Skydiving and getting Stuck

Well, I couldn't have asked for a better few days. We celebrated our host sister's birthday Friday night with a braai (.. that's bbq to everyone I know, or knew before coming on this trip anyway) at Gumstone and an outing to nearby Kalk Bay for dancing. A few of the other volunteers stayed over at "Camp Gumstone" for the weekend, so we all walked to Imhoff Farm for a leisurely brunch before heading to ANOTHER braai at the Kommetjie lighthouse, where we watched the sun set from the top of the lighthouse. It was so beautiful! On Sunday Dan, Mark and I woke up early to pick up some friends in Cape Town and go skydiving at Skydive Cape Town. Skydiving was amazing! I can't even begin to describe the experience, so you'll  just have to ask me about it when I return. I can't say that the trip to and from the skydiving place was so incredible, however. Because I was the only one who can drive a manual car, I had the pleasure of driving the 1996 Fiat Uno rental car, whose gear shift decided to stop working halfway through the trip. I managed to get it into 1st, 3rd, and 4th for most of the drive up, but I couldn't get it into 1st or 2nd for the life of me on the drive back into Cape Town, on which we happened to hit every red light. Perhaps understandably, the clutch burned out and we ended up stranded on the side of the road JUST as we arrived in Cape Town. Luckily the man who rented us the car was willing to come pick us up (and knock some money off the cost of the rental), so it was really the perfect broken down on the side of the road situation. Getting back to Gumstone and sorting out the cost of the car took most of the day, but it really was quite an extraordinary adventure! I can't wait to tell you more about it in a few weeks. -MEA

Finally in the Schools!

A lot of exciting things have happend since last I posted. For one, South African schools are finally back in session so I am now working with some of the most amazing third graders in the world at Marine Primary School in Ocean View, a predominately coloured area near Gumstone. Every morning I take the children in Mrs. Samuels' class out five at a time to work with them on their reading. In the afternoons I take about 60 children out for PE classes. It would be exhausting work, but I know that I am helping the children so much just by inspiring them to read more that I hate having to leave in the afternoons. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I return to Masi after school to tutor some of the kids from the Careers Indaba. Students here are encouraged to study math, accounting, and science, all areas in which I'm not particularaly adept, but I have managed to find at least one student a day who needed help with history or english projects. On days when I don't go to Masi I head to Fish Hoek, where I recently joined a gym. Although I lead P.E. classes every day, I don't actually get much exercise here so it's a nice treat getting to go to the gym (well, when I went yesterday for the first time it was a treat... we'll see how that goes), especially when I can get a ride rather than take a taxi! I am also hoping to stay at Marine a little longer each day to work with the students in my class who really struggle with reading. Some of them don't even know their alphabet, but get by in reading class because they have read the same books so many times that they have them memorized (they only have a few books in each class here), or because their classmates are always trying to help them out. On Monday I had the students write down all the words they sturggled with while reading and used their individual lists to make a  "Challenge Words" list. The words 25 words on the list ranged from "were" to "understand" to "Christmas", and I asked each of the students to write a story for me using as many of the words as they possibly could. I can't wait to read all of their stories this weekend to decide who will get "silly bandz"  for the best story. The third graders I spend time with on a regular basis are all so much smarter than the average third grader,. and certainly much more advanced than the children here, that I'd almost forgotten how funny stories written by small kids can be! I'll pull out some of the best phrases to share with you in my next post, which will hopefully be within the next week. -MEA