Just wanted to make a really quick update to let everyone know I made it home safely. I'll post another update tomorrow sometime about the last day in Stellenbosch and the flights back home. But for now, I have slept about 45 minutes out of the last 48 hours, so I should probably go to bed now!

I haven't felt like I've had much to update about lately, and suddenly I find myself with a few days worth of stuff to write about! I have 38 minutes left on my internet account that I'm going to try to use up today, so we'll see how that goes ( Read more... )

Today was our last day at the Ark. My kids made me a card, sang me a goodbye song, gave me tons of hugs, and it was a good day. One of my students cried, which I was not expecting, and several of the Grand Valley students cried too. I did not. I will miss the kids, but I don't feel I was there long enough to grow too attached to the place ( Read more... )

Today was long and kind of tiring. Last night, our host family's son Jonathon came over for dinner, so we sat and talked with him for a bit, and when he went home, I went to bed and Tara and Eric went over to the Greener's to take some pictures for them of a birthday party. So I went to bed pretty early again, around 9:30 I think. Woke up in the ( Read more... )

Not too much to update about today. We went to the school this morning, and I sat back and watched completely mystified as the teacher tried to demonstrate to the kids how to do 2-digit subtraction completely incorrectly. She understood enough to know that in the ones column if the top number is smaller than the bottom, you need to borrow from the ( Read more... )

Sorry it's been a few days since I've been able to update this journal. The day after I updated last, we went into Capetown and met up with Harold Herman, a professor at the University of the Western Cape, who also worked at Grand Valley for a year previously. He took us on a tour of some elementary and secondary schools, as well as the University ( Read more... )

Once again, running short on time, so just a quick update. Last time I updated, I think I said something about meeting Sandy for ice cream before she left. Well, after that, she also invited us to get dinner with her later that night before she headed to the airport. So in the meantime, I went home with Katie, Dan, and Jake, and we went to the ( Read more... )

Just a short update. We're meeting Sandy for ice cream in a few minutes, so I've got a bit of time to catch you all up on the day ( Read more... )

This will have to be a quick one... we're all in desperate need of a nap right now. Went back to the school today and I don't think any of us were ready for it again yet, so we're all pretty tired ( Read more... )

Today was pretty nice. Ericka has an older sister who happens to have a friend who lives in Cape Town, and this woman had some things she wanted to send back to the States with Ericka for her sister, so she met up with us today and picked up Ericka, Missy, Eric, Tara and me and took us into Capetown for lunch and just to spend the day there. We ( Read more... )