Pretty large chunk of the trip!!

Hello everyone!

I’m sorry that I haven’t blogged in awhile, I have been super busy and a little exhausted when I have time to blog. But the past few weeks here have been very eventful. In my last blog I wrote about wanting to work in the preschool in Kurland. I haven’t been doing that, but I have been working in a daycare called Come to Learn Daycare, which is like the preschool, but less teachers, fewer kids, and it is not registered by the government. It is actually run by this woman named Patricia, and she runs it out of her house. It is a pretty amazing place. Although the discipline and other things are very different from in the U.S., the kids there are learning so much, including three different languages, English, Afrikaans, and Xhosa. So for the past three weeks, Monday through Friday, I have been helping in the daycare from about 8am-2pm. The kids have been adorable, but very naughty at times as well. But overall, I had a really good experience at the daycare, and I will really miss the kids.

At the end of the first week at the daycare, we had a long weekend and went to a town called Addo, which is about 2 hours away, to go on a safari! We stayed at this place called Chrislin Bed and Breakfast, which was super nice and fancy. We stayed in these luxurious mud huts which were really awesome, and our breakfasts and dinners were both delicious and looked beautiful. But the Friday that we got to Addo, we went to two different places. The first was a place where we got to look at jaguars, pet a cheetah, and play with lion cubs!!! It was really fun. Then we went to a place that had all kinds of things, from snakes (which some people held), other reptiles, porcupines, owls, meerkats (which I got to hold!!), and other things. Then on Saturday, we went on a driving safari in Addo Elephant National Park, and we saw elephants, zebras, warthogs, meerkats, buffalo, kudu, and other things that I don’t remember the names of. But basically it was awesome!! On Sunday, we went on a hike within the national park, but where there weren’t any animals. It was a good, easy hike and then we spent a few hours at a really nice river. It was a nice relaxing day. Then on Sunday we went on a river safari, which was basically canoeing down a river! It was super fun! The river was apparently the fastest flowing river in Africa, but it wasn’t very fast where we were (thankfully). But I think that was one of the most fun things on the trip so far.

On the rest of the weekends, we have just been going to different places on Saturdays and hiking on Sundays. Although I did actually go zip lining about a week ago, which was really fun! We went zip lining at the Tsitsikamma Falls, so it was beautiful, and it was really fun as well. And a little calmer than bungee jumping! And yesterday we went to a rugby game in Kurland and supported the Crags Jaguars, which was really fun! But also a little confusing because I know nothing about rugby.

Tonight is our last night at Rocky Road, so this weekend we’ve been preparing to leave and packing. It has been bittersweet for me, as I am really excited to come home and see everyone, but this trip has gone by really fast and a part of me isn’t quite ready to leave. But tomorrow morning we’re leaving for Cape Town, where we will be until Friday. We will be staying at another hostel, and we will be going to museums, doing touristy things, and going clubbing at night! I am really excited. Then I’m on my way back home, going on two 10-hour flights. I’m not so excited for that part, but very excited for when I arrive! I will probably blog again when I get back home to tell everyone about my last week! Until then, I hope everyone’s summers are going great!

Week 2 1/2!!

This past week since I wrote my first blog has been very eventful. What Rocky Road has its group of volunteers do for the first week or so is to work on refurbishing houses, so that’s what we have been doing. We have been working on two houses that are connected, kind of like a duplex. They were in pretty bad shape before we started, with the walls and the flooring. So what we did Monday through Friday of last week, and yesterday and today, has been to chip loose paint off the walls on the outside and inside, sand down the walls, clean the walls (which is a difficult task because the walls are pretty dirty, as well as greasy from cooking), putty spots that need to be filled in, paint cement on the ceilings so they don’t leak, put primer on the walls and the ceiling, paint the walls, paint the window frames, and finally, put in flooring. There are three rooms in each house, so this has been no easy task. As of right now, the houses are still not done, but they are almost there! They look so awesome and a lot brighter inside with our cream and yellow paints, and the outside is red/brown and looks very clean and sophisticated. It should just be a day or two more that we will need to be working on the houses. Working on the houses has been a really cool thing to do because our group has had the chance to all work together and bond, we’ve gotten to know the workers Glenrick and Daniel, and we’ve really brightened up people’s lives. My favorite part about the houses has been the painting because painting is just fun in general, and you can really see the result of your work when you are done.

            While we are only working on the houses from about 9:30-4 each weekday, in the evenings we’ve had the time to relax, journal, read, and spend time together. Every night I am amazed by the deliciousness of the dinner that is made for us, and we are told that nothing will be repeated for 6 weeks! By the time we are done with dinner, which is usually about 8:30, most of us are pretty tired and usually stay up for about an hour more and then go to bed. We’re not used to such early nights but we’ve been working hard!

            As some of you know, last Wednesday was my 21^st birthday! It was pretty stormy that day, with pouring rain and wind (its winter here), so about half of us didn’t need to go into work because there was only so much we could do on the inside. So I stayed behind with a group of people and we just played cards and hung out until the other group got back! Then I was told I needed to start celebrating so quite a few people had a shot with me pretty early, and the fun started there. It was both my 21^st and the 4^th of July, so things got a little crazy and there was a lot of dancing. The guys at Rocky Road made us homemade burgers and fries in honor of the 4^th, which were absolutely amazing! And they even made an apple pie for my birthday! Although it was difficult not being home for my birthday, everyone here made it really great. :)

            Every Saturday we will have a free day to do what we want. So all of us decided to go into Plettenberg Bay, which is a small city near Kurland where lots of people from Kurland go to work. They say that it is a big place to retire in South Africa, and that was clear as it was along a beautiful coastline and it was filled with expensive houses and condos. We started out by going to a pie place that was recommended, which sells savory pies, and they were freaking delicious. We all wanted more when we were done! We then walked down Main Street and did a bit of shopping, then got some lunch, and then went down to the beach and hung out there for awhile. When we got home everyone was exhausted so people took naps and I read for a long time, and took some much needed alone time. Then on Sunday we went on another hike! But this was no ordinary hike. We went back to Plett to do it, and it was at the Robberg Nature Reserve. We were right on the coastline in the mountains, so we had a spectacular view of the coastline the whole entire time. The hike lasted about 4 hours, so it was really tiring, but it was definitely worth it. In the middle of it, we stopped to eat lunch on huge rocks that were right on the water with huge waves going past us. Then after lunch we walked/climbed on some pretty scary, sometimes slippery and wet, rocks and our confidence was definitely tested. As much as it was scary though, I felt really awesome for doing it and it was totally worth it as we were right up close and personal with beautiful views of the ocean.

            As I have said, we have probably a couple more days working on the house. Right now, my professor and guys from Rocky Road are working to match us up with our NGOs that we will be working with. We are also all trying to figure out our research questions for our research papers at the end of the class. I am hoping to work at the preschool in Kurland and find out a bit about the lives of the children who live there. I would like to research how to help children who grow up in an impoverished community to strive to do better with their lives, and to strive to break the cycle of poverty and violence. I am so excited to start working in my NGO and to hopefully get to know the children in the preschool, if I am placed there!

            For the past few days, I have been feeling pretty homesick. I am torn between loving it here and not wanting to leave, and hoping it will go fast so I can see everyone back at home. I think we are all still getting used to the routine here, and once we get into that, it will be easier to acknowledge that we’ll be here for awhile longer. I am sure that once I start my research, it will be hard to take myself away from it though! I’ll try to blog again soon, probably in about a week or so. Until then, I miss you all at home and I hope summer is going well! :)

Week one!!

So this is my first time blogging since I left, so I am going to put in a nutshell everything that I have done so far…

I left on Sunday afternoon from the Seatac Airport, along with three other girls from my class. The plane ride was about 10 hours, which is the longest I’ve been on a plane in my life. We all had a 12+ hour layover in Frankfurt, Germany, so we decided to go there to explore for the day. We got there around 8:30 in the morning, so we had a very open day ahead of us. We decided to take the train into town, but that turned into quite an ordeal. We were trying to buy tickets, but obviously everything was in German so we had no idea what to get…until a nice German guy who spoke English, who also happened to be from South Africa, helped us turn the screen to English and then told us where we should go. So we got on the train and were off to find our destination. Then I had a pretty terrifying experience…we were hesitant to get off at a certain stop, so we took a little while to walk to the door of the train, and the doors open for a very short time and then close. I was the last of us four to get off, and the doors started closing while only my arm was out. So I was forced to stay on the train and was separated from the other girls, but thankfully, I just got off at the next stop, and they all got back on a different train and got off at the same stop as me, so it all turned out fine!

Once we got into town we just walked around and looked at everything. It was only about 9:30 in the morning, so there weren’t many people out and about for awhile. But we looked at beautiful churches and amazing old architecture and it was a really nice walk! When we got hungry we found this little bakery and I got some amazing bread and we just sat and talked for awhile to take a break from our walking. After walking around some more, we decided to get back on the train to find another part of town. We walked around a bit more, but some of us were determined to get bratwursts and we were getting pretty hungry! So we found a place that sold bratwursts and after eating them, walked around more but then decided to go back to the airport, because we were getting pretty tired. The ride to the airport was definitely interesting. We pretty much went back and forth on the trains until we found it because we kept either getting off at the wrong stop or taking the wrong train, but at this point, it was the middle of the night back at home, and none of us really slept on the plane much, so we just thought it was hilarious because we were so tired. After getting to the airport, we immediately went through security and got to our gate with still a couple hours to spare, so we pretty much slept until boarding.

When we arrived in Johannesburg, we met up with some other students who had arrived, our professor, and the driver who was to take us to our hostel where we were going to stay for a few nights. The hostel was called Brown Sugar Backpackers, and it was really large and nice. The first day we got there, we slept a lot and then our whole class met up for the first time to have dinner. The food there was delicious, and they fed us really well. The next day, we pretty much saw museums about African history and apartheid all day around Johannesburg and Soweto. We went to Constitutional Hill, where they have constitutional meetings, and it is also an old prison where lots of political activists were held, including Ghandi. It was really amazing but sad. We then went to the Museum of Apartheid, the Hector Peterson memorial museum, and the Mandela House, which is Nelson Mandela’s old house that they turned into a museum.

The next day we got up even earlier and went to Pretoria to a beautiful museum there on the top of the hill where we learned all about the Boers and the Great Trek, and then to the national capital building, which was also beautiful. Then we got on a plane all together and flew to Port Elizabeth, and then drove a couple of hours to Rocky Road Backpackers just outside of Plettenburg Bay and next to Kurland (where we saw a baboon on the side of the highway!!). Rocky Road is where we will be staying for pretty much the rest of the trip until we go to Cape Town. It is absolutely beautiful here. Everything is so nature-y and the scenery is spectacular, with mountains and trees surrounding us. Most of us are staying in tents (very luxurious tents), and right outside of my tent, I have a beautiful forest view. It’s amazing! The food here is also amazing, all homemade and delicious. Our first night here (Thursday), they welcomed us with free mimosas and a great dinner!

On Friday, we went into Kurland for the first time, where we will be interning/volunteering with the NGOs. It is a cute little town that is in very much poverty. It reminds me a lot of Tijuana, with the way that many of the houses look and by the friendliness of the people. Mac, from Rocky Road, gave us a tour of the village and told us a lot about it. We got to see some of the NGOs, including the preschool and the regular school, which are very big possibilities of places that I may volunteer. I am so excited to start! Then that night, we had a bry, which is the word here for barbeque, which we will be having every Friday night. We also went in the hot tub, which we’ll be doing every Friday night as well, and it was just a really fun night.

Saturday was a very adventurous day. We went on our first hike, where we hiked to the bay/ocean. But I think that hike may be an understatement. We started off doing normal things, like walking on a trail through the forest. We then came to a few amazing viewpoints, where I saw the most beautiful view of the ocean that I had ever seen. We ended up walking to a calm part of the bay, where we stopped to have lunch and then had time to put our feet in the water and walk around. But here comes the fun part. Our destination was a different part of the beach, and Mac had his own way to get there. We started off climbing up big rocks on the side of the bay, then it turned to more forest, and then we came out on another part of the bay, where it was again very beautiful. Then we saw a penguin, which was so exciting for everyone!! Then it got a little bit scary, and for those of you who know me really well, you would be really proud of me. We pretty much scaled a jagged rock wall with a drop off and climbed on more jagged rocks along the drop off, and it was one of the most terrifying things ever, but it was also a really awesome thing to be able to do! My heart was beating so fast and a lot of adrenaline was going through me the whole time. But it was pretty much a fantastic day!

Today, Sunday, we went to Monkey Land and the Bird Sanctuary! It was absolutely amazing, especially the monkeys because monkeys are my favorite animal! Monkey Land gets monkeys that have been held in captivity in some way, and they get to live there, in a free, protected environment. I’m not sure about the Bird Sanctuary, but I’m sure it’s about the same thing. But both of them are pretty much protected forest areas where the animals can roam free. At Monkey Land, we got to walk around with the monkeys swinging and running all around us, and we all got so many pictures of them! There were mostly small monkeys, but some bigger ones as well. At the Bird Sanctuary, we saw some really colorful birds, and some were pretty exotic. We even saw some flamingos, which was awesome!

This week, we will be working on houses in Kurland Village, as a way for us to bond and get to know Kurland and the people who live there, as well as get a feel for who we may want to work with. Then after that, we will be doing our internships during the week, and hiking/relaxing/doing other fun things on Saturdays and Sundays. I am hoping to blog again soon, but I hope this gives you an idea of what has been going on! So far, South Africa has been treating me very well. J