What Really Matters

Here's my final blog post about my trip to South Africa. I actually wrote this about a week ago, I just kept forgetting to post it.

I’ve spent most of this blog describing my adventures on this trip, the big events and for the most part the tourist-y things. Those were the things I took the most pictures of and the things that really stand out in my mind when I think about this trip. But in between all those trips and exciting adventures were the simple, daily life things. These are the things that truly make a trip like this as special as it is. It’s not about how many mountains I climbed, animals I saw, World Cup games I watched, or amazing adventures I had. What matters most from a trip like this is the people I met, the friendships I gained, what I learned from them and what they learned from me. After all, I went to South Africa mainly to get experience teaching in a classroom there. The sightseeing and adventures are just icing on the cake. For three and a half weeks I got up early every morning, taught at a school, came home and spent time with my host family. It doesn’t seem like much, but the things I learned and saw during these weeks were huge to me. However, these are not the kinds of things I can always put into words. I’ll always be grateful to all the wonderful South Africans I met – the women I lived with, the other teachers at the school, my students, friends of my hosts, and Corvell’s own family – for opening their hearts and homes to me and the other MSU students. They set an example of friendship, hospitality, and caring that I never want to forget and I hope I can embody here in the U.S. Here are some people who deserve a special thanks and I hope we stay friends for a long time to come:

• Sunet, Rika, and Janci- my wonderful hosts who shared their home, friends, food, and life with me. I had fun being your fourth roommate for three and a half weeks. You are three wonderful people with huge hearts and you really helped make my time in South Africa so special. And Sunet especially, thank you for sharing your classroom and students with me, giving me lesson plan ideas, guidance for how to teach the kids, and support when I really didn’t know what I was doing. Thank you for taking care of me and being a great mentor and friend.
• The Cranfield/Hendricks family- Corvell, Faith, Dayle, Dominic, Johnny, David, Jesse, and more. These were people who basically adopted all 23 of us into their family for six weeks. They cooked meals for us, attempted to teach us favorite South African sports (that wasn’t always successful), helped us along on hiking trips, drove us all over the place, gave advice, answered countless questions, and entertained us with their jokes and stories. All of our adventures were extra special because we had you with us.
• Everyone else from MSU who came on the trip- Part of the fun of having a big adventure like this is being able to experience everything with others. I remember lots of great conversations riding in the vans or sitting in the guest houses late at night, sharing our experiences and discoveries in our individual host families and schools, our favorite parts of each sightseeing day, and our lives back in the U.S. We’re all very different people but we shared the same passion and excitement for this trip. Coming back home, it’s nice to know that I have a group of people here that I can share memories with.
• My Grade 3 students at Eikendal Primary School- I did my best to be a good guest teacher, but in the end I’m not sure if you learned anything particularly special from me other than a few new facts about the U.S. I slipped into your world for less than a month and I hope it was enough to leave a lasting impression. In the end, you were the ones who really taught me and I hope I can take what I learned back to the U.S. to share with future American students. I hope I can be a better teacher because of it and students in the U.S. can have their eyes opened because of what I can tell them about you.

Some of my favorite memories (the small moments between the big adventures):

• Countless conversations with my hosts about comparisons between the U.S. and South Africa.
• The collective excitement from the whole group every time we saw something new, beautiful, and exciting
• Getting hugs from my students at the end of every school day
• Reading to my students and watching their little eyes light up with excitement over the story. Most of them don’t have many books at home so they love it when they are read to at school.
• Watching the Grade 3 rugby games
• Having my Grade 3 students write letters to my student teaching class in the U.S. They were so excited about it and drew beautiful pictures in the margins of their letters too.
• Watching South African Idol with my hosts, laughing about all the bad singers and calling dibs on the cute guys. I think I watched more South African Idol in three weeks than American Idol in the whole time it’s been on.
• Playing the Question Game in the van
• Relaxing evenings at Deo
• Listening to the students imitate my accent
• Staying up late at the "Robben Island" house, hanging out and playing Scrabble
• Laughing about the stupidity of the English language with my hosts
• Sitting in the computer lab every interval with Candice and Mallory, frantically checking our e-mail and Facebook since this was the only time we had to do it
• Randomly jamming out to “Waka Waka” in the van
• Jesse and his model poses
• Attempting to understand conversations in Afrikaans through context and body language, and amazing my host family when I occasionally succeeded
• Hilarious games of BS and Egyptian Rat Screw on weekend trips
• Taking pictures with the kids on my last day at school. They all thought it was so fun to take pictures of each other with my camera.
• Talking about all the same kinds of things with my host family in South Africa that I would with my friends back home – family, friends, faith, guys, movies, TV shows, education, college memories, and more. Even though we live halfway around the world, we’re really not that different in the things we care, worry, and dream about.

Final Weekend Day 3- Caves, Ostriches, and Baby Cheetahs!

We spent the next two nights at a backpackers’ lodge in the town of Oudtshoorn, an area known for ostrich farming. Not surprisingly, our breakfast at the lodge in the morning included scrambled eggs made from ostrich eggs. The volume of one ostrich egg is equal to 24 chicken eggs! Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell you if the taste was any different from a chicken egg because my nose was stuffed and my senses of smell and taste were limited.

The last day of our adventure-filled final weekend (Monday, August 9) was jam-packed with interesting activities. In the morning we toured the Cango Caves, a set of caverns under the mountains filled with limestone rock formations- stalactites and stalagmites. The caves were not that different from some of the limestone caves I’ve seen in the U.S., but the unique thing about Cango Caves is the type of tour they offer. At the caves you can choose to take either the Standard Tour or the Adventure Tour. The Standard Tour is a basic walking tour through the large open areas of the cave while the Adventure Tour is a little more involved, including climbing and crawling through small spaces like a real cave explorer. The majority of our group, myself included, opted for the Adventure Tour. I’m not the biggest fan of small tight spaces, but I’m always up for trying new things. It was a challenge to climb through that cave, but I managed through the ducking, crouching, crawling, and squeezing better than I thought I would. My dancer’s agility certainly came in handy. Some of the more intense parts included the “Devil’s Chimney,” a narrow tunnel about six feet long that you have to climb up through. The space is so narrow all the way around that you can’t really put your arms to your sides. You have to push upwards with your legs mostly and keep your arms in front of you. I felt a little like I was swimming to the surface from deep in the water, I just wanted to get out as quickly as possible so I pulled myself up with all my might. Another tight spot was the “Post Box,” a space about 2 feet high and 8-9 feet long. You basically have to army crawl on your stomach through the tunnel. At the end you have to squeeze through a space a little more than a foot high and slide down a short slope on your stomach. Thankfully the tour guide was there to help us out. My friends and I had a great time taking silly pictures of each other among the cave formations the whole time we were on the tour. In the end it was a great time and a great way to bond with people, helping each other through tight cave spaces.

Limestone stalactites

After lunch we visited an ostrich farm. As part of the tour, visitors are given the opportunity to ride on an ostrich if they want. However, bearing riders is very tiring for the ostriches so the farm only allowed eight people from our group to ride. I wasn’t dying to ride an ostrich so I opted out, but I did get to sit on the ostrich and get my picture taken. Watching the others ride was pretty hilarious. It’s very difficult to stay balanced on the ostrich, so there are two trainers who run alongside and pull the person off once they start to lose their balance. The trainers themselves were very good at it and could even steer the ostrich by gently pulling its neck toward one side or the other. Some of the other close ostrich encounters included getting an ostrich “hug,” where the trainer holds their hand with food behind your back and the ostrich reaches its neck over your shoulder to get it. I was surprised at how soft the ostrich’s neck feathers were. Two of the guys from our group were talked into “kissing” the ostrich, putting a piece of ostrich feed sticking out of their mouths and the ostrich would come and peck it out. That was very entertaining to watch and both guys claimed that it was one of the most awkward things they’d ever done. Haha. We also learned that ostrich eggs are incredibly strong. A large adult man can stand on one without it breaking. It takes an ostrich chick close to 48 hours to peck its way out of the egg when hatching.

Ostrich riding

Ostrich hug

The last thing we did that day was visit a place called Cango Wildlife Ranch, which was kind of like a zoo but more interactive. We toured through their different animal exhibits and saw warthogs, vultures, lemurs, flamingoes, crocodiles, a pygmy hippo, a river otter, white and brown tigers, white lions, and adult and baby cheetahs. For an extra fee they allow people to enter the enclosures and touch some of these animals. All of us paid to pet baby cheetahs, something Corvell told us about a long time ago that we were all very excited to do. The cheetah was adorable and reminded me of a very large housecat. One of the babies was even playing with a stuffed toy while we pet it. It was so cute! Some others in the group also got to hold a boa constrictor and two girls even paid to do a cage dive in the crocodile enclosure.

Crocodile cage diving

That night we were treated to a delicious dinner at the backpackers’ lodge that included braaied ostrich meat, on shish kebabs and in sausage form. Mmmm! Then we spent the rest of the night relaxing and hanging out. It was sad to think that we’d be leaving South Africa in just a few days, but it was nice for the time being to enjoy spending time together. We’ve all grown very close as a group over the past six weeks and I knew it would be hard to say goodbye to each other and to all the wonderful South Africans we’ve met along the way as well.

Final Weekend Day 2- Safari and Zip Lining

The next day (Sunday, August 8) we packed up all our things from the lodge in George and drove to see a game reserve near the town of Mossel Bay. At this reserve, called Botlierskop, we got to go on a real African wildlife safari (I guess you could call it that.) through the hills and valleys of the reserve. We rode in huge jeep-like vehicles all across the plains and up the hillsides. The views were stunning – green rolling hills as far as the eye could see with mountains in the distance on one side and the ocean far away on the other. Driving all through these hills felt a little bit like being on a slow moving roller coaster with all the ups and downs.

On the tour we saw more elephants, a family with a mom, dad, and baby. They also drove us up on one hill where Botlierskop has a 90 hectare lion sanctuary. Right now only two female lions live there. There used to be two male lions living there also, but both sadly passed away within the last year. The guide told us that since these lions grew up in captivity they could never be released back into the wild so they created a large enclosure for them that would mimic life in the wild as much as possible. This reserve is also home to a large herd of impalas, both brown and endangered black impalas. For several years Botlierskop has run a breeding program to increase the population of black impalas.

We also saw a herd of wildebeest, a couple different antelope species (waterbuck and bontebok), white rhinos, giraffes, and zebras. The rhinos and giraffes were particularly exciting. We had driven around for a while without seeing any animals when we came around a bend and spotted a family of rhinos (mom, dad, and two daughters) grazing at the bottom of a hill. Their horns were huge and dangerous looking but they looked very content and peaceful. A little farther on one of the girls from our group spotted two giraffes way off in the distance. Our guide tried to bring the jeep closer but there was a swamp in the way that the vehicle couldn’t get through. Thankfully my camera had enough zoom that I could get great pictures of the giraffes even though they were far away. Eventually one giraffe became curious enough about us that it came closer and stopped about 50 yards from us. It was amazing to see these animals roaming free like this. Finally, at the end of our tour we saw a small herd of zebras. I was especially excited to see these because my band sorority’s mascot is a zebra. I’m very glad to come home from Africa with pictures of real zebras.

Wildebeest

Bontebok

After the safari tour we drove 2½ hours east, just across the border into the Eastern Cape province. (So now I can say I’ve been to two provinces in South Africa – Western Cape and Eastern Cape.) Some of our group had signed up to go bungy jumping at a place called Bloukrans Bridge, which is the highest bridge in Africa and the highest bungy jump distance in the world of 216 m. A company called Face Adrenalin operates the bungy jumps from this bridge. While I like adventures and thrills as much as the next person, I wasn’t really interested in something quite as crazy as bungy jumping. About half the group was dropped off here to do the jump or just to watch and the rest of us drove a few miles farther to the town of Storms River where we went zip lining in the nearby Tsitsikamma Forest. For zip lining you’re strapped into a harness that goes around your thighs, waist, and up your back. You have two clamps on your front that attach to the main cable and other clamp at your back that attaches to a secondary cable. Connected like this you slide on the cables from tree to tree, landing at a platform built onto each tree. Two guides come with your group to hook you on and off the cables at each tree. On the tour there are 10 different cable slides, varying in length and speed. The longest was about 90m long. Don’t worry, it’s very safe. The guides keep a close eye on us and even when we’re standing on the platforms we’re still hooked to another cable that wraps around the tree. I was a little nervous at first, but after the first slide that went away. It felt like flying to glide from tree to tree like that so high above the forest floor. Even though it was also raining and chilly I still had a great time. Most of the trees there were yellow-wood trees, which is the national tree of South Africa. I thought that was kind of cool.

Afterwards, we drove back to Bloukrans Bridge to meet up with the bungy jump group, all of whom were very excited and raving about their experience. Then we drove the 2½ hours back the way we came. It was a long day and I was very tired by the end of it.

Final Weekend Day 1- Knysna and Elephants!

For our last weekend in South Africa we left Cape Town and traveled to the far east side of the province, about 5-6 hours drive from Cape Town. This is a mild climate, very scenic region on South Africa known as the Garden Route. We spent the first two nights at a travelers’ lodge called Afro Vibe in the town of George. On our first full day (Saturday, August 7) we visited sites near the town of Knysna. In the morning we took a ferry to the Knysna Featherbed Nature Reserve, which is located in what’s called the Knysna Heads, across the estuary from the town itself. This Knysna Estuary is an inlet of the Indian Ocean with very still, peaceful waters. Some of vacation properties people have on the islands and headlands are the most expensive in all of South Africa. The area is beautiful with green forests, towering cliffs, and a view of the ocean so it’s easy to see why.

At the nature reserve, we took a tractor ride up to the top of the headlands. As we climbed higher we were able to see out across the estuary and out to the Indian Ocean. Even though it was a little foggy and cloudy that day the view was still incredibly beautiful and we stopped at one point to take pictures from an overlook platform. Once we reached the top we got out of the tractors for a mile-long hike down to where we started from. On the way we climbed up on to a rock face at the edge of the cliffs to take more pictures. Our study abroad group had come across on the ferry with another tour group of senior citizens from Texas. Up on the cliff one of them saw that several of us were wearing Michigan State clothes. She got really excited because she used to live in Michigan and her children went to MSU. She couldn’t believe that she ran into a group of MSU students halfway around the world and wanted to take our picture.

We continued our hike through a forest filled with vines, gnarly-looking trees, and strange and new plants. I felt like we were walking through an enchanted forest, kind of like when we were on the Contour Path a few weeks earlier. We also explored a huge cave down by the water’s edge. This whole place felt like somewhere you would see in an adventure story, like it belonged to another world. I loved it! Finally we followed a paved pathway back to the entrance of the reserve. Included in our admission was a buffet lunch at the reserve’s restaurant, which was located under a bunch of big, overhanging trees. We were all very hungry after our hike and stuffed ourselves with lots of delicious traditional South African food – bobotie, pickled fish, calamari, potatoes, chicken, salad, passionfruits, and malva pudding. On the ferry ride back one of the other girls in the group decided we should sing the MSU Fight Song. Using another girl’s small iPod speakers and the recording of the MSU marching band on my iPod we energetically entertained the whole boat with MSU spirit. :)

Restaurant in the trees

That afternoon we visited the Knysna Elephant Park. We wanted to ride on the elephants, but unfortunately when we got there we found out that another large group had already booked up the riding for the day. However we were still able to walk with the elephants, feed them, and take pictures with them. For about $4 we could buy a small bucket of fruits and vegetables to feed the elephants with. Out in the park they kept the elephants behind a metal barrier while we fed them. We were able to hold out pieces of food in our hands and the elephants would grab the food with their trunks and put it in their mouths. I got lots of elephant slobber on my hands but it was so much fun to have the elephants excitedly grab the food from us. We were laughing the whole time. After feeding the elephants we were allowed to go around to the other side of the barrier and walk with and pet the elephants, with supervision from the elephant trainers of course. There were three adult elephants and two babies and we got lots of pictures with them, even hugging and kissing them! Elephants are huge animals but they’re so gentle and funny. Sadly the next tour group came in much too soon and we had to leave.

We finished our day back at the travelers’ lodge where Corvell braaied chicken and sausage for us for dinner and we all hung out, played cards, tried to work on assignments, and talked about life.

Coming Home

Well, I'm finally back home in Michigan. After 18 hours on an airplane (again) I landed back in Detroit around 3:00pm yesterday. It was so hard to say goodbye to South Africa and all the wonderful people I met there. I cried as the airplane was taking off and I finally left Cape Town behind. I will never forget this place and I feel as if I've left a piece of my heart there.

More blog posts are coming with my adventures from the last week of the trip. But first I have a paper and a lesson plan to write in order to fulfill my course requirements for the study abroad. (It's not all fun and games.) Once that's done I'll update. Time to get working!

Putting on My Dancing Shoes

I’ve done a surprising amount of dancing since I’ve been here. Since dancing is such a huge part of my life back home I thought I’d highlight some of these experiences in South Africa. Way back during our first two weeks here we went to a church one night and had a dinner cooked by some of Corvell’s family members. A couple of them sang for us, we played a game, and Corvell’s nephew Jesse taught us some dancing. Jesse’s mom owns a dance studio and he knows a lot of traditional South African dances and also more modern dancing. He taught us a style of dancing called gumboot dancing which involves a lot of stomping, hopping, and smacking your hand against the bottom of your shoe. A lot of the moves are syncopated so it’s difficult to stay on the beat with the dancing. We were all laughing at ourselves the whole time as we kept getting our feet twisted up. After that they put on some popular music and our group just started dancing around on our own. When they played Shakira’s new song “Waka Waka” we got really excited and started singing at the top of our lungs. This song was written as the 2010 World Cup theme song and it’s extremely popular in South Africa right now. Not surprisingly it’s also become a bit of a theme song for our study abroad group as well. Seeing our excitement, Jesse decided to teach us some of Shakira’s choreography for the song. We were tired and sweaty from all the dancing that night but everyone agreed that it was some of the most fun we’ve had in a long time.

I hardly ever go clubbing back home, but I’ve been taking out clubbing three times here already. Since the women I live with are still in their 20s, they still enjoy going out every once in a while. A couple weeks ago they took me and a few other girls from my study abroad group out to a club in Cape Town called Tiger Tiger. This was what they call an “English” club, meaning it plays music in English, although it’s basically a normal type of club like we’d find in the U.S. Being in a place like that I almost forgot I was in another country since it was so similar to something I’d find back home. However, people tend to get dressed up a lot more when they go out here than they do in the U.S. You can still wear jeans there though and not feel completely out of place. You just can’t wear tennis shoes. A week later I went back to the same place with my entire study abroad group. You can imagine what a group of loud, boisterous American college students would be like here compared to the South Africans who are a little more conservative. That aside, it was fun to have the chance to let loose with my friends and celebrate how much we’ve been enjoying South Africa.

My hosts also took me to an Afrikaner dance club called Opskop, which was a very different experience. Here I was exposed to an Afrikaans style of dancing called “langarm,” which is a type of partner dancing that is like a very informal waltz. At this place, when Afrikaans music is played this is how people dance, but occasionally they play English music and everyone dances like I’m used to in the U.S. For the Afrikaans dances, girls are expected to wait off to the side until a guy comes to ask them to dance and during the dance itself the guy leads the girls through the different moves. Sunet, Rika, and Janci (my hosts) explained to me that every guy has his own style and the dance will be slightly different depending on who a girl dances with. Most people seem to come to these clubs as large groups of guys and girls, which is what we did. The single guys will usually make a point to ask every girl in their group for at least one dance to make sure everyone gets a turn for a few dances. I got a chance to dance a few times with Sunet, Rika, and Janci’s guy friends on the night they took me. It was a different experience and something I had never done before, but I liked it. The gracious and chivalrous behavior that guys are expected to display at this club seemed unusual and old-fashioned to me since this environment is very rare in the U.S. I felt a little bit like I was in the middle of one of the dances described in a Jane Austen book, where guys invite girls to dance with them and girls sit around and talk about how guys dance afterwards. Hahaha. I kind of wish we did this kind of dancing back in the U.S. It was fun to have nice guys glide and twirl me around the dance floor. Lucky for me, I had dance and music training so I was able to pick up the steps pretty quickly and not embarrass myself by tripping over my feet too often.

Sport in South Africa

One thing I’ve learned is that almost all South Africans are crazy about sports, even more so than many Americans, believe it or not. I was told this before coming here and I’ve definitely seen that it’s true. This was definitely a good culture to bring the World Cup into.

The most popular sports here are rugby, cricket, and soccer. Some other favorite sports are netball (which is kind of like basketball), tennis, field hockey, and track and field (which they call “athletics”). Like the U.S., South Africa has professional teams for its biggest sports based out of every large city. This time of year is the height of rugby season so I’ve become very familiar with the provincial rugby teams since everyone talks about them and my host family watches rugby on TV a lot. For example, Cape Town’s team is called the Stormers, Pretoria’s is the Blue Bulls, and Johannesburg’s in the Lions. The women I live with all grew up in Pretoria so they support the Blue Bulls, although they live in Cape Town now. People have all sorts of opinions about each other based on the teams they root for, very much like the U.S. Watching rugby with my host family and listening to people talk about rugby reminds me a lot of the way people act about college or pro football in the U.S.

Unlike the U.S., South Africa assembles nation-wide teams for rugby, soccer, cricket, and netball every year to play against other countries. They also give names to their national teams. The national rugby team is the Springboks (this was the team featured in the movie Invictus). A springbok is a small antelope-like animal found throughout South Africa. The soccer team is called Bafana Bafana, which is why that name kept getting thrown around during the World Cup. “Bafana Bafana” means “the boys, the boys” in one of the native African languages. The national cricket and netball teams are both called the Proteas, which is also the name of the national flower. One of the subjects that students are taught in primary school is called Life Skills, which is kind of like social studies. In grades 1-3 they learn about things like good citizenship, careers, community helpers, and national symbols – not to different from lower elementary social studies in the U.S. They also learn about sports in school, which happened to be the Life Skills unit my Grade 3 class has been working on since I’ve been here. The kids have learned about the difference between team and individual sports, sports equipment, the roles of different people at a sporting event (players, spectators, referee, etc.), and also the names of South Africa’s national teams. From listening to these lessons I’ve learned a lot myself about South African sporting culture.

In the U.S. a lot of young kids start playing sports on community recreational teams and then move up to travel teams or middle school and high school teams. In South Africa, all primary schools have their own sports teams for Grade 2 and up. Poorer schools like the one I’m working at offer barely any arts programs, and only for the older grades, but they have rugby, cricket, netball, and track and field teams for all ages and compete against other nearby schools. Sports are a huge deal in the schools. I’ve gotten a small glimpse of this during my time at the school because my mentor teacher is the coach of the Grade 3 boys’ rugby team. Four boys from her class are on the team and the rest come from the other three Grade 3 classes. They practice every Monday and Tuesday afternoon after school and they all get so excited for it. They played their first game last week against the Grade 2 team (since the other schools they’re supposed to play against keep canceling the games). The Grade 3 team won, mostly because they’re bigger and have practiced more, but all of the kids were so excited just to get a chance to play. The gym teacher, who was the referee, wanted to play the game before the school day ended, so for the last hour of the day my mentor teacher and I trooped her whole class out to watch the game. Since she was on the field coaching, it was my job to keep the young spectators under control. (Which was quite the task.) They were almost as excited as they players. I had a lot of fun that day.

Grades 2 and 3 playing rugby

Our group leaders from MSU have made sure we’ve been treated to some South African sports experiences as well. A couple weeks ago they took us to an indoor sports center to play action cricket. They split our group into four teams and paired up the teams to play against each other. Contrary to popular belief, cricket is actually very different from baseball and it took a while to get the hang of at first. Thankfully we had Corvell, his brother-in-law Johnny, his sons Dayle and Dominic, and his nephew Jesse playing with us to help us out. Even so, I was pretty confused for a long time. I didn’t finally get it down until almost the end of the game and then it was time to leave. Oh well.

Indoor cricket

Last Friday we got tickets to see Cape Town’s “minor league” rugby team, called simply Western Province, play a game. The games for the minor teams don’t fill up that much so we were able to get really good seats close to the field. I still don’t really know much about rugby, but surprisingly I was able to follow along pretty well. It’s enough like football that it kind of made sense. I’m amazed that the players don’t hurt themselves more often since they don’t wear padding and helmets like football players. Apart from Spartan football I’ve never paid much attention to sports back home, but I’ve actually found learning about the sports in South Africa to be very interesting. I’m glad I was able to experience a little bit of this part of their culture.