Girl's Club Photo Scavenger Hunt

We've just come through a four week public sector strike, which means in the village we haven't had school in four weeks! To pass the time a few volunteers, Kelsey and Amanda, came to visit me and help me do a photo scavenger hunt with the girls club. This is the group that I followed around and took photos of. In the end all the girls were able to look at the photos of each group on my host sister's computer. See if you can guess the categories (1. with shopkeeper 2. in taxi 3. in tree 4. playing the brick game 5. with a koko (grandma) 6. doing hair 7. on the phone 8. holding chickens 9. baby on the back 10. carrying water on the head 11. cooking over the fire 12. herding cows 13. traditional dance)

Chess Camp

Over a long weekend a friend of mine who teaches English at a highschool in Pretoria came and taught some of the learners at my key school how to play chess. We ran the camp for three days over a long weekend, and had an impressive turn out for each day. Lincoln patiently explained how each piece moved, and for two days they mostly practiced moving the pieces and got a feel for the game. On the third day we had a tournament, and they showed their brilliant colors playing a number of games (very quickly). It was amazing to see how far they could come in just a few days, from knowing nothing about chess, to playing competitively! THANK YOU SO MUCH to everyone who sent me chess boards!! You made this possible and sustainable. My host father, who is an expert chess player, plans to maintain the chess team and tutor them toward mastery.

To the left is the demonstration board that lincoln brought to teach the children how the pieces move. Below you can see my host brother, Poopo, (a grand master in the making).

The final photo depicts the Tournament held on the third day of the camp. A lot of chess was played this day, but it all came down to Poopo and Alice! It was a close game, full of intensity (you can see the rapt audience), and Poopo won it in the end. I was so proud!

April Trip to Cape Town

This April I took a trip with some friends to see the famous Cape Town, one of the most beautiful cities in the world, resting just at the southern tip of the continent.

Below is a photo of the wine region where we did a lot of wine tasting and became very educated and cultured, and sometimes tipsy.
To the right Jillian and Cait are hanging out on a walkway to the beach in the Wilderness park area east of Cape Town. Here we beach combed and kyaked, and I fell off a cliff while looking at a bird, but I'm alright!

These are a couple of photos from the top of Table Mountain in Cape Town. We climbed up through some ridiculous winds that were trying to blow us down the mountain. It took us 3 hours. It was freezing at the top so we drank 2 hot chocolates and then took the cable car back down to the base. Jillian took an alternate route and got a little lost so she finally appeared at the bottom about four hours later looking like she had just bushwacked her way through a jungle!

To the right is my birthday cake specially "baked" for me by Cait and Jenny. It was a sleeve of thick white chocolate around raspberry tart--delicious! We hung out at the backpackers that night and marvelled at the stories of some American volunteers from the Congo who were staying there. Below is me asking the time from someone with very small ears so I had to lean over and shout.

This is the view from the Pikes Peak route that we took to get back to Cape Town coming from The Cape of Good Hope. Below is Jillian, Jenny, Cait and I posing on the cliff's edge.


Below Cait is charming some of the Jack Ass penguins we saw at the penguin colony we stopped at at the way to the Cape of Good Hope.