Weekend Is Around The Corner.

The week has come to an end! I definitely have fallen into a routine. Wednesday, the only activity on my agenda was volunteering at Masifunde, but that wasn’t until two. I would say that the most exciting part of my day consisted of all of us getting our bikes delivered, finally! I have never been so happy because this means I don’t have to walk behind slow people on my way to class. I can just zoom by them, not to mention leave for class about 20 minutes later than usual! After we got our bikes, I laid by the pool all afternoon and read my book. I later then went over to the library before volunteering so that I could check out a few books for my paper that is due on Thursday. I must say this: the library is probably larger (considering square footage) then all of Lake Erie’s buildings. I got lost a few times and I was only on the 1st and 2nd floor. People are checking books out, some people are on the computer, others are just chatting. Our tour guide told us on the first day that if you actually want to get work done you should go to the North Campus library, which is actually closer for me anyways, but they have less books. We can also get wifi in the library, which is another reason why I think I am going to be able to call that my second home. I checked out a total of four books, which is four more than I have ever checked out at Lake Erie. Once everyone was done in the library, we made our way over to be picked up for volunteering. The ride felt shorter this time because I actually knew where we were going. Once we got there we got right into the kids homework. I had a boy this time, but I won’t even try to spell his name because I know I will butcher it. He was eleven and didn’t have all that much homework. We breezed through his math and moved onto reading. You could tell that he loved to read from the minute he started to read his list of spelling words to me. They were simple words like this, those, were, where, Wednesday, and he had no trouble saying any of them. Next he had to write them out as I read them to him. He did wonderful and only made a few errors with words that sound similar but are spelled differently, like where and wear. I gave him a sentence for the words like this, but I still think he was thinking in the order the words were on the paper, not so much about what the words actually mean. After that he wanted to read some more and we had a little time to kill. He picked out a book from the front room about goblins stealing stuff from the toys in a house. I was the narrator and he was the voices of the toys and goblins. He even adjusted his voice for who was talking. Goblins were a low deep voice, while the duck and other toys had light and airy voices. As he was leaving he told me he wanted to be an artist, I said painting or drawing? He told me he wanted to write stories, that kind of artist. He also told me he would write me a story for next week. Next up was Jessica, the girl I had last week. I wish I could think of a word to describe her. She is super smart, but also like a little diva. The only work she had was to write resolutions to some conflicts she might experience at school. Her topics were; two girls fighting over a boy and gossiping behind someones back. Her answer to the first one by saying they should ask the boy to pick one of the girls. I asked her how she would feel if she was the girl who wasn’t picked and she just sort of looked at me. I told her that if it were me, I would say the two girls should both find new boys for each of them so that they can stay best friends. She liked my answer so she wrote it in her journal. Next she said that people gossip in her school all the time and when she hears it she just ignores it. I believed her because she seems like she wouldn’t care what others thought of her. All she had left to do was color and decorate her paper. As she was coloring we talked about a whole bunch of stuff. She even sang the South African National Anthem to me. She told me all about her camping trip her class is going on right around Easter and showed me all the days of school she has off because of Holidays. I told her about Halloween and April Fools Day. She liked the idea of getting a bunch of candy in a pillowcase just for dressing up. I like Jessica because she is smart and knows when to get her work done, but she also is extremely funny including all her friends in homework club too!
After volunteering, I literally read the entire night. Can you believe I am still not done with this book, I think it might be like eight or nine hundred pages. This class is killing me and is about to ruin my weekend. It isn’t like I could have started any earlier either because we got the assignment the first day and that is when I got the book and started reading. I stayed in while others went out. The next morning I made my way to my 745am class on the tenth floor of the main building. From that floor you can see everything from the rugby stadium down through campus to the ocean and almost into town. Classes went by quick today, so I made my way over to the library, again. I sat at a cubicle study desk (What are these called?!) and worked on getting sources for my paper, I need ten. Afterwards Chelsea and I road back to Annie’s dropped off our bags and went to get pizza to take to Kristen’s for lunch. It was buy one get two free! We tore through the boxes pretty quickly then polished off Kristen’s brownies and ice cream. This is where things get a little crazy. On our bikes, Chelsea and I decided it was time for our group to have some plastic solo cups (if you don’t know what these are you are probably a South African) We automatically knew that they weren’t going to have solo’s, but we thought for sure we could find something similar to a plastic cup. I can’t even tell you the distance we covered on our bikes to find these cups. We would walk in, Chelsea would ask “Do you guys have plastic cups” and everyone would proceed to show us little white foam cups, which are very unreliable when trying to play flip cup or pong. We checked places like the hardware store, Wimpy, Pick n Pay, literally everywhere. We were on a mission and failure was not an option. We rode down to Barney’s, a local bar in which we usually go on the weekends. They were able to give us 3. They told us they don’t get their shipment until Friday mornings. Everywhere we went we asked if they could point us in the direction of someone who might have these cups, everyone did, but every next place told us they didn’t. We noticed that anywhere that sold ice cream had a thinner plastic cup and we were desperate. Chelsea decided to switch up our tactics and say that they cups were needed for a project. We finally came up with 5 small cups from Steers; that was all that they could sell us. On the way back, we tried the other Steers that is closer to Annies. Same outcome! We arrived only two and a half hours later with thirteen plastic cups. Flip cup commenced in about thirty minutes after that and they we walked down the street to the braai in honor of Teresa’s birthday! They had a bunch of food and they brought out a cake and we sang happy birthday (in English thank god!) Then we went out to Balizza, which has ladies night on Thursday where all ladies get in free. I’ll end the story here and recap the rest of my weekend on Monday! Cheers!