto the main road and hail one (stick pointer finger up in the air.) Anyway back to our week. On Wednesday we completely re-arranged our house. We finally figured out how we (and by we I mean I haha) wanted to set up the house. We re-arranged the fridge and tables, and organized everything. It has made our “living room/kitchen” a space that is way more open and a lot more useable. Thursday I was able to go and meet up with some friends in a neighboring shopping town called Groblersdal. It isn’t our shopping town obviously but it has a store called “Game” that had a few things we wanted and are unable to buy in our shopping town (because it’s so small.) Overall it took me about 3 hours (Eric stayed home to get our external hard drive which was being dropped off by PC.) I took a taxi to Jane Furse (our shopping town) and then got immediately into a taxi headed for Groblersdal, however I had to wait over an hour at the Taxi ring for it to fill. Then finally got to Groblersdal and ate some delicious pizza with friends. I met up with Alex, Kat, Cate and Nicole. I was able to purchase the few things we needed from Game (a nice fan, and a hot glue gun.) Which I was very happy about, then I headed back to Mashegoane again. It was a long day with lots of waiting and awkward taxi moments but well worth it when I plugged in the fan for the first time! (for those of you who know me well, know how I feel about fans haha.) On Friday we both went to town (Jane Furse) to stock up on groceries for the next few weeks. We don’t intend on going to town except for once or maybe twice a month, now that we are set up in the house and don’t need household items. We also were able to purchase a couple of camping chairs which have made all the difference in our lives! We now have comfortable chairs to read it outside which is great since that’s pretty much all we do in our free time! (besides explore.) Overall our house is all set-up and we are settled in officially, which is obviously a good feeling.  Our family has been gone at the hospital for a few days since the baby has a cold so we’ve been alone most of the week (which is fine by us) however they weren’t home to realize that we were running out of electricity (here you load it almost like a pay as you go phone, you load money on a card and then plug it into the electrical box.) So we ran out of electricity and were without from Friday afternoon until Sunday morning. Luckily we’re a WoHeLo and an Eagle Scout so we are well prepared for a lack of electricity. We have a backup stove (run by gel fuel) and frozen water bottles to keep everything cold and frozen.  Yesterday (Saturday) our friend and closest volunteer Laura came over for a visit. Her and her host brother were in the area and dropped by to say hello! Turns out her host brother owns some businesses in our town and is near us all the time so on their way to a wedding they stopped in for a visit! It was nice to see her and show her our house. She is living in a neighboring village about a 25 minute run from our house. (We’ve run to each other’s houses before) but it was nice for her to actually come in and see everything!  Then today (Sunday) we haven’t done much. Haha it’s mostly a reading/blog type day! We go back to work tomorrow and are excited to get back to a good routine.  Our goal for the day is to install the mosquito netting on all the windows with our new hot glue gun. This will make it a lot nicer for us since we’ll be able to open our windows! We’re being extra careful with the bug situation as we’ve been hearing a lot of horror stories from fellow PCV’s who were not so careful (ie: a few scorpion stings and humongous spider interactions haha)