Winding Down and Gearing Up

The semester is over a week from Friday. After that we have three weeks of exams beginning May 31. I cannot believe how quickly things have gone by. It’s crazy. I only have one more paper due (thank God) and then I’m done until exams. I only have two exams (thank God, again). I have a take home exam for my WAC seminar and then an art history exam on June 11.

Grace and I have planned a trip to Kruger National Park (supposedly the best in all of Africa) and Mozambique for a little over a week. We’re leaving May 24 and flying up to Johannesburg. From there we’re getting a ride to Nelspruit (outside of Kruger). We’re then spending one night camping in Kruger which should be incredible. We’re also visiting the Blyde River Canyon which looks a lot like the Grand Canyon. I can’t wait. It looks incredible up there. Then on the 28^th we’re taking a Greyhound into Mozambique and staying in Maputo until the 31^st. On the 31^st we’re taking the bus back to Nelspruit, staying there for the night and flying back to PE on June 1^st. I’m really excited for this trip. It should be amazing and certainly an adventure. We get to take our malaria pills which excites us for some reason. Also, we get to see our first country outside South Africa, which is an amazing opportunity. On top of that we will get to see our first lion! How stereotypically American (according to South Africans). What can I say? I want to see a lion in the wild!

I’ll then be in Grahamstown from June 1^st to the 11^th. I have my exam on the 11^th then I pick Dave up from the airport on the 12^th. We’re then spending two days in PE on the Indian Ocean, then another two days in Addo National Park (the closest national park to where I am). On the 16^th we’ll come to Grahamstown to pick up Grace and the three of us are roadtripping to Cape Town again on the Garden Route. We’re stopping at a few of the places that we stopped at last time, but for the most part everything is new. We’re spending our first night in Jeffrey’s Bay because we loved the hostel last time and they cook great South African food. It’s jus t a great place with great people and a lot of fun. The next day we’ll go to Storms River to do the world’s highest bungee jump. I’m really excited for that. We’ll stay there for the night. The next day we’ll stop in Plettenberg Bay for lunch (I found this to be the most beautiful place I’ve been here). From there we’re going up to the Cango Caves which are supposed to be fantastic. They were recommended to me by a lot of people, so I wanted to see them before I headed home. After that we’re going to Cape Agulhas, the lowest point in Africa – where the Indian and Atlantic Oceans meet – to go whale watching, as it will be whale season. We’re then staying there for the night. The next day we head to Cape Town for four days. In Cape Town we’re going to do everything we didn’t do before – the Cape Peninsula, Robben Island, general exploring. We also have to pick up things we neglected to get before. I’m really glad we’re going back. My last trip to Cape Town didn’t end well, so I’m hoping this will make up for it. On the 24^th we’re taking an overnight Greyhound back to Grahamstown. Then it’s time for Festival!

Those are my plans for the next month or so. I’m really excited for everything that’s coming up. It’s going to be a lot of fun and great experiences for everyone. I can’t believe that we’re already halfway through May. I’m going to be home before I know it, which is both bad and good. I can’t wait to be back at home. I miss a lot of things. But at the same time, this places feels a lot like home now and it will be hard to leave. I don’t want to say goodbye to the Eluxolweni Boys, and the Nyaluza kids and the women at the Raphael Centre. It’s going to kill me!

This experience has been life changing, but I don’t know if I’ll fully appreciate the magnitude until I go home. We’ll see. Until then, there’s still a country to explore, fun to be had, an exhibit to prepare and kids to teach.

Camping & Addo

I am exhausted after our second trip. Yesterday the WAC kids left bright and early for a nature reserve. We arrived around noon and cooked up some egg and cheese sandwiches for lunch and hung out until our guides took us for a walk through part of the nature reserve. We walked for awhile and our guides, whom we found out later we both younger than all of us, pointed out interesting things like aardvark burrows and termite mounds. We walked for awhile and they showed us a pond we could go swimming in. We walked back to the luxury campsite carrying the wood for our braii and the six of us that were going back to swim changed and we headed back to the pond. As we were walking it started raining, but we were all still excited for the swim. We all headed into the murky water. It was so nice after the hot day. Once we were in the water and we looked down at our limbs we realized that we were the color of Oompa Loompas. It was funny/disgusting. We swam for awhile and Bryce, Kevin and Kieran found overhangs for us to jump off of into the water. It was a lot of fun. We got a chance to test out the waterproof capability of my digital camera, producing several portraits of Bryce, Sonya and me in the orange water. We all walked back after our swim to take showers in the outdoor showers. Each tent, which were very, very nice, had an outdoor bathroom with it. They were nice bathrooms, not like an outhouse, it just looked like a regular bathroom with three. So when you were showering/using the bathroom you were just out in the open. We all ended up taking naps and meeting up a little later for our braii. The boys had a tough time getting the fire started, but in the end we had a great flame-grilled meal of steak, sausage, garlic bread, veggie burgers and salad, fruit and wine. It was delicious. Afterwards we all stayed up for a few hours, enjoyed some drinks and one another's company and talked for a few hours. It was an incredibly funny/interesting/unforgettable conversation. The boys are crazy.

We had to wake up at 7am to leave for Addo and we all crawled out of our tents and onto the bus for the trip to Addo National Park. The scenery along the drive was beautiful. There are just these rolling hills and mountains. Everything is so green and lush. It's gorgeous. At one point we saw a pack of baboons on the side of the road. That was really cool! There were baboons at the campsite; we could hear them, but we never saw any.

We arrived at the park for our Game Drive. Our driver was very fun and the drive was really exciting. Our first animal spotting was an elephant near the road. From there we saw many more elephants at the watering holes (Addo is known primarily as an elephant park, although they have the "big seven"). We also saw warthogs, kadoo, antelope, ostrich, zebra, buffalo, turtles and African birds. It was all very cool. The zebras were close to the road and the a turtle and kadoo crossed the street in front of us. This was something I've always wanted to do. It was amazing seeing the animals in their natural setting. The elephants were very entertaining. They were playful and they had babies with them, it was very cute. Up close a zebra's stripes look painted on. Warthogs are much cuter than they look. Unfortunately we didn't see any lions, but I'm not going home without seeing them. The surroundings at Addo were absolutely beautiful. The mountains and the billowing clouds. It was breathtaking. I plan to return before I go back to the States.


Be sure to check out my Flickr page (link to the right) to see all of the pictures!

Quickie.

Tomorrow morning we are leaving for Addo Elephant Park where we will spend the night on a game reserve. We're going to be camping and having a real South African braii (BBQ). It should be a lot of fun and we're going to get to see some real game! I'm excited. I'll be sure to post pictures Sunday night.

Also, I start teaching art classes at the Raphael Center on Wednesday. That should be exciting. I'm hoping to start receiving donations of art supplies for the classes that I will teach there and at Amasango. It's really hard to get things going without art supplies, but I have faith that I will receive enough donations to do my classes and then have new supplies to leave them with. At the Raphael Center I'm going to be doing a photo-journal project that will put a face to HIV/AIDS. I want to show the real lives of real people dealing will the virus. For that I would like to provide each person with a disposable camera to take pictures of their homes, their lives and what may be left of their families. This is going to be a costly project, so I'm especially asking for donations for this. I think that it will be well worth it since the head of the Raphael Center, Jabu, has now told me a couple of times that she will be getting me exhibition space at the National Arts Festival in June/July. This will be huge. I can't think of anything more exciting! Grace and I flew here separately from everyone else in order to attend the festival and this is the second biggest arts festival in the world. I couldn't be more pleased.

Things are really moving for me here and so far I've had some really enriching experiences, especially because of Jason. No one else has experienced anything like we have, so far. Grace and I were just saying today how lucky we were that he was asked to give a talk in our WAC class. I would never have gotten to meet these really special kids and I can't wait to be a part of their lives!



[anyone interested in donating art supplies please email me at karenhye@aol.com. thank you]