Daylight Savings Time? Not Here!!

Well, I am feeling more at home here, which is very nice. Little things help, like cooking my own food everyonce in awhile and putting pictures up on my bedroom wall (thanks to Rachel B for those!) Also things are becoming routine which means I generally know what to expect from day to day. Not the most exciting thing, but at least I am not homesick anymore. :) Also last weekend I had roll koukin (I never could spell that!) and watermelon. A lovely summer's day lunch.

This is Samuel, Brian and Lynelle's oldest son. I spend many of my weekends with this family which also includes Markus, their younger son. One weekend we went to a small nature reserve at the Umtata dam. Samuel is standing beside an ant hill and behind him are zebras and a couple wildabeasts, not that you can really see them in this picture!!

I wanted to put a couple more pictures on here, but the computer is not cooperating - big surprise! Oh well, I will try again later. Story of this blog!

Well, apparently this weekend Daylight savings means people back home are changing their clocks. I say apparently because there is no such thing as DST here in South Africa. This means that it always gets dark early - around 6:30 pm, and is always light very early - before 5 am. It has taken some getting used to. This also means that I am now seven hours ahead of Ontario time. This of course makes calling home even more annoying! Oh well, it is worth it.

A fun day in Nqeleni

I had a really great day today. The local school where a lot of the younger kids I work with attend had a beauty pageant today. Very unfeminist and an affront against all of us liberated women, but there was a category for guys too. :) It was really fun. Of course, they put me up on stage in the front. Wherever I go I am in the front. No blending into the background here! I'm still getting used to it. Anyway, during breaks while people were getting ready some of the kids got up on stage and started dancing. These kids can move!! It was so much fun watching them, several of them were from Mzomtsha, breakdancing and busting a move. It was a very loud afternoon but very fun.
I should go, a church service is starting right outside the door of the office. A local team has started having church services in our hall twice a week, wednesday and friday evenings. I go most of the time even though I don't understand most of what is said. If I'm lucky the superintendant has time to interpret, or one of the students whoes english is good enough does it. Most of the time I just listen and try to interpret for myself based on the pastor's hand gestures. Sometimes they are good enough for me to actually have a clue! But the best part is the singing. Some of the songs I know in english, or oddly enough in some other African language (Syahumba and Akuna Akaita are good examples) but mostly I just listen when they sing in isiXhosa. But they do sing in english often enough so it is nice.
Ok, that's all from me tonight.

A rainy day in Africa

Well, today is the first time I have felt like the "rainy season" has actually begun. It poured all day which blasted most of my plans, but instead I was very productive and I planned the next ten lessons with my grade 5/6 class. I finally found all the resources that Jeremy left here (big help by the way!) and so I got inspired. So, I thought I would finally get around to putting up more pictures. Not that anyone is really waiting for them, since I just realized that I forgot to tell everyone about my blog. So, now you all get two for one! These pictures are of the beautiful coast line at Coffee Bay. I took a crazy hike from Coffee Bay (of course I had to go there, even though there is no actual coffee there - a shipment of coffee wreaked there a couple hundred years ago) all the way to Hole in the Wall. That is exactly what it is. A big hole in the wall of a cliff in the ocean. It was a fun hike, but very exhausting. Those hills are no joke! We finally made it, although we cheated a little.
That is all from me for today. I have a class to teach yet tonight!

Pictures of where I live!

Well, Finally! A blog and it has pictures on it!! At least a few. More will come later. I haven't the patience to do anymore tonight! They didn't even come up in the right order, but seeing as it took me an hour to get them on, I'm not going to fight with it!!

The first one is a group of my kids and me. The second is more of the kids - they LOVE posing for the camera!! The third is a poinsetta the size of my hand (!!!) near where Brian and Lynelle live. The plants they have here are crazy! The fourth picture is of the children's home where I am working, the buildings are where the kids live. Both the pictures with the kids are taken there too. The last picture is of a Bird of Paradise bush. I love these flowers and at home they are expensive and exotic, but here they are commonplace and you find them everywhere - even in my yard here!! I promise to put more pictures up really soon. I have tons to put up, but they take forever!!


So, now you can see a little of where I am and what it is like here in South Africa. I have now been here just over a month and am starting to feel quiet comfortable. Well, most of the time. :) For those who don't know, I am here working in a children's home teaching english. I have two classes and a total of about 35 kids. They are really great and really make all the loneliness and language difficulty worth it. I am living at the home which is in a village called Ngqeleni about 30kms from Umthatha, in the Eastern Cape Province. I am the only white person in my village which means I get stared at wherever I go. It has been very interesting for me, someone who is much more comfortable blending in and staying behind the scenes, to be the centre of attention most of the time. I find that it, along with being surrounded by people speaking a language I don't understand, makes me rather tired! I know I have talked to many of you online or through email and so most of you know that I have been homesick. It is gradually getting better and happens less and less often. I really am enjoying myself!

That is all for tonight. Cheers!