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 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.

Three weeks and counting...

As most of you know, I will be studying abroad in Cape Town, South Africa for 6 weeks this summer. I created this blog to document this trip and keep family and friends updated on my experiences. I will be leaving on Tuesday, June 29, 2010 and will return to Michigan on Friday, August 13, 2010. (Friday the 13th! Oh dear.)

The program that I’m part of is called Cross-Cultural Teaching Abroad- South Africa. The 6-week program involves seminars at the University of Cape Town (UCT), 4 weeks of student teaching in a South African school, sightseeing, and cultural exploration. On top of all of this I get to earn six graduate credits. Not bad for a month and a half. J Especially exciting, we’ll be there during the end of the World Cup! The quarterfinals and semifinals are being played in Cape Town. Unfortunately we weren’t able to get tickets. (Fine with me. I’d rather not deal with the the crowds and the chaos.) But we will visit the fan park outside the stadium and make time to watch the final match on TV.

For the first two weeks we’ll be staying at a guest house in Cape Town called Deo Gratia. Then we’ll spend a little less than four weeks living with the families of the teachers we’ll be working with. My host and mentor is a 3rd grade teacher who has been teaching in South Africa for two years. Prior to that she taught in the U.K. for two years. She has only been teaching for a few years and I think it will be interesting to work with another young teacher like me and be able to learn about the experience of new teachers outside the U.S.

Only 19 days left until we leave! The whole trip still feels a little surreal right now. I don’t think it’ll quite hit me until I’m sitting on the plane heading halfway around the world. This is probably the most adventurous thing I’ve done in my life. (And I’ve had plenty of adventures.)

To learn more about everything South Africa, check out this site. It’s very comprehensive with information about geography, culture, government, current events, you name it.

Also check out my itinerary page to find out what we’re doing each day on the trip.