AlexRoosenburg

*My apologies on the delayed final South Africa post! Coming back to the USA, sorting through jetlag, and celebrating my birthday took all my time and energy!* So, in our final week in Cape Town, we were partnered up with our Edunova counterparts and each partnership was assigned one of the workshop schools. We then spent a few hours per day in that school, following up with the teachers that attended our workshop, meeting with the administration, and helping to get the ball rolling on the IT goals for that school. Every school was very different. Some looked similar in construction to the school we'd held the workshops at, but had newer computer labs and systems, others were in far worse shape and in very dangerous areas. The school that I was assigned to- Bongolethu Primary ... read more

When I wrote last weekend, I was nervous about how the workshops would go this week: how it would feel to take a step back and just mentor the process, how the facilitators would do, how the teachers would be. Turns out, my nerves were unecessary, and everything went really well! We ended up having about 30 teachers show up (50 were registered, but it is their holiday time and several were probably putting relaxation on a higher priority rung than ICT workshops), and we split them into two groups: those who had attended an Edunova workshop previously, and those who hadn’t. We had 2 locations to use, and the returning teachers went to the Edunova center for their sessions, while the first-timers worked at Mkhanyiseli Primary School (near to the Edunova center, also in the ... read more

Well, we are officially in Cape Town now! Work is in full swing, but life is comfortably less hectic than it was when we hit the ground running in the Eastern Cape. On our way out of town on Saturday, we drove to The Lion Park. A little black sign on the side of the road with a dangerously sharp hairpin turn to go into a driveway of someone’s farm property. We paid our entrance fee of about $5, bought one of the little optional feed bags, and were given the instruction of “the wild dogs are here, the cheetah is there, the lions are over there, and there are 4 new little lion cubs that you can go in to play with, but just be warned that they do bite and scratch.” And with that, ... read more

And thus, the next adventure begins! From the beginning. I made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare and met up with Sarah, the other volunteer on the programme with me. We chatted a bit, until the plane started boarding and it was time to face the 16 hour longest. flight. ever. Realistically, I’m sure there are longer flights, but this one was pretty darn long. I watched 2 movies, until my ears started hurting from the headset provided by the airlines, read some of my book, slept as much as I could, and fought off my leg cramps as discretely as possible so as not to continually kick the seat in front of me, nor wake up my seat partner and I deftly hopped over her to wander the aisles. My flight ... read more

Well, I finally did it! I conquered my goal to reach the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro! It only took two tries! What made this trip really special as well, was that I was able to do it with my mother, and two great family friends. Mom arrived mid-week while I still had 2 days of work. She had some time to relax and get used to the time change, while I tended to the last few things that I needed to do before leaving. On Thursday, April 1, we left with plenty of time to get to the airport and be there 1.5 hours before our flight. Unfortunately, holiday traffic was against us, and it took well over 2.5 hours to get there! Needless to say, we missed our flight, and there were no more flights ... read more