GOOOOOALL!!!!

Sunday, June 13th 2010
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Sunday was a very lazy day, frankly. I slept til 11:30 AM (GLORIOUS.), watched soccer, skyped and chatted with family/friends, watched soccer some more… My whole life really has just revolved around soccer lately: which really hasn’t been a bad thing. Honestly, I wasn’t really excited about the World Cup until I got over here; once you get watching the games, the national pride and excitement over this competition really takes hold. Germany played an amazing game against Australia, even though I wanted the ‘Socceroos’ (that’s actually the team’s official name. wow.) to prevail.

Monday, June 14th, 2010
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Today was my first new teaching day with the women of Philisa Abafazi, since I was taking over classes that Petra used to teach with them. I waited for the women to arrive and we had three out of a possible six attend. I asked them what they felt familiar with in terms of programs, and most of them said they weren’t comfortable with anything; that makes it easy for teaching though – I just teach everything! We started out with the basics of Word and Windows. Unlike the children, the women were much more unsure of themselves when using the mice, keyboards, and touchpads. We had to spend extra time working on basic concepts like moving the mouse, using scrollbars, and highlighting text (this was particularly challenging). You really don’t realize how many little details go into something as simple as typing a document until you start explaining it! Anyway, we’re making good progress, and I have several more groups to teach throughout the week. I spent the remaining time at work fixing up the website some more (we got the internet back, but only for very limited use.) and doing some things with the Philisa Abafazi logo.

That night, we celebrated Ryan (my housemate)’s birthday. Philly had a bunch of family members over, and one of the other volunteers came as well. We had a huge spread of food (pies, samosas, doughnuts, cappuccino muffins.. so much good food) and we toasted to Ryan’s health and well-being. Just like when I attended the other birthday party, I noticed that the local culture emphasizes the importance of birthdays in a way that the West often doesn’t. They take it as a time for spiritual reflection, gratitude, and welcoming. Most of Philly’s family had just met Ryan that night, yet they were so earnest and warm about wishing Ryan the best for the future – they also told him to only say positive things about South Africa when he got home ;)

While we ate and celebrated, we watched the amazing Italy-Portugal game. I really thought Portugal was going to pull out a victory after that amazing first goal; oh well.. we’ll see how they do in the next games.

Sorry no pictures recently, maybe next time I’ll have some interesting stuff to share ;) Goooo BRAZIL! (And the US)