Hey everyone! I got my computer fixed! There is a guy who fixes Mac’s in Bloemfontein, South Africa. He fixed it up for $25! I’m going to try my hardest to write a little at my house and upload it on my blog when I’m in town.
Like any job, things happen that make you feel amazing and like you love your job…on the other hand there are days where you want to eat an entire chocolate cake and sleep for a few days. I ate a whole chocolate cake last Saturday. With the help of a few other volunteers, I planned a workshop aimed to help the male teachers in my schools understand how to work with women and treat them better. A few other volunteers came up to help run the workshop and to see how they worked. I gave invitations to each of the five schools and talked with each teacher. A local shop owner cooked about $50 worth of food, which was amazing and a ton of food. We had everything planned, trained a facilitator, and began to wait at 8:45 for the teachers to arrive and the workshop to begin at 9. By 10:00 no teachers had arrived. 11:00 rolled around and Lerato came with the food, but still no teachers. We decided that they weren’t coming and asked 25 high school students to come instead so the local youth group could perform the skits they had come up with and so we could do something with the food. The workshop ended up going really well and the kids learned a ton and really enjoyed it. I actually think it went better with the high school students and not the teachers.
I spent the first two hours of waiting going back and forth between being mad, embarrassed, and defeated. I really didn’t know what to think. I thought I would be really upset with the teachers and would show that when I visited the schools. Instead, I used the opportunity to talk to some of my neighbors and teachers to figure out how to fix the problem that ultimately goes back to my work at the schools. The Monday after the workshop, for example, I showed up still angry only to find 2 teachers at school. I purposely came late because I knew teachers often arrived to school late. I thought about it for a little and realized that attendance is something that I can work on that might have an impact on the school. I talked to a few teachers, principals, and neighbors about the problem and they all told me to have a meeting with the principals. I have on scheduled for Thursday and hopefully we can talk together about encouraging the teachers to work harder.
In other news…the next few months are pretty full for me. I’ll be working with other volunteers to prepare for an amazing camp for high school kids, more workshops (hopefully teachers will come), a fajita night at my friend John’s house, meetings for a few committee’s I’m on, and a welcome party for some of the new volunteers in country.
Soooo things are going pretty well here. I’ll be back in town Saturday and will try to write more! Hope everyone is doing well at home! Miss yaaaaa
Oh! The pictures…The one with the trailers – my friend and Nicole and I ate there in Ficksburg, which is right across the border in SA. We got a huge plate of food for $2! We were a little nervous to eat there, but it ended up being amazing. Some of them are of Lesotho in the spring. It’s starting to look beautiful again! The peach trees all turned purple and the willow trees look so green against the brown hills. And one of them is of kids playing with Lego’s at Nicole’s house. Her aunt sent her Lego’s and she lets the kids play with them when they come over. I had just as much fun with them as the kids did!
