last day at school and the teacher was out so we helped out in the 6th graders

we got a bit distracted with games and pictures from time to time 

then we had a swim lesson in the freezing cold pool. who wears wetsuits in a pool? we do. its freezing

the newest and cutest visitor at saltys

carmen, one of my students, gave me braids

my leaving celebration 

halloween!

neti pot fun!

school daze

just some kids

kids in the 

floris playing with the boys 

can you do backflips too? 

school

the school daze

floris took soon really nice photos 

then i stole his nice photos 

break time

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sushi buffet anyone? 

chilling at the rocks after sushi

sundown in cape town

chillers being chill 

your typical day at the office

wanna learn how to surf? we can teach you!

this is our morning work space

office equipment 

there were a million of this massive floaties all over the beach that afternoon

its officially summer in south africa

summer is here and the increased uv absorption has taken its toll on us volunteers. 

the real shark infested waters

the week was a good week with the kids. the routine is really falling into place during the week even with the addition of two new volunteers, Floris and Eddie, from Amsterdam and Maui respectively. We spent the week at the school doing the math program and then also working with some new 6th graders with the swim/surf program. Because they are new to the program there are only 4 students out of the 40 that know how to swim, we basically only did 1 surf lesson this week and the rest were all swimming. then comes the weekend.

on friday the norwegians, the sophie's and i did a wine tour of the south african cape wineries. sooo beautiful and sooo fun and left us all feeling pretty happy after 6 wineries in only a few hours. But oh my god it was so much fun because it was just us. then we were dropped of in the beautiful university town of stellenbosch, which is where i plan on moving to and living in as soon as i can. we met up with our body boarder friends after taking a mid-day nap at our hostel. the night started off great, dancing our away all of our wine induced sleepy mode. however somewhere in the midst of all the fun i must have donated my iphone (what i use as my camera most importantly) to the thieves of stellenbosch. i must say i am more than upset and would have posted a ton of beautiful pictures of wine tastings, towering moutains, and happy times in crowded bars, but alas, no dice, no pictures. hopefully i will get another camera soon. hopefully soon. in the list of good decisions i made last night, i wore flip flops ("pluckies" as they are called here) to the dance club... today with the help of german sophie and others we fished out a couple shards of glass out the bottom of my feet. disaster move on my part. whatever. taking it easy and watching movies with the volunteers tonight at salty's with burgers and tea in hand. all's well that ends well 

shark cage diving?

we woke up at 5, fell asleep the whole 3 hour bus ride, awoke in a random town on the coast, ate a real egg breakfast, got on a boat, saw 8 great white sharks, and swam with them

heres one 

could have actually reached out and touched it if i wasnt stunned still

2 fat kids gone cage diving

they circled us for the 3 hours we were out in the bay. they chomped on chum and put on a spectacular show for us. 

the longest one we saw was about 4 meters long. 

it was insane

playtime in tachakut

at the tachakut settlement to go play with the kids with table mountain in the background

we did face paint! 

and hula hooped for you don't even know how long 

at the t.l.c playground in the settlement 

we also gave piggy back rides/ races for sooo long

german and i raced around with kids on our backs for what seemed like a fun forever

thomas did double the work

inside one the houses

wednesday updates

the school is hiv-friendly and there are signs on all the doors. this means that children that were more than likely born with hiv are allowed to go to school here because a lot of schools in S.A. do not like to have kids enrolled that are positive. 

just hangin with some of the younger students while they wait for the bus and eating carrots! 

so far im doing 1 mountain a week. this week was lions head again only for the full moon hike. we watched the sunset at the top and hiked down with the moon as light but it was kinda cloudy. 

some of the cute kids after school 

finished off the day with a braai, a south african bar-b-q. soooo good! we braai right in the bar at salty's 

school and surf

the time in the school has been great. im actually just physically exhausted tho after work. i have surfed 3 times in the past 2 days and climbed lions head again and been doing surfing and swim lessons and working in the computer lab. im drained. i bought a new wetsuit 2 nights ago because as i have said before, the water here chills the bones and the one's at salty's are peppered with holes and the almost freezing water and me aren't friendly together. i got a really nice one from reef but after wearing it in the water im afraid it is too big in the calfs because the water kinda rushes in and its a bit loose. anyway it still made the time sooo much better. the waves were great yesterday and decent today. im getting back into the swing of things. salty's is so nice to come back to after a day of surf and chill out, but yesterday instead of watching a movie and falling asleep, which i would have been fine with cuz i was exhausted, we decided to drive into cape town and a full moon hike of lions head. it was so beautiful and nice but im so exhausted still. the new guy, thomas, sophie and i went for a morning surf this morning and it was a bit small but we were just about the only ones out there so we had all the waves to ourself to mess around on. it was so nice. then we went to placement and worked with the 5th graders in the computer lab with math again and then took some of them swimming. im too exhausted to write much more but i will upload pictures of the school and my other happenings soon. 

first day in the schools

today was our first day at the vaaloek school. we worked with kids, ages 10 to 11, on math using the computers which is very hard for many a reasons. 1 there is a huge difference in learning and comprehension between the kids that all come from the same class so the simple addition that mara was doing years ago ie 6+2=? was like translating greek for me - not even the symbols make sense- while for others they were done with their math games in 5 minutes when it was supposed to take 30. 2 the kids dont know how to use a computer or a keyboard for the most part. a girl today accidentally hit down the shift key while typing a 2 and made an @ sign and freaked out thinking she had done something wrong. they don't know that clicking on a red x will get rid of a window or that you can do other things with the computer all they know is that if they hit numbers and then enter it will be red and wrong or green and right. it just seems like there should be a program for learning about computers. i was astounded at uneven levels of understanding was between the kids.

anyway in the afternoon we took some of the kids for their surfing lesson and i was so surprised with the skill level of the kids in the surfing program. like some of them were really good and damn fearless. the water in cape town is truthfully just crazy cold. bone chill cold. i think its terrible in the hole-filled wetsuit that i borrow from the program. the kids however use never donated wetsuits sans holes and want to stay in the water forever and they will. i hope i can record some of them surfing they have really come a long way because most of them were apparently just learning how to swim 6 months ago. so impressive. 

also its my mama's birthday and it makes me kinda homesick but ive got good company to keep my mind off it. too bad the bodyboarders are gone; they were good at that. the church group of 20 gossiping children keen on playing with the dogs and not much else that now takes the bodyboarders' just give off a different vibe :)

livin the beach dream

saturday was a day spent at big bay, another beach town just about an hours walk or a 20 min bus ride to a rocking beach break with waves that can be small and easy going or as thick as a prairie house, bigger than one too. we, the two sophies and i, went down to go support the slew of body boarders (or boogie boarders as some of us know them as) that have been staying at the backpackers with us for the past week. they are a professional team sponsored by reef and a whole truck full of legit companies called the boland team. the boland boys are truly leka fun with the most leka attitude. they taught me this word "leka" - the slang version of "lekker" - which essentially means everything from "great", "chill", "perfect", "hilarious", "interesting", "delicious", "huge", etc...  i think. Anyway, we had a leka day on the beach cheering on the boys and just having a good time to celebrate their 7 riders in the South Africa Bodyboarding Championships. the swell was huge and crowd was so good. the boys did great and we had a great time just hanging on the beach, followed by a night of celebration and fun. today was super fun and mellow. we just went to the beach again, ate some bomb pizza, gave the dogs a bath at salty's and generally had a nice mellow day after a first week of work peppered with celebrating, 30 bodyboarders in tiny salty's and getting used to life in south africa. i already love it here and dont wanna go back... anywho bed ways is best ways so leka slaap

cape town and big bay

this guy was great

 eastern bizzzzzzare for lunch

beautiful flower market in downtown

chillin with canada and germany in big bay to support the boys

boland boiiiis!!!

the boland boys for the win! 

simon's town

the penguin rocks in simon's town

the kids seeing their first penguins!

please look under your car for penguins

a lesson on the beach taught by canadian sophie

a pretty leka pool if you ask me