a quick update

Ok, so I know it's been a little bit since this has been updated...but I figure most of the 3 people who read my blog are my facebook friends, so they've been able to keep up to date on all of my latest shenanigans.

This weekend has been amazing! We have met some great new friends in the past two weeks who have taken really great care of us. We spent a lot of time in Soweto checking things out. We hung out at a house cd release party which was a lot of fun! Yeah, I know, I hate house music, but the people we were with made it much more agreeable. Thabang, Kagiso and Thabang took us to a few monuments in Soweto that were associated with a lot of the uprisings against Apartheid. We were able to visit a park with a lot of art from a local prophet. It was kind of crazy...I started sweating profusely in the art cave, so I jetted out of there pretty quickly.

After that, Thabang and Makana took us to their houses so we could meet their families and friends. Overall, things have been great.

Week One in Jo'burg

Things are still going well in Jo’burg. We’ve spent a lot of time at the school (obviously, because we live here, which is really strange) doing observations of different classrooms. The students are amazing! I have yet to see a single behavior problem or lack of participation. When other kids are not participating, the other students call them out. Another impressive experience with students was a meeting we sat in on of student leaders who each run separate community outreach groups. Each of the students was so articulate and serious about making change in their community through different partnership activities.

Back at our apartment things are still as they were before…lots of tea drinking, snuggie wearing, cooking and general foolishness. Sara’s best friend was having her bachelorette party back in the states, so we thought we’d participate remotely. Some of you might be lucky (or unlucky…depending on how you look at it) to see some of the pictures we took for the photo scavenger hunt. They feature tattoos, mullets, missing fingers, 3 karat rings, cracks and stripes; quite a treat.

In other news, we finally rented a car yesterday. Her name is Dolores and she sure is beautiful. We figure it makes us look like less of tourists since as it was said that “no self respecting tourist would ever drive this car.” Mike has been our chauffer so far, but I hope to try out driving soon. They drive on the left side of the road here so it’s a little strange. For now, though, I’m comfortable as a passenger.

There are currently reports about violence in the Townships, but it hasn’t been apparent to us yet. Last night we got lost on our way home from a dinner party and ended up in an industrial area on the outskirts of the Alexandra Township. Although, we probably should have been nervous, everything felt fine to me. A lot of people warned about the general sketchiness of Johannesburg when I was planning to come here, but I feel really safe. I’ve actually felt way more nervous in parts of Mexico. It probably helped that on the first day here, we set off the house alarm on accident and within five minutes a security guard with a bullet proof vest and gun showed up in our kitchen. Since then, I think we’ve set the alarm off about 15 times, so hopefully he doesn’t get too sick of us.

Jo’burg has been challenging so far. We have been taking barely warm sponge baths in a freezing cold bathroom for the past three days, dealing with a testy alarm system which has gone off several times and have been without any transport. The shower situation has been fixed as we found a working shower next to one of the classrooms on the campus and this weekend we had a few people who drove us around which was really generous. The alarm system is still a pain, though. Tonight as Mike (a fellow here with me) and I were running we were talking about how we felt about being here so far and we both agreed that we loved it despite the challenges we’ve had so far. I feel that I will be really helpful to the school and community here and I am excited about everything I will learn and bring home.

Saturday we went with two teachers from the LEAP3 school named Oral and Thabila to visit a hospice in the Alexandra township near the school. We spent some time with the women who have been caring for AIDS and cancer patients. These were a really amazing group of people who have been working at this clinic since March without any stipend and still remain committed to the work. I was touched by the idea that someone who lives in one of the “worst” townships in South Africa would work for free to help others. This really challenged my idea of charity as I have always (shamefully) thought of it as something you do when your own cup has been filled to an adequate level. We only spent a bit of time there, but I really want to go back as much as possible during the next 3 weeks.

On Sunday Stacy, a life orientation teacher at LEAP3, picked us up and took us to Lion Park where we saw some animals. It really wasn’t my thing and I found the whole experience to be a little strange, but it was nice to get out of the house. Afterwards we sat in the park and had a braai (a South African BBQ).

Today was our first day of school at LEAP3. All of the students returned from their winter holiday break today so the day started with a community meeting in the barn. Besides being absolutely freezing, it was a great experience. The entire meeting was led by two grade 11 students who started the meeting by asking students to share important feelings and realizations from their break. Some students had been in Cape Town with the LEAP1 and 2 schools and other had gone to the zoo. When the student running the session felt that the students who were sharing were focusing too much on surface experiences, he encouraged his classmates to share some of the struggles they experienced. This opened up some rich dialogue among the students. The only time I heard any faculty speak was to share their experiences and never to redirect or prompt. This is definitely something I will bring back to my own classroom.

Later, we started our work on planning the upcoming workshops and outreach efforts we will be doing with teachers at LEAP3 and other schools in the Alexandra township.

Oh yeah, and I almost forgot to mention my acquisition of a South African Snuggie. Totally awesome and super warm!

Our New Pad

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_Q7pcRV5JU

7/17: The trip to Jo'Burg

After an extremely late night celebrating our departure from Cape Town we headed to Johannesburg. It was really sad to leave the crew in Cape Town, but knowing we’ll be back in a month makes it a lot easier to deal with.

Instead of staying at a lodge like in Cape Town, we are actually staying on the campus of the school in an apartment that adjoins to one of the classrooms. It’s a really strange set up. I’m not exactly sure what this place was before it was a school. There’s a barn, pool and playing field on the grounds. Inside, it is like a maze. What was once a bar is now a classroom, the garages are the computer labs. There is also an indoor Jacuzzi tub in this glass room. It’s a little strange being here with just the three of us in this huge compound. I’m a little spooked, but I’m sure it will be fine. At least we have a boy with us and don’t have to go investigate any scary noises or kill any big bugs that come visit us.

Tomorrow is Nelson Mandela’s 91st birthday and everyone here does 67 minutes (not sure what the significance of this number is) of community service. We are going to go into the Alexandra Township and spend time at a hospice with the idea that we are going to care for the caregivers. In the morning we’re going to make food to take with us there and then spend some time listening.

The Weekend

my feeble attempt at gumboot dancing

Another great weekend! It rained almost the entire time, but we all still had a blast. On Saturday morning, we spent time at the LEAP school cooking together and performing what we had learned in the classes the former LEAP students put on for us on Friday. I elected to do the African drumming. Others did some singing and dancing. Drumming seemed like the most reasonable choice for me. Cooking together was really cool as well. It’s a little crazy to me having that many people running around a restaurant style kitchen, which totally ruined all of my fantasies about working in a restaurant kitchen.


Saturday night all of us went out to dinner on Long Street, then went out to some bars and clubs. It was a lot of fun, but sad that this was our last Saturday night in Cape Town for a month. Sunday it was still raining all day, but since we had no food we had to walk to the grocery store. We bought so much crap that we had to borrow two shopping carts from the market and walk in the rain back to the house like a bunch of hobos. It was pretty awesome. When we got back I learned to tame my obsession with playing rummy by learning how to play spades. It was made even better by the great Christmas tunes Matt bumped. We figured that since it’s winter here, it might as well be Christmas. Later, we made dinner. There is someone else here who likes to cook who is also going to Jo-Burg with me, so we’ll continue to eat well the whole trip. Unfortunately, my plan to avoid all of the touchy-feely group discussion is not working out as planned. That part always seems to happen after dinner. I’m very in touch now so when I get back if anyone wants to talk about their feelings, I’m down.

Tomorrow is going to be my first day doing student workshops. I’m team teaching two lessons with some of the other fellows: one on how the Fibonacci Sequence occurs in nature and another on Psychology (obviously the other fellow is taking the lead on this one). It’ll be good to get to work; I feel like even though we’ve been super active since we’ve gotten here, it has been like a vacation.

July 7

Being patient sure is hard! I think I did an alright job of faking it today, though. Today, with about 90 students visiting from the Johannesburg campus, we took a boat out to Robben Island. There we were able to see the facilities, which held imprisoned political activists during Apartheid, including the cell of Nelson Mandela. In total, I think that during the first part of the day we spent about 50% of the time waiting. Later, we took the kids up Lion’s Head (our second time up). Instead of climbing all the way up I marinated on a rock for a bit, then made my way back to the buses and waited for about two hours for everyone else to make their way down from the top. This was absolute torture. When the kids started coming down I immediately felt stinging feelings of guild as the smiles and excitement became apparent. I’m such an ass! Another lesson learned. As we started loading up the buses we looked over and saw the full moon rising over the opposite mountain and it was so beautiful. This picture doesn’t really do it justice, but hopefully it gives a good enough idea of what it looked like. Enjoy…