Saturday, May 18:

Today was a free day, and I got to Skype my Dad and sister, Laura for the first time being here. I tried to show them the Sister's guard dogs outside, and they were both coming over to me, and one of them decided to just lay his head on my lap while I was talking to them. Super cute. I ended up coming back from the house late, and went to bed early to be up for church early the next morning.  

Friday, May 17:

Every Friday is a shortened day for the students. I had another “session” with the girl who had came to talk to me on Wednesday, and then worked on the powerpoint for Sister Margaret in her office. I went back to the Sister's house with them, and continued to work on the powerpoint while waiting to skype one of my good friends. (This 6 hour time difference is really hard for trying to skype people). I tried Rooibus tea today, a South African tea. It was horrible just black, but adding milk and sugar made it a lot better. Anezka came back today from the retreat she was observing, and it was nice to see her again.

Thursday, May 16

Last night Anezka brought out fruit tea from her room and said her mom had sent it to her yesterday in the mail. I was going to ask if you could get it here, and apparently you can't in the main stores. While talking about over-priced foods, she was really surprised that we can buy candies in movie theaters, when in Czech, they only sell popcorn and drinks.

Today at school in the morning, I walked into the grade 1 class, and they were all lined up in two lines singing without a teacher. (A lot of the time, the grade 1s are better behaved than the older grades). It was really fun to hear them singing in Zulu and English. I was then needed in the grade 3 class for a while, and we went over their homework from the day before, and then Sister Margaret showed me what she wanted me to do for a powerpoint presentation I volunteered to work on. After that, Esther and I went to talk with the Aunt of a child who was “missing” from school. She lived in a nicer part of Finetown, and here the families live in actual houses (though they are very simple and small), and have electricity and water in their individual houses. We sat in their small house for a long time, but besides the little bit of English spoken, I could not understand anything. Esther was finding out what happened to the child, since she had not returned to school in a while. It turned out to be a custody battle case, as the government gives money to households with children to help families. We had tea in their house, and then left. On the journey home, we ran into two young ladies working for the government passing out pamphlets with information on HIV/AIDS and Women abuse. Doctors-in-training came to the school today from the University of Johannesburg to see children who were sick and to give our vitamins and medicine to them. They do this work for free for our school, and they come every Thursday after school. After school, I showed Magda what “Angry Birds” was on my ipod, and she got addicted to the game. She had never seen/played it before.