Julian & Nicole on Devil's Peak
Taylor and I have officially taken over Ms. Mtiya’s 10th grade classes. Quizzes, homework, lesson plans; they’re all up to us. We’ve also managed to make the classes somewhat interesting. In one of our lessons we made a game that involved copies of South African money. Whenever a group of learners got a question right they would take money from the other groups. This was the first class that we taught where 100% of the learners stayed awake. Kids were making it rain left and right and they actually retained some of the information that we taught them the next day.
Yesterday we experienced some serious language barrier problems at the job. We were having the kids make political cartoons on slavery and asked them to put captions at the bottom. They didn’t know what captions are though. We explained it as a short line that fits the topic of their cartoon. They interpreted that as writing a paragraph on why slavery is bad. It wasn’t what we wanted but we’ve learned to be patient.
Last weekend was a crazy one. It started Wednesday with Stoanes, as usual. Thursday was class and then a sunset and full moon hike on Lions Head Mountain. On Friday Logan and I whipped out our new dance move at the Assembly in town. Saturday was an early morning hike that started at Rhodes Memorial which is located at the top of the UCT campus. The trail that Logan, Nicole and I took brought us around Devil’s Peak, up Newlands Ravine, down some random slope and finally up Devils Peak. To get back down we went down Devil’s peak, across half of Table Mountain and down to Tafelberg Road. It was definitely the longest hike I’ve done since I’ve been here. In fact, the longest hike I’ve ever done considering I don’t even hike back at home.
So I had a great weekend at that point and figured I’d use Sunday as a day to do all of my homework. I woke up, got my computer out, and was all ready to do work when I heard Kayla talking about Chrystal Pools. She met some friends at Stoanes who are locals and they offered to bring some people to this place about an hour away that has cliff jumping and swimming. Naturally, I decided to let my homework wait and went to have a little fun in the sun.
My activist project is finally underway too! I think. Right now I am torn between working at Thandokhulu High School where I would be doing a technology program with the kids. I’m not too keen with technology but these kids don’t even know how to use Word or make an e-mail. These basic things are necessary for those of who go to college. I’m also considering doing something that is sports oriented with our RA’s other job. I don’t really know the details of it though. Maybe I’ll just do both.
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