Day 1

17 March 2009
Today was our first full day in Stellenbosch. We got to our houses last night around 1am, following approximately 28 hours of travel (not including the drive from Grosse Pointe to Grand Rapids). The flights, though exhausting, were relatively uneventful. Since Hayley is dying to know, I watched Four Christmases, The Changeling, and part of a movie called Hallam Foe, which I didn’t like enough to finish. They also has Slumdog Millionaire, but I didn’t feel like watching that for the first time on an airplane, and Doubt, which seemed more serious than I wanted. They are still playing Mamma Mia. I have no idea why, but several of the people on the trip ended up watching it. It was a good thing we had so many Abba fans, since the only CD in the bus that picked us up happened to be an Abba CD. Unfortunately, I am not much of an Abba fan, and now I cannot seem to get “Fernando” out of my head.
But you don’t read this blog to hear about my taste in dated European pop groups.
There are five families hosting the 12 Grand Valley students in Stellenbosch. We are all ridiculously close to each other: two of the families are six and seven houses down from us; another family, the Taylors, is about a 2 minute walk away. David Taylor is the person in charge of the program in Stellenbosch, he set us up with our families and we meet at his house in the morning to get picked up for school.
This morning, David and Sandy, the GVSU program head, took us on a tour of all three of the school we’ll be working at. Three students are at Cloetusville Secondary School, five are at A.F. Louw Primary School, and four are at Idasvallei Primary School. We visited the schools in that order, meeting each of the principals, touring each school, and at A.F. Louw we were even lucky enough to have tea with the other teachers!
Tomorrow will be my first day at Idasvallei. There are about 900 students and 28 teachers. In South Africa, the government agrees to pay for a certain amount of teachers. Then, the governing body of the school decides how they will allocate their funds, and the most important thing to spend money on is teachers. Four or five of the Idasvallei teachers are paid for by the school. By adding those teachers, they can bring their average class size down to about 40 students. FORTY! I thought my 27 were a handful!
In 2007 they spent a lot of money to build a new media center. It’s pretty much empty. It’s sad, because the room is really nice but they just don’t have any books for it. I’m glad that we at least brought what resources we could with us. Their pride and glory of the school was also built in 2007: a computer lab. The lab is great, I would say it’s better than a lot of public school labs in the States. The government paid for half, and then Idasvallei was able to raise enough money from its funds to make it twice the size it would have been. They’re right to be proud of it.
After touring the schools, we were dropped off in downtown Stellenbosch to explore a bit. We found the bank, had lunch, picked up some stuff we needed (hair dryer, cell phones, etc) and then learned how to walk back home from there. It’s about a 15 minute walk, I think. We stopped about half way to see where Sandy stays.
When we got home our host family was waiting for us! I live with my friend Heather, from Grand Valley. We’re in a gorgeous house with a mom, a 12-year-old daughter, Raiatea (ryh-TEE), and a 7-year-old daughter, Genove (jen-oh-VEE). We gave them their gifts, including a Motown CD, some baseball caps, the book M is for Mitten and ton of Disney stuff, and they seemed to really love them all. Then we all had dinner together, played some Wii (I’m really good at tennis and bowling!) and then the girls went to bed.
The family also has a dog: a German Shepherd puppy named Luce. When I say puppy, I mean in age alone. This dog is NOT small, and unluckily for Heather and I, he doesn’t speak English. So when we tried to tell him “out!,” “no!,” and “come here!,” this morning, he was less than responsive. I have the feeling the only Afrikaans I will know when I leave will be commands. So far I’ve learned “aff!,” (off) and “eit!,” (out). Those are merely phonetic estimations, but he actually listened to me when I said “eit,” today, so basically I am a Goddess of Afrikaans.
In other exciting house news: I have my own room! I stay in the guest room and Heather is staying in Raiatea’s room. This means that I have a glorious full sized bed, and Heather has a glorious full sized poster of the Jonas Brothers over her bed. I think this is an even trade. Heather may disagree. We can both, however, agree on how awesome our view is! I’ll have to take a picture, but ours windows face the mountains. It’s incredible. We also have a pool in the backyard, which is almost as incredible. Unfortunately it was quite cold here today, so the pool must wait for another day.
It’s nearing 10pm here, and I have to wake up at 6am to teach tomorrow, so I’ll stop this now. I’ll try to get it uploaded as soon as I can, but I probably won’t get them up daily. Sorry if you’re reading this in the future, but I wrote it on the day that it’s dated, so hopefully that will give you an idea of what point in the trip I’m at (though day one should really be quite apparent).