Updates

hey guys

the internet is getting pretty sporadic so i'm probably going to be in and out of communication indefinitely. i'm slowly posting pictures up and i'm working on the captions so hopefully you guys will get the updates.

this past week has been pretty action packed but the long weekend before that was pretty awesome too, which is the extent of my picture posting so far.

last friday we went on a class field trip to the berry farms in stellenbosch with our afrikaans teachers. then on saturday my auntie cathy, uncle raymond, and their daughter bianca took me and kat around cape town to a flea market and to the scratch patch (mineral gem thing place). on sunday kat and i attempted to cook chinese food for our host family which went pretty well. and then on monday the group went to table mountain where we proceeded to climb all 1085 glorious meters of it, my asthmatic lungs protesting pretty much the entire way. it was quite a task but totally worth it, and it's absolutely beautiful from the top. it's very cloudy up at the top and the mist and clouds roll in and out so one minute you're looking at a beautiful blue sandy coastline and the next minute you can't see five feet in front of you-- it's like nature is playing hide and seek with you. anyway so that was that weekend, and the pictures are under the SA 6 album. said album also includes pictures of Tumali, one of our many "fufs" or "friends under fifteen" as we like to call them. big kids are a little intimidating for us, or are maybe a little intimidated by the nine of us, but little ones (host siblings, kids in the park, etc) are more than willing to hang with us and school us in soccer in the afternoons. Tumali is the grandson of Felicity, who drives us to and from school. he is adorable and mostly likes to have nothing to do with us, but we go to great lengths to coax a smile or sentence out of him.

however, today we did make some "fofs" (friends over fifteen). this past friday we saw a poster for an ANC (african national congress) Youth League meeting so we went and got to see people debate on two centers of power and democratic centralism and other things. it was pretty interesting, and the group was also organizing a tutoring programing in guguletu, a township nearby, so today we went with them to go help out. the program is headed by a neighboring university, UTC (university of cape town) and is working with the government to set up an every-saturday tutoring program over the next few months to help 11th and 12th graders study for their final exams since they missed out on a lot of instruction when teachers went on strike a few months ago. i have a feeling it's going to be pretty cool so i'll keep you posted with that.

our other way making fofs is luring them with kat's hacky sack, which we take with us pretty much everywhere. i'd like to say that after a month of playing pretty much daily we've improved, but sometimes it's hard to tell.

so, that's a wrap up of that.

i still have to post up pictures of our baie lekker three-day garden route trip we took this week. so i guess i'll tell you guys all about that when i get the pictures up. stay tuned because you won't be disappointed!



Tumi and Me <3



Jam



Scratch 'n Patch


Table Mountain



Nippy.