Week 2 :)

I’m happy to report that Grahamstown, South Africa has kept me busy this week!  Now that I’ve finished week 2 of school, I have much more responsibilities in the classroom.  Mrs. Arnold said this week I should anticipate teaching 75% by the end of Friday!  

I started ‘assistant coaching’ hockey in grade one.  It started this week and I am absolutely dreadful!  I feel like I’m losing respect from the girls when I do hockey because I’m not confident in it.  I’ll be working this week on more research for it.

Stef and I have been making loads of friends and learning more about Grahamstown every day!  We’ve been to a few places that are so rich with culture!  Everything here is so old and the structures have integrity. This one spot is an old house that you enter from an ally (with a green light above the door to tell people it’s a restaurant) that has two fire pits and an outside and inside bar as well. The outside part has trees growing all around and they’re massive It’s really something!! The local university kids go there, so we’ve been able to meet loads of people and learn more and more.

I also went to Bathurst and Port Alfred this weekend.  Friday I stuck my feet in the Indian Ocean in Port Alfred.  The sand went on for miles!  On Saturday we went to Port Alfred again, but we stopped in this little town Bathurst beforehand.  It’s a town of about 200 people and it’s mostly white, elderly hippies. We stopped for a bite, and past the restaurant there was a macadamia nut tree. Stef and I collected some and once they split we can crack them open. We walked up to this old Baptist church with a graveyard in the back.  The oldest grave died in 1827! The eerie thing about all of the houses here is that because they’re so old, there has to be ghosts.  But like my mom always says, ‘the dead can’t hurt you; only the living.’ I’m not sure about all the houses, but I definitely felt some crazy energy in the graveyard!

When we were in Port Alfred we decided to have a braai on the beach.  A braai is similar to a BBQ.  We didn’t prepare well for it, and ended up at the bottom of a massive sand dune with all this meat and wood, but nothing to cook it on!  We ended up making marinated chicken, boerewor (sausage), and steak on a rock with some fire!  It was absolutely hectic (their term for crazy)! I didn’t get sick and we ended up having a great time leaving with full bellies. The walk up and down the dunes was quite entertaining.  I was very exhausted by the end of it, however.

We’re heading to Cape Town on Saturday this holiday weekend.  Friday is Freedom Day, and we don’t have school until Wednesday!

I’ll talk with you all just now.

(that means I’ll talk to you later…different, right?)

Oh! Happy Earth Day!