Sunday 10 February 2013

1 month in!

Wow so I have been here a month now and time is going very fast! I still occasionally think, oh my god i'm in Africa...what!?! I can't even remember much as to what happened in the week, we didnt have as many lessons as the form 2's were on a residential but then i had more admin work to do so I was still very busy! This weekend was very very fun. I have joined this service called Barclay's Build which is basically a service which goes to orphanages/schools or disadvantaged areas and i think sometimes helps build things but we also paint buildings. This Saturday was the first one (its once a month) and we were painting a large storage unit at St Peter's Day Care Centre. This is for orphans and under-priveleged children, they come here every day in the week and are looked after and given a meal (for most this is the one guranteed meal they will get). Its for children aged 2-6 (before they start school) but older ones can come after school for the meal and to have somewhere to do their homework. So we had to paint this ugly looking storage unit that is in their playground. We spent the whole day there and we painted it white and then I drew the alphabet on it and we painted the letters different colours. It was very hot but very rewarding and the lady who runs the Centre was very grateful. We are hoping that we can go there and help every other tuesdays after school.

A memorable thing friday was around the late afternoon there was a HUGE thunderstorm with hail and massive bolts of lightning and lots and lots of rain.

Saturday evening was our first braai of the year (aka BBQ). This was really fun but was a bit of a mission to help organise-trying to persuade the upper sixth boys to stop sitting around and help cook the meat wasn't that easy! It was a great evening with a really fun and relaxed atmosphere-it was held by the pool and they had music playing and there was SO MUCH FOOD.

Sunday (aka today) was game drive day! It was at the local safari park called Mokolodi and it was a two hour game drive. Sadly we didnt see that many animals but we all still enjoyed ourselves immensly and the guide was really nice and told us a lot of interesting facts. e.g. a spitting cobra and spit about 2 meters and always aims for the eyes! The way you can tell the gender of a giraffe is by the size of their horns (males are slightly larger) and a males coat is slightly darker colour. We saw two ostriches a male and female (which came very close!) a giraffe but this was quite far away, a dead chameleon, springbock, fish eagle and another animal but i cant remember its name (similar to a springbock.)

This evening we are probably going to watch Les Miserables so i will have the tissues ready! Tomorrow is the first Naledi Feeding. This is another service i have joined where we take food to families who live in a underpriveleged area of Gabs. Next weekend I am going on the sports basketball trip to Johannesburg which should be fun.

p.s. COME ON ENGLAND (in reference to Six Nations)

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