Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! I am sitting in the library trying to be productive, but all I got accomplished was renting a car for this weekend and signing up for the GRE. This week has been pretty easy going so far. Monday started off with disaster. I woke up with a bunch of ants on my floor, and that wasn’t even the disgusting part. I went to the restroom and when I passed the garbage can there were a bunch of maggots flooding out of the trash. Then I looked behind me again and they were spewing into my room. I was completely grossed out, and told Becca I couldn’t run until they were cleaned up. I had to wait for the maids to come so that I could borrow their vacuum to sweep up the mess. It happens because we don’t take out trash out as soon as we should I guess? I think I am a neat person, so I keep the kitchen clean. The rest of the day was normal, I went to class and later that night did some homework. Tuesday Becca and I ran about 5 miles. I only had one class and from there I sat in the library and used up some free internet. My internet stick ran out and it is such a hassle to get internet around here so I finally settled on getting the internet for Annies. It works well sometimes, but if the wind picks up you can see it get very slow. Wednesday was like every other Wednesday, I didn’t have class so I got some stuff done around my room and went food shopping. Grocery shopping is so much easier now with my bike. Volunteering today was a lot of fun, like always. There was a bingo game going on when we walked into Masifunde today. They had to mark their spaces when they figured out which two multipliers made up the number on their card. There was a lot of commotion and I am pretty sure everyone in the room had at least one bingo. Once they were finished with the game, we moved into the study hall and started on their work. I sat down with a young girl in the 5th grade named Leslie (although that is probably not how you spell it, but how it sounds to me). We had to study for her history test she had the following day. She was learning all about Egypt and the Nile River so we went over all her questions on her study guide. I quizzed her once and then it seemed as if she wasn’t truly remembering everything, so I asked if it would be okay if I made her a mock test that she could take and she could ask me questions as she went along. She did well, but she did have to ask me a lot of questions as we went through and I gave her clues when she needed them. I told her to make sure that she looked over this again before the test because it will help. Next I helped a younger girl, who usually I don’t see there, read. We read through a book and I noticed every word that I told her how to say, she remembered. I thought that was great seeing as she just isn’t repeating me, she is actually learning. We then read through a story about chickens and she had to write if she would ever want to have a chicken as a pet. She said no, because they are too noisy! Once I was done with her, it was almost time to go. I went to sit with Jessica to check her long division, which I haven’t done in years. She got most of them right and only made a few mistakes. Since she was done with everything, her attention was turned to cracking my fingers again. I think this is an area I still need work with, I have a hard time getting kids to refocus after something else catches their attention. I think I just have to be more assertive to reach this goal and I think that will be hard for me. I learned today while joking around with Jessica, that I still am a kid at heart, and sometimes it is also hard for me to focus when there isn’t busy work keeping me involved. After volunteering a bunch of us took a taxi out to central to our reservations for an Ethiopian meal. I have never had their cuisine, but was told it was going to be really spicy and it was! This wasn’t like a normal restrauant though, we had to call and make reservations because we basically ate at some ladies house. It is like a dining room in the back of a store and I believe she lives above it. She was the nicest lady ever and it was only 40 Rand for all you could eat. She cooked so much food that we had enough so that everyone could take some home with them! I went right to bed that night because I had a i2P skype conference to discuss the upcoming expeditions! It is so exciting to be involved with that organizations because they are evolving so much and doing so much for all the school following along all over the world. Unfortunately, the call was at 9pm EST meaning I had to be up at 3am. I took about an hour and a half nap after that and then Becca and I met around 530 to go for a sun rise run! We ran down along the beach and although there were a lot of clouds, the scenery was still very pretty. There were a lot of people out and about in the morning jogging, biking and swimming. They are all probably training for the IronMan here in April. After our 9 miles I showered and headed to class. After Xhosa class, the rest of the afternoon was spent trying to figure out which car to rent for this weekend. I accomplished a lot that day like getting the car, signing up for the GRE and catching up on my emails. Since it was St. Patrick’s Day we obviously drank all day. South Africans don’t celebrate the holiday and think that Americans are crazy because it isn’t even our holiday to celebrate and its just another excuse to drink. We got green food coloring and dyed everyones beer green so that everyone could be festive! We played some flipcup with the plastic cups we have been stealing (collecting) from the bars around here since they don’t sell them anywhere. South Africans don’t really know the game so we had to teach most of them. We then went out to ladies night and danced till about 2am. All in all it was a great St. Patty’s Day! Although I wish I could have been downtown with all my volleyball girls back home!!!