I'm spending a lot of time writing(and less time typing - as you may have noticed!) its arduous after a while - so bear with me - i have quite a lot to answer! But I do love working on the letter-writing skills...its a lot more exciting than writing an email - although that has alot of benefits aswell...
I should also mention that parcels are like birthday presents! Everyone was laughing at me when I was opening my parcel of insanely good-tasting chocolate(South African choc is tasteless), dodgeball tshirt and other marvellous items. I was bouncing around a little crazily! I can't remember if i blogged about the 'parcel experience' last time but can't be bothered to check to be honest with you. so if i did you will have to appreciate how excited I was about the parcel.....
Just quickly....this was ment to go at the bottom of my last blog but it won't appear for some inexplicable reason so I'm just going to blog it here as a bit of extra-ciricular(can you tell I've been in the school today?!) reading for those over-eager readers (also known as eager beavers...can you tell I'm well stocked up in the sugar department?....) who can be bothered to scroll down to the end of the last post and link up the text...
On Friday we're going to renew our visas (which could take some time - we'll have card games at the ready...) and then this weekend we're hopefully going to a beach in Durban! Though we have yet to fully organise that - so we shall see!
Peace out!
So that's that intensely exciting part of my blog lets move onto my hectic, hectic week (I had to get everyone to help me remember what on earth I've been doing....Abby is keeping a regular travel journal atm which is very instrumental in helping me match up the day with the activity!)
Tuesday 27/05
This was no ordinary day....it was in fact the Founders Assembly Day at Gateway Christian School!
This meant smart clothes, cheese muffins for breakfast(provided by resident cook at the school! YUM!), early start at work, much photocoping of programs and creation of photoboards and other random work.
The assembly was there to honour those who have worked so hard to make the school what it is today (9 years ago there were no roofs on the classrooms..things have come such a long way!)
They gave out awards to the founder of the creche which went on to become the school, the pastor who gave spritual guidance for many years, the man who was a long-standing principle before Pastor Sinatra(the current principle) and a couple of other people.
There were short speeches (praise the Lord that the long, drawn out prize days, which were a large and boring time of 'celebrating' exam results during my secondary school days cannot pretend to hold the attention of primary school children or cross a South African principle's mind at this current point in time!)
Instead there were some other little delights to surprise us! A choir singing worship songs in English and little children doing Zulu dancing which is AMAZE!
These little children(and adults do this aswell) kick their legs up over their heads - a bit like a super high-kick can-can and dance. A sight to behold...and the rhythms are amazing!
Then we sort of hung out for abit to serve food to the guests(transpires the food was self-service so we didn't actually end up being of much use!)
Abby and I went over to CCP to continue with poster making - didn't get much done but did make ourselves a to-do list with some tick boxes which made Abby happy to tick some stuff off....small things...... :-P
In the evening it was cell as usual. It was a little quiet as there are exams going on in schools and uni's (bit like England tbh) so less people came than usual (not that we don't double the size of the cell group normally......hum-de-dum........)
Wednesday 28/05
Abby, Hannah and I did the bible bit of the devotional at CCP - this was sort of scary but turned out OK.
For those who are interested we looked at
Galatians 6:9 and Ecc 3:1-8and tried to encourage the staff of CCP with the amazing faith and trust they have when they seek God and their dedication to their work - even when its the most emotionally difficult work that I can pretty much imagine doing.
I use the words 'we tried' not because our words didn't encourage them but because they immediately wanted to pray for and minister to us because we've given up our time, money etc to be there with them.
That was great, but a little hard to accept as we had all imagined that we would be able to minister to them not the other way round. We're still very British sometimes!
I spent most of the rest of the day (apart from helping in a brilliant music lesson with Izzy which involved an hour of trying to control/have fun with a group of 6-7 year-olds!) in the school I.T. room.
Just sussing things out with where I stand with the whole situation and where I want to go with it...the situation is a lot better than was initially expressed to me.
However the simplest thing to do would to be completely re-vamp the room, although there is the slight issue of no money!
Its a lot more difficult to look at the exsisting old and slow computers and find a way to improve the situation sustainably for the long term development of the children's skills.
I think even this at the moment is a little beyond my means; so i am simply trying to work out how best to spend my time and invest my energy so that I can make some kind of difference in how the children use and view computers.
It was weird how everyone had disappeared by 4pm - I almost ended up being locked in the alarmed school building because I was still working. People were congratulating me on a hard day's work - when - compared to some of my days(OK, most of my days) working two jobs (as I did for most of the first seven months of my gap-year) I had not actually done very much at all!
In the evening we headed out to watch the latest Indiana Jones film with Dean (our cell group leader) which I found fairly fun if rather inplausible but which everyone else informed me served only to slowly rip apart the I.J legend piece by piece (i have never seen any of the previous I.J. films...)
Also, for the first time since I've been here I had the cell to myself for the night as Abby and Jenny needed some deep and meaningful conversations so Abby moved into Jenny's cell(on the spare bed) for a night. which was a new experience for both of us. I found it refreshing for a while as I quite like having rooms/houses to myself every now and then but I did miss the companionship of our grunts and moans which normally punctuate our daily struggle to pull ourselves from the snuggly, warm depths of our beds!
Thursday 29/05
This was perhaps what you could call a 'normal day at work' but seeing as there isn't really a normal at the moment I'm not too sure what that entails - so I'll leave that to your own deciding!
Essentially, we went to Bethany House (CCP) did much poster making and register typing(to make everything official in the schools) and then headed back to Gateway for lunch - as we'd been lazy and not made ourselves sandwiches (we occasionally get lunch at CCP on Thursdays but there does not appear to be any method in lunchtime madness so knowing whether to make sandwiches or not can be a little hard to predict!)
Unfortunately when we got back to PG we found that there was some meeting of utter importance going on so we couldn't get into our food(yes, the food store is very wisely in the room which is sometimes labelled the 'boardroom' and more often than not is comandeered as the 'Oasis Team dining room')
so we sat and felt hungry in the sun for a while (what utter hardship!)
until we finally got in!
In the afternoon we had the 'standard' CCP de-brief which varies a lot from week to week. This week emalgamated into a random discussion about:
The discipline of children - hitting/spanking on a fairly regular basis is the expected norm and does, in most cases, appear to work fairly well, even if I do disagree with it on many levels.
Drinking - is definitely not the norm. There seems to be no middle ground in this culture! You're either teetotal (and hide whatever alcohol you use for cooking at the back of the cupboards) or you're a raging alcoholic with serious problems - this may be slight exaggeration but I did feel very stared at when I was talking about how in our culture there are some people who have mastered the art of responsible/sociable drinking! The question 'What is a pub?' seems to come up a lot when I'm talking to some people about the differences between SA and the UK - I hope that when I'm back the weather is nice to go and sit in a beer garden so that I can chill-out with a beer and good company and rejoce that TIE (This Is England!)
I also better understand the rule in Oasis code of conduct which doesn't allow us to drink while we're here; as if anyone did see us they would be likely to assume the worst.
Drugs - there were a good few stories coming our way from the most unexpected people! Hilarity and surprise where on the menu big-time!
Of course all of this did have a serious aspect aswell - but it was a good time to relax and have fun- which is part of the aim of de-brief!
Plenty of chat and prayer that night within the team which was cool. And I did some more research into our holiday in Cape Town. Which at that point was pretty much all over the place in terms of actual decisions!
Friday 30/05
We all went to a production at the school called Hooked on Books(instead of chapel - absolute sacriledge!!) - which was insanely cool. Run by a company in Jo'burg; it is a team of three theatre bods and they run some sketches from about six books to give the children a taster of some books to go and get from the school library.
Absolute and complete hilarity. They were brilliant! Costumes were simple and inventive, as was the 'stage' set. Audience participation, silly accents, singing, beatboxing and a few digs at the foreigners sitting at the back! The children were excited beyond all belief and we were in absolute fits of laughter!
From there we went to renew our visas at - well - wherever the place you have to renew your visas is!(rest assured that I wasn't driving!). All went a lot quicker than I think anyone of us had expected - and without glitches - so we should be legal for the extra month we require to be stamped in our passports!
Unfortunately Becky (our co-ordinator) was unable to renew her visa because she needed a medical, and when she went to the doctor she was diagnosed with anaemia. So she has to undergo more testing before they sign(or don't sign) her medical form.
After a slow lunch and much debating Jenny, Hannah, Izzy and I went out to Liberty Mall to do some errands. I bought a new camera to replace the one I misplaced/lost/had stolen there a couple of weeks back. The camera was good and the memory card exceptionally cheap in comparison to English prices. Unfortuately said camera failed to charge when I plugged it in so, erm, yea, it's going back soon for a swap. Bummer.
Incidentally I think this would be a good point to insert some photos which I should have put on the last few posts, for the benefit of those who don't have Facebook.....sorry that they're small - they took an age to upload!
Samke&I going over the edge
(below the wood was a sheer
107m vertical drop!)
Our assembly on.....hmmmmm....I can't remember what!
Izzy, Me and Hannah in the car on the way to Durban
Group photo when we went to a creche with Hands&Feet
Me with face paint on at Moyo Restaurant in Durban
Me and Jonno being weird while washing up!Yeah!
Where was I? Oh yes!
After Liberty we went to the Royal Show (run by the Royal Horticultural Society - just the name made me feel like I was back in V.W. Community Centre!!)
This is a big annual event with lots of animals on show and stalls and tractors and big trucks and funfair rides. We were very tired by this point so weren't in the mood to be bowled over by the show. Had a quick look around and then came home.
After dinner Phil and I headed out to NCF Youth as everyone else was too tired. We made that fatal error of being on time for a youth group(!) and so ended up hanging around for about half an hour before things kicked off. It was mega-cool tho!
Worship was lead by a 15year old girl who was amazing(we didn't find out how old she was till afterwards) teenagers seem to be far more confident at a younger age out here - its a weird trend! Rather cool to see tho!
The 16-18 range have the enthusiasm of a group of 8-10 year old Brits - so brilliant! Phil&I chuckled with the humour of the situation - and I personally was a little sceptical of such enthusiasm at first. But quickly reminded myself of the exuberance that bubbles from most Africans/South Africans and shut my cynical brain off fairly sharpish to allow myself to enjoy the evening! Which I did do! In vast amounts!
I want to continue blogging all night but its just turned midnight and I was up at 0530 this morning(Weds) to do the feeding scheme at Northdale Hosp so I'm gonna call it a night. I have notes on what happened over the weekend(many, many cool things!) so I shall leave you with the suspense that the next time I blog(hopefully Thurs or Fri) I will be able to explain to you the wonders of Durban beach day and Moyo Restaurant.
And the miracle at CCP this week. I should mention that this is only one of God's miraculous provisions for all the projects and people here on a daily basis.
It really is amazing to be a part of!
I'm hitting the sack!
Peace out xox
1 comment:
WAAAAHHHHH i knew this would happen i dont know what you're up to..blog already!
when exams are over im ready for you to come back.. im not allowed to hv tv in ur room so there will be no use for it....
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