Planning and fun....

Yesterday Sara (the Teach with Africa 2 year fellow) picked us up at 10am and we went into Newtown which is basically downtown Johannesburg. Impressed, I was not in comparison to cities I've been to around the world. I was impressed at how amazingly nice everyone was though. I was also impressed with some of the street art that was painted under the bridge.

Anyways, Sara picked us up to talk about the upcoming week when the kids return. She put together an amazing workshop focused on recycling. My main focus will be creating gardens with the crap they have lying around in the barn. I've been putting aside a lot of tires which will work great as raised beds and I am trying to come up with a plan to use the tires in some sort of hydroponic system. We are lacking funds so really I have to engineer some sort of project with our resources.

We talked about this for roughly 3 hours and had some drinks too. I have really been enjoying the local beers (Windhoek, Castle, and Black Label) also the local food has been....interesting. Yesterday I ate a Chips Roll, a local delicacy that can be purchased on the streets of Alexandra. basically it's french fries in a hot dog roll covered in ketchup and mustard....delicious!!!

Today we met Lizwe and Nyalungwe. These are two of the teachers we will be working closely with. Lizwe teaches Life Science and Nyalungwe teaches math. They took the 3 of us to the Pretoria zoo which was pretty cool. I was a bit hesitant because I am in Africa, I should be going on Safari, not going to a zoo...but nonetheless, it was beautiful.

BTW...They are scary drivers. Being in their 40's, it seems as if they have never driven a car before. Maybe I am just still getting used to driving n the left side of the road...or maybe they are simply terrible drivers.

We had some amazing discussions about education and what their vision what of our role should be and I am happy that they seem open to ideas and not stuck in the traditional teachings that I heard most teachers here are. They are excited to collaborate and exchange ideas, start conversations and dialogues as to why the teachers are really here, and to ensure that we must be here for the students. I feel overwhelmed and inspired, but am excited to meet the kids on Monday.

I ate "Pap" today. It's basically ground up corn meal boiled down with water and it looks a lot like mashed potatoes. It was actually delicious. It was covered in a tomato sauce and served with a side of meat, which was Springbok, the local deer type animal in South Africa.

Tonight we headed into Melville (local college town) to watch the Ghana v. Uruguay game. It was an amazing time even though Ghana lost by cheating Uruguay. I am so blown away by the people I have met here. Everyone has been amazingly welcoming and kind...more so than I have ever seen in the US. People are really in touch with humanity and treating people with kindness and respect. I have made my first friend...Sandile...he is taking me on a tour of Soweto tomorrow. He's such an amazing person. Inspiring and thoughtful. I have been approached by many people simply wanting to know how I'm doing. When I tell them I am from the States I have heard nothing but, "Welcome to South Africa." Many South Africans call it the New South Africa since the end of apartheid. There are still a lot of racist undertones from the Afrikaners (the imperialist Dutch that still reside here) but apparently it is worse in Cape Town. I will see it for myself in a few weeks.

I also found out that a big holiday is Freedom day in April. The day Nelson Mandela was let out of jail. Simply amazing.