VACTION TIME!

Tomorrow I leave to go on my first vacation as a PCV and I simply cannot wait! I'm leaving early in the morning to take a bus into Kuruman, where I'm meeting up with another volunteer. From there we take a khumbi to Vryburg, where we're hopefully meeting 2 other volunteers, and by evening we should be in Pretoria to stay at a backpackers (hostel) for the night. Wednesday we'll have the day in Pretoria to do some last minute shopping and hopefully grab a good meal and some drinks. Our bus for Mthatha leaves at 5:30 and we should get to Coffee Bay on Christmas Eve, where we'll be spending the rest of our trip!

While I strongly believe that as a volunteer I shouldn't have to rely on these vacations to get me through my service, I can't deny my excitement. First of all, it's been so so hot here and I don't think I can put into words my anticipation to swim in the ocean and hang out on the beach with a nice cool breeze. It will be glorious. And, as you may have guessed from my Thanksgiving posts, I kinda like my fellow volunteers. 11 days of uninterrupted fun with them will be pure magic... can't wait!! And lastly, some of the activities that are on the list of possibilities: camping on the beach, surfing (!!!!!!), cliff diving, hiking, cookouts, christmas eve meal provided by the backpackers, and hopefully some sunrise jogs on the beach - gotta keep the running going!

Some random notes on the past week:

My principal took me on a day trip to Kimberley! This is the capital of the Northern Cape and famous for it's diamond mines (and the first mine in S.A). We weren't there for too long, but we did get to walk around a bit and see the Big Hole:

This was a mine from 1871 that became the world's largest diamond producer, ushering in the Industrial Revolution in S.A. In fact, before Kimberley's diamond production, it was assumed that diamonds could only be found in rivers. Interesting stuff! Now it is just as it says... a big hole that is 214 meters deep with this beutiful green water. Unfortuantely we didn't have time to explore the mine, perhaps on another trip (I do have 2 years, after all...).

Saturday I got to go on a school trip with a volunteer friend (the one closest to my site) to Wonderwerk Cave, which is less than 2 hours away from here! This was really cool and brought out the anthropology nerd in me, as it is a famous archaeological site with evidence of human habitation dating 800,000 years ago! Some of the cave was closed for renovation, but we did get to see most of the cave paintings from the San bushmen. Sooo so cool! Then we did a little hiking in the surrounding hills which were beautiful and gave a nice view of the area. (And a shout out to Mom - I couldn't stop thinking about how many of the cool rocks she would have stuffed in her backpack to carry back with her... they were the neatest rocks ever!!!) Unfortunately I forgot the memory card to my camera, but I'll steal some from Jenneffer and post them later.

I also ran the 8 miles to her village and back (luckily with a night's rest in between) last week. Hopefully this is preparing me for the half marathon I've signed up to run in March! I've never been much of a runner, so we'll see how that goes...

Other than that I've just been sweating it out in my village and trying deal with my new insect residents that have come with the heat. These have included gigantic wasps, gigantic bees, gigantic beetles, cockroaches, flies, mosquitos, and ANTS! The ants are by far the worst... they're the meanest things ever. One day they decided to invade my living space and I couldn't even walk on my own room floor without them crawling up my legs and biting me all over! They are nasty, nasty creatures. Luckily the next day I bought some bug killer (lovingly named DOOM), and since then the ants have been no more!!! Success!!! I'm feeling quite lucky I haven't had (or at least seen) any scorpion visitors yet, I've seen the stings from them and it does not look like fun. Knocking on wood!

I've been hanging out a lot with my host family since break started, which has been pretty nice. One weekend I even went to a funeral, a wedding, and a church service with them! Not really my cup of tea to do this all the time, but I could tell my family and community appreciates these gestures. The only downside is that since it's break family from ALL over is coming to stay here and I haven't had much privacy or time to myself. On the upside I've fully put into use all of the soccer and volleyballs that have been sent to me! The kids are constantly a-knockin and we just have a ball playing together... haha couldn't resist the bad pun, sorry. Thanks again to my family and Tyler!! You guys rock!

OK, that's all for now. I miss you all so much and hope everyone has fantastic holidays!!!! I read about the gigantic snowstorm hitting the east... is it headed west also? Luckily since it is blazing hot and summer here it doesn't really feel like Christmas, so hopefully I won't be too homesick :) I won't have my internet phone with me, so you may not hear from me until January.

Salang sentle

December already???

Well December is in full swing and South Africa is apparently shutting down for the holidays! Well not really the whole country, but the schools pretty much called it quits weeks ago. This resulted in extreme boredom on the work front for a few weeks... with the teachers giving final exams and trying to sort out all of the end-of-the-year adminstrative BS that the Department of Ed. (reffered to as the DoE) requires, there really was not a whole lot of work to be done. I helped proctor ("invigilate" as they say here, not a pretty word... although proctor isn't great either...) a few exams, helped type some things, showed my admin assistant how to do the budget records in Exel, did stuff on their computers (mostly installing programs, organizing things into folders and de-virsuing as best i could..) and taught some games to grades that were done with their exams (noted that heads-up 7-up in Grade 4 causes utter chaos). Good times!

Last week was the official end of the schoolyear and actually a pretty great week, probably the best I've had in the village so far! I attended a lot of end-of-year meetings, including numerous SGB meetings (similar to PTA), staff meetings to discuss my plans for next year, community meetings, parent meetings, and the like. It reminded me a lot of my first couple weeks here.. but this time around I noticed some significant changes: I am no longer CONSTANTLY stared at (still stared at, but without so much confusion this time), I am not uncomfortable when a handshake lasts multiple minutes, I understand a bit more Setswana - probably more than I'm giving myself credit for but this seems like its coming very slowly, I am used to things starting and running HOURS late, and I understand that such gatherings will entail lengthy speeches/songs/prayers/dances at random. People are much more comfortable with me here now, and I am beginning to be approached by the community for help with little projects here and there. These past few months have been filled with ups and downs, rendering the reality of the Peace Corps "roller coaster" very very true. But I am now just days away from the 3-month "community integration" phase (lock down) and will soon be allowed to actually teach, start projects, and travel wherever and whenever the hell I want! (not really true but we can pretend)

Last Tuesday was the closing party for my smaller school and a REALLY fun time. The school and village are both so tiny that I was surprised and what an event this turned into... and what a gigantic feast was prepared. Many attended - parents, community members, teachers from my other school, learners and their siblings, the chief, the SGB, etc. We handed out awards to the 6th graders who are continuing on to a new school next term and grades 4-6 performed cultural dances. I helped the women cook and clean and just smiled and laughed at how they sang the entire time (did i mention how the BaTswana are always, always singing?). OH and the best part? My staff bought me vegetarian sausages from a store in town so that i could be eating "meat" with them... very random but definitely thoughtful!!! Overall it was a really, really good time.

Another highlight of this last week was our school trip to MiddelPos farm... an Afrikaner-owned farm a couple hours away. The kids were able to jump on trampolines, picnic outside under big trees, row boats in a pond, and swim in a pool! The latter was especially exciting but probably not the smartest thing as most of them have no clue how to swim. No worries though, they all came out alive and wet! If you were curious to see what 40 South African kids who don't get out of their village much look like when going on a field trip, this could give you an idea:

If that isn't pure joy, I'm not too sure what is!! Oh, and did I mention they sang the whole way at the top of their lungs, there and back???!!

I also bonded a lot more with a couple of my teachers and SGB members, which was really nice. I got to talk with the owners of the farm (very much a missionary family), and they were really excited about the Peace Corps and what we were doing in the villages. In fact the wife was very enthusiastic when I asked if they would be willing to host a girl's leadership conference (called Camp GLOW - girls leading our world) that I've been wanting to organize for next year, she said that's exactly the kind of thing she'd like to get involved in. So yay!!! A possible project in the works! There were also some really awesome mud houses that they turned into guest houses that were INCREDIBLE and I want to live in one:

Two other things made last week a great one: One of my best PC friends who lives far away from me came for a surprise sleepover in my village! Her principal was headed to Kuruman and she got a ride directly to my doorstep.... we made french toast and talked pretty much all night and it was awesome. Then one afternoon one of the gogos in my village showed up at my doorstep with her adorable Dachshund named Lizzy, told me she had puppies, and that I could have one! This was great for multiple reasons - I wasn't really sure who this lady was, but word had somehow gotten out that I really like dogs (probably because im the only one in the village who pays any attention to them/ doesn't kick them), and she just decided that I should have one! I love dachshunds and am really excited about the prospect of having an adorable puppy here. I was going to get it last week but we decided since I will soon be leaving for 10 days that it's best if I just pick it up when I get back in early January. I hope it works out because now I can't stop thinking of having a dog!!!

There's more I wanted to blog about, but I'm tired (it's almost 9:30 and past my village bedtime) so I'll just post again this week. Here's a pic I took of a storm coming in last week... you know it's gonna be a big one with the dark-blue sky like this one: