feb 5 to feb 11

Friday February 11, 2011
This morning I was able to sleep in... My back is super sore though... Eh. Then I walked into the bathroom and there was a nice big cockroach next to the toilet! Ah! So I decided to be brave and get rid of it... And believe me... It took me a while... But I got some toilet paper and I tried to pick it up! Ahhh! I couldn’t so I pulled back and it was squirming cuz it flipped over.. After a few tries I actually picked it up and then threw it in the toilet... And I missed! Haha so I had to touch it AGAIN! Eventually I got it in... But oh man... That was too hard haha. And then I started typing up the last 6 days! So much fun ;) but I’m glad I can keep everyone up to date. It is going to be so hard to try and really fill everyone in when I get home haha. I’ll have so much to talk about, you guys might get sick of me... Haha.
I found out this morning that Jamie and I are going to switch projects and host families. I don’t know when we’ll be moving but it will probably be Monday or Tuesday. I’m excited to learn new things and meet new people. :) I asked to be placed somewhere with more volunteers so we can do more social activities. I’m excited :)

Thursday February 10, 2011

Happy Birthday Kyle!!! :)

Today when we woke up we went and got a picture of Jess Jamie and me with all the kids printed and we put it in a frame as a going away gift for the creche’. When we got there I was greeted my Nathan and he gave me his porridge so I could feed him. As I was feeding him I got a bunch of hugs :) it was nice. :) Today for class we made Valentines day cards (jamie and I cut hearts out and they colored them). It was pretty fun, they seemed to like it. After they were done they pretty much dinked around until the other room was ready for them to go take naps. As soon as they were all asleep it was time for us to say goodbye. I went to go put something away in the office area and I found Olive there by herself just bawling! :( it was so sad!!! She was crying because we were leaving! :( It made Jamie and I both sad and we both ended up crying. She said that it is really special that we are white because the kids will look back to this memory and wonder if it really happened or if we were angels. It was very touching for me to see Olive so emotional...she really appreciated having us there. And hearing the things that she said and seeing her express this to us made everything worth it. I was able to think to myself “this is why I am here!” haha it was cool. She also said that she is going to let the Hokie Pokie carry on haha. So that is cool. After leaving the project Jamie left to meet up with everyone for the garden route tour and I took the train back to the Retreat station and then walked to the internet and was able to be on for like 3 hours and research different safari’s and tours and what not. I think that I am basically going to have to choose between going to Kruger national park and doing an intense 4 day safari where we sleep in an uncaged area under the stars next to the lions and the hippos and such! I would also be able to ride an elephant and study them and whatnot. OR I could do the Garden route and see a bunch of different beaches, sand dunes, go to an elephant sanctuary, 2 hr safari ride on an animal reserve, and possibly go cage diving with crocodiles! .... Decisions decisions... I really am stumped. Comment on this post and let me know what your vote is...

Wednesday February 9, 2011

Today was the second to last day at the project. It was a fairly good day, but Jamie and I both walked away glad that we have been there and looking forward to wherever we go next. Today we helped the kids to a worksheet that was prepared for them. It had different lines on it or arches or X’s and O’s and they were just supposed to copy the shapes. Well it was really really sad to see that pretty much everyone couldn’t do it. I saw some homework sheets that they were being sent home with and it had problems like “6-_=4” ... K... How are they supposed to do this homework when they can only count to ten and don’t know what numbers look like or how to draw an arch. Not gonna happen...
After the project, Jamie and I went to the beach. It was pretty windy though. We didn’t stay too long but it was nice :) we saw a kid that was part of a surf project and he was a little stinker. He was running away from the group leaders and was doing flips in the sand and he came up to Jamie and took her coffee and was like “for me?!” haha it was so funny. I guess the kids that age are gonna be crazy everywhere! Haha

Tuesday February 8, 2011

Started off the morning by getting pooped on by a bird as we were walking to the project. Good luck right?! This morning was okay at the project and this afternoon was kind of a joke. This morning one of the teachers asked Jamie and I to take over the class, we asked what she wanted us to do and she said whatever you want, whatever you usually do.... Kinda frustrating. We pulled out some matching cards that they have and we started to lay them out on the table and she was like “just dump them on the table and let them play with them” we were like... Uh no... We want them to learn something...
Then this afternoon just as the kids were starting to wake up from their nap time she came in and was like hey will you guys watch them for like 10 minutes so we can have a quick staff meeting? Well an HOUR later we had to go get them because things were out of control. 2 kids peed their pants and one pooped them while they were sleeping so I had to clean that up but while I was trying to clean them up there were dirty dippers, we had to pick up all the mats but Nathan (an autistic kid) thought it was super hilarious to take the mats and blanks that we had piled up and throw them around the room poor Jamie was in there trying to get everyone to sit on the mat on her own and everything just went haywire. So needless to say we were so ready to leave when Olive told us to go. We told them today that Thursday will be our last day because SASTS is supposed to contact us at the end of the week with a new placement. But Jamie is leaving Thursday for the Garden Route so we didn’t want to leave for the weekend and just not come back.

Monday February 7, 2011

Today at the project it was a bit crazy because we didn’t split up the older kids away from the younger kids so they were all in the same room. Today we had small groups of kids at a time do a connect the dot sheet. I had a bunch of dots and then there was an example page where the dots were connected to make a picture of a house. Well it was surprising to see that these 5-6 year old kids couldn’t understand how to connect the dots even when you were saying “draw a line from here to here” it was kinda sad to see.
We left the project around 3:45. The train wasn’t bad today which was way nice. We were able to catch it in time to get to the internet for a bit and then we came home, took a show, a nap and then at about 7:45 we walked down the street a ways and met Olive and Alliouse, lisa, and their family at a restaurant called Spur and we all ate and celebrated Lisa’s birthday. It was fun! :) it was good to hang out with Olive and Allouise and Lisa outside of the creche’.

Sunday February 6, 2011

Today was wonderful. Pretty relaxing. After waking up I got to talk to my family! :) that was awesome. I got picked up for church this morning by a guy named Juan. Church was wonderful. There were more YSA’s today. It was Fast Sunday so it was really cool to listen to everyone’s testimony. One lady talked about how she was robbed on the train this week... Kind of brought me back to reality, cuz I take the train every day. Kinda scary. After church I took a nap and then I was picked up for institute by a guy named Darren and his sister and her boyfriend. It was kinda cool :) institute was really great, I got an institute manual and D&C on disk so I can put it on my iPod. While I was there I found out that the institute teacher was on her mission with my dad! They both served the same mission and had the same mission president. I thought that was pretty neat. We also had flat pancakes with ice cream, blended mango and pineapple and nutella! Delicious. It’s been a good one! :) (This is my 4th Sunday been here for a full 3 weeks now.)

Saturday February 5, 2011

Today was great! We slept in! Haha and then we went to the internet. By noon we left for cape town. When we got there we met up with some other volunteers at green square market. It was their last day and we had lunch with them it was really good :) I got a toasted tomato and cheese sandwich with avacado... Yummmm! After eating Jamie and I took a minibus to camps bay. When we got there we layed out our towels and started to soak up the sun! :) not shortly after we layed down we had sales people up the ying yang trying stopping and trying to sell us stuff. One of the guys that stopped was one of the painting sellers I had met last time I went to Camps Bay. I asked him if Joe was there, the guy who I bought my painting from. He said he was there so he went and got him and Joe came over and visited with us for a while! It was nice. He is pretty good looking haha I told Jamie she would have to hook up with him cuz she’s looking for a rasta man haha. Anyway, after he left a lady came by and she was selling hena tattoos!!! :) so I had her give me one :) I got a chinese character that says “art” on my ankle. It’s pretty neat :) after coming home we really didn’t do much the rest of the evening. Love the beach! :)