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.