Dependancy.

One of the massive differences between England and South Africa is safety. The area where I've lived all my life is amazing. Everybody knows each other and it's all very friendly and safe. It's taken my mother an hour before to make it from one end of our road to the other (and it is not a very long road at all-I could walk the length in 5 mins) because she's stopped to talk to people or people have stopped to talk to her! In Manchester I would go out at night alone and not even think about it, I regularly used to walk home at 2am after babysitting.

Here in SA however it is a totally different matter. Yesterday me and Sarah were on the train (I'm not a huge fan of taking the train because they can be so dangerous here for a white person) and we were the only 2 white people in the whole carriage. And it wasn't an empty carriage. Also, at night, you just do NOT go out alone. I haven't been outside in the dark on my own for nearly 6 months and by the time I get back I won't have been outside on my own for a whole year. It's just not safe. Even in the daytime I've heard of people getting into potentially sticky situations. It makes you so unbelievably dependant on other people. If I want to go to the gym or the shop after dark, I have to find someone else to come with me or I don't go. I used to be so scornful of those girls that need a friend to go to the bathroom with them in case they get lonely or whatever the reason is, but now I've nearly become one of those people. I've become so used to having people around me all the time I find it weird when I'm on my own. Last night one of my roomies was still on holiday and the other 2 were out for the evening. I turned off my laptop at about 12.30 and tried to go to sleep but I couldn't because my room was too quiet. I've not slept a night on my own for nearly 6 months and now it seems that I need other people around me even when I'm sleeping! My roomies came back before I fell asleep so everything was OK!

5(ish) Years Gone

About 5 years ago my dad took me to the Body Worlds exhibition at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. It was very good, but I can't really remember very much of the information. I never would have even dreamed that in 5 years time I would be in South Africa or that the next time I would see it would be at the Waterfront in Cape Town! It makes me wonder what I'll be up to in the next 5 years. I know what I hope to be doing (My future plans involve me gaining a secret identity and saving the world multiple times, becoming a world-wide hero and gaining lots of hard-to-get awards before retiring from the world-saving profession and becoming a rocket scientist. Oh and I'll be living in an eco-friendly house about 10, 000 feet in the sky that has zero gravity machines so I could fly) but I wonder if I actually will be doing anything I plan for?!

At Long Last!

Here is my post on volunteers with education. I've calmed down significantly since I thought of writing this and I've had a day and a half off, but I still want to write it because I find the subject quite interesting.

Basically there are a few volunteers here that have gained some kind of qualification in child care from their home country. They've come to volunteer at the home usually as work experience I think. But I have a slight problem with this. They've had their training and education in a first world country and therefore it applies to first world children's homes. This is not one. All the points I make from now on are based on working a weekend in my usual house with a volunteer who has an education but to my knowledge has never worked in that house in the day (but had done night-shift there). This volunteer is German, but statistically that was almost a certainty! I also have nothing against this volunteer, it is just the only experience I have of working with someone who has the education, I have heard plenty from others about similar stuff.

There are several differences between South Africa and Germany, culture being quite a big one. I don't know what the laws are in Germany, but in England, corporal punishment (say to hit your child when they've done something wrong) is illegal and has been for longer than I can remember. In South Africa, it has only been made illegal recently (I tried to google it, but I'm at the gym and they block things), this doesn't mean that the Child-Care workers (CCW) hit the children, if they did, they would almost certainly lose their jobs. But because the idea of NOT hitting your kid is a new one, I believe parents still do it. South African education concerning child-care is also probably different as is its application. When you're working in a house with 14 kids aged between 6 and 11, you know that there are certain things that would definitely benefit a child, but actually being able to do those things can be virtually impossible. I know that reading to a child before bedtime is so much more beneficial that TV. But when you have 14 kids, reading to each one individually wouldn't work because you'd have to start hours before bedtime to get through them all. Reading to them as a group also doesn't really bear thinking about due to the fact you've got 7 girls and 7 boys, there is no way on this earth you could ever get all 14 to make up their mind on one story and due to the different mental ages some stories wouldn't be suitable to some kids and if you read a younger story, the more mature kids would get bored. On the point of boredom, I have tried reading to them a couple of times before, 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory', and they cannot for the lives of them sit still long enough for me to finish a chapter. A book just doesn't have enough visual stimulation for them, however many pictures it has.

I also have an issue with putting labels on a kid. We were watching a movie with them on Saturday evening and one of the girls kept getting up and wandering round, or going upstairs or into the kitchen. Most of the other kids were sat still watching the film, some of the other girls were laying on the floor doing colouring books. The volunteer turns to me and asks me if I think the girl who keeps getting up has hyperactivity or ADHD or ADD or whatever. Now if a child has a real problem (and I'm not saying ADHD and ADD aren't real problems, let me make my point) and putting a name to it means the child can receive the proper medication or therapy or whatever they need then by all means label away. My problem is the eagerness which people now have to jump to diagnosing things. This girl didn't want to sit and watch the film so the volunteer assumes the kid has ADHD or ADD, in all likely-hood, the child had probably just seen the film several times already that week and as she's one of the oldest mentally, she may well just be past the stage where she watches a film over and over again. She was probably just bored..

I guess my problem is actually with the attitude these volunteers have. They've got it into their heads that even though they're only here for 3/6/12 months, they can change the whole system and that they know better. I think they should come with the mentality that they've been able to learn so much in school and now they can go out and experience what they've learnt in the real world. And that the real world is often different to the perfect scenarios depicted in their text books (especially if it's in a completely different culture). I also slightly resent working in a house for 4 months and someone coming in and saying they know better ways of doing things that they learnt in Germany/Japan/England where-ever. I've spent 4 months learning these kids and what makes them tick. Don't get me wrong, I love working with new people who don't know the kids as well, I can get so many new ideas of what might work and what might not. But I just don't like it when folks come in thinking they know better because they have some fancy certificate. Each child is individual and different as is each day. I don't think you can teach those things.

Table Mountain-Attempt #2

 Ok, I will probably get round to writing the post about volunteers with degrees, but I wanted to do a quick post on what I've been up to today. Me and 3 other volunteers went up Table Mountain (the lazy way-by cable car) for the sunset special-get a return for the price of a single. It was baie lekker! The sunset was spectacular, you could see the sun move! I've never had that! And me and Sarah saw the magic rainbow sky again. This is something we first saw when we went to Cornwall together, and it's when the sun sets and you can see the fractured light and it's like the whole sky has become a rainbow!

Long Week

I've nearly finished my first long week in my house. I refuse to complain about the work because I'm very lucky that they've allowed me to change my shift but stay in the same house, but there is a post that's been forming in my head over the last few days about volunteers with some form of higher education in social work or child development or whatever, but I'll probably write it tomorrow when I'm off if ever.

Getting Fat and Being Happy

There is a particular issue at the Home that I don't think I've touched upon in my blog. Weight. One of the first things new volunteers get told is that they will put on weight. There is no question as to it happening, the only differential is how much weight they will acquire. If they are only here for 3 months or they are determined not to gain weight they probably will put on less than those who are here for a year and don't care!

Now I'm not in anyway skinny. I'm decidedly short and fat, I was when I arrived and I will be when I leave. I don't care how I look, I don't care how other people see me, actually no that's a lie, I do care what people think of me, just not enough to change for them. So it interests me how obsessed some volunteers are with how they look. There is a fairly new volunteer who refuses to accept that she will gain weight and has someone drive her some place every day and she runs for 20 minutes before she gets picked up again. A lot of volunteers start off like this before they get bored and resigned to their fate and just be happy. Or there's the volunteers who don't think they're going to get fat, then get a bit chubby round the edges and attempt diets and going to the gym more often and what-not. It's insane. So many people obsess over the numbers. How many kilos they weigh now, how many kilos they've put on, what size their waist is, blah, blah, blah.

Here at Home we get a plate of hot food every day if we want it. It is usually chicken and rice (sometimes potato or semp) or some kind of pasta, so there's a lot of carbs. And the vegetables are almost always sweetened with cinnamon bark. And then we get donations! Almost every day we get donated food from Woolworths (not the English one, the SA one. Equates to English Waitrose or M&S) or Spar. It's often microwave meals, salads and puddings (all out of date of course) such as ice-cream, chocolate mousse, pastries etc. The Home also gives us peanut butter, bread, (full fat) milk, jam, butter (margarine pretending to be butter) and weetbix. Combine all this food with boredom and you can see why it might be a problem for some people.

My motto: Get fat, be happy.

Feeling like a Father?!

Today was the first day back at school for all the kids. 3 of mine had their first day of high school today and that meant a new uniform. And for 2 of them, that meant their first ever school tie. Now there were 3 volunteers working in the house yesterday as well as the Tannie. The Tannie didn't know how to tie a tie, nor did the other 2 volunteers, so I had to teach the kids how to tie their ties (there is going to be an excessive use of the word 'tie' in this post if you hadn't already noticed!). When I went  to hight school I had to wear a tie, my dad taught me how to tie it, so it was strange to suddenly be teaching my kids how to tie theirs. I certainly wasn't expecting it to be so soon! It sort of sucked actually that I wasn't working this morning to see them off, but that's life. I'm going out at outside time so I can see them then and ask how it went!

Although I'm loving the new shift plan I'm on, I've found some of the kids aren't so keen. Last night when I was saying goodnight to them all, one of the boys asked if I was working tomorrow. Most of them ask me, even when they know the answer. And when I explained to him that it was a different volunteer who he would see every day now, he nearly cried! So I've made a promise to him and one of the girls that I will go and play with them on outside time today and tomorrow. I'll probably get there and they'll be happy playing without me and won't want me to join in, but I'll go anyway...just in case!

End of Something.

It's the last day of the holidays, the kids go back to school tomorrow. So today is a busy day! We (the volunteers have been given our new shifts for the foreseeable future, I've managed to score long week short week (LW/SW) in my usual house. YAY AT LAST! Although this does mean brutal 6am starts, but that's managable, and once I'm up it doesn't seem so bad. So there's a new mon-fri volunteer: a girl who arrived just before the holidays started so doesn't know any of the kids and because the other LW/SW volunteer who's usually in the house is on holiday, there is also a new volunteer on that shift who only arrived about a week ago! So today there are 3 of us working, usually the new LW/SW volunteer wouldn't be working today, but seeing as she doesn't know any of the kids she has to work today to meet them, then she's thrown in at the deep end tomorrow morning when she has to wake them all and get them ready for school! On the note of shift systems, the volunteer who arranges who works where when has deliberately put me and Sarah on the same shift so although we don't work in the same house, we work the same days, hours and have the same off days! I'm so happy! I wanted to ask if he could do that, but the unspoken rule here is that if you ask for something like to work with your friend, they'll put you on opposite shifts to make a point so I didn't.

As for who's in the house, it's the usual 13 we had before the holiday (I'm not sure if I ever mentioned, but in November a boy arrived from one of the satellite houses) plus another totally new girl that arrived last week. So we now have 7 girls and 7 boys. Or at least we will have by the end of today, they're still arriving back from their homes!

Holiday Posts

Howzit!

Me and Sarah just finished our 4 day jaunt to Storms River/Tsitsikamma. I had the foresight to take a pad of paper and a pen, so what follows is possibly the longest post I'll ever write (and is also my account of the last 4 days).

7/1/13

Yay, we made it! We're at the Tube 'n Axe backpackers in Tsitsikamma and words cannot describe how beautiful and peaceful it is. It's basically in the middle of nowhere, it's really quiet, it's just so serene and relaxing. A nice change to the constant noise and movement that is the Home (as much as I love it).

The drive, although 11 hours long, was pretty uneventful. We admired a bus drivers reversing skills before he promptly reversed straight into a concrete pillar, partially removing his bumper and fully removing his back window, placing it in a nice little pile very nearly on one of the station workers heads!

We saw quite a lot of wildlife in our 11 hours. I've seen my first live, wild ostrich, eagle and what I'm pretty sure was a springbok but could have been a goat.

As we were leaving the backpackers to get some tea (replace with dinner/supper/evening meal as per region) we saw the baz bus pulling into the hostel with what might have been some Project Trust volunteers but we haven't seen them so we're not sure if it was them or if they're here.

8/1/13

The first day of our holiday was fairly wet. I didn't get up til 10.30 which was nice. I was absolutely shattered from the combination of travelling and not getting a full days sleep after night-shift.

We went on the canopy tour today which was fun. We didn't see a whole lot of birds or animals, but flying through the forest and the view was pretty breathtaking. It began to rain as we finished so we got a bit damp round the edges but the rain cleared the humidity so it was refreshing.

Because the weather was so miserable and we'd not planned anything, we just chilled at the backpackers in the afternoon. Planned the rest of our days and had a few games of pool. Sarah's doing the bungee jump tomorrow and I was half contemplating doing it, but just rocking up, checking out how many skeletons were piled at the bottom then maybe jumping if it didn't look overly terrifying. But Sarah chirpily informed me you have to book first. Sarah has also made the annoyingly valid point that it's only 5 seconds of my life and I probably won't regret doing it, but almost certainly will regret not doing it.

9/1/13

We started our day with the intentions of doing a 26km bike ride in the morning, then Sarah was booked to bungee at 4pm. We had to rent bikes from Tsitsikamma Backpackers and we decided to go with the non-electrical option (electric bikes are for wimps). Just normal, pedal powered mountain bikes. What we got was just that, but massive. I prefer men's bikes, so I was glad when that's what they presented us with. But I like a good women's saddle. This we did not get. Also, the men's bikes were ginormous, the crossbar reached my hips the bikes were so tall!

We set off down the trail, and it was all downhill. All of it. For about 2km. Then we reach a small bridge over where they do the blackwater tubing. And from there on, it was all uphill. For maybe 6km. We gave up part way up this monster hill and maybe an hour of climbing up took us about 5 minutes of free-wheeling down.

We got back to our backpackers with enough time for a cup of tea and a biscuit before getting the shuttle to Bloukrans Bridge. The bridge itself isn't overly impressive, but it is the home of the highest bungee jump in the world. When we arrived I still hadn't decided whether I was going to jump. I wanted to, but I honestly didn't think I would be able to. The barman at our backpackers told me an option was to pay R100 to walk to where they jump from and decide there if you wanted to jump. But when go to the registry desk, Sarah goes first and paid for her jump and they assumed I was jumping too! Decision made.

We spend the next 15 minutes watching 3 other people throw themselves off and we're trying not to panic. After the longest few minutes of my life, I'm shrugging on a harness and walking down to the safety briefing. We're jumping with 4 other people: 2 guys from (I think they said) Africa, a girl from Austria and a guy from New York. We're told we'll have a safety line attached to out harness and the bungee cord to our feet. We will have to stand with our toes over the edge of the bridge, put our arms out to the sides (like we're on the cross) and chin up so we can smile at the camera!

We walk onto the bridge and Sarah has to jump 2^nd after one of the African guys. So she jumps/falls off and the guy points to me to tell me I'm next. I go get strapped up to my safety line, then my ankles are tied together and clipped to what is essentially just several rubber bands strung together. I jump/hop as close as close to the edge as I ever want to be, with 2 guys either side of me making sure I don't fall before I should. They tell me I need to go forward more so my toes are over the edge of the bridge but I'm literally paralysed with fear. I've never EVER been so scared in all my life before. They basically carry me forward before stepping from next to me, to behind me. I can feel them holding onto the back of my harness. I'm trying no to look anywhere. Trying to forget I'm about to willingly chuck myself off a bridge.

Time has never gone so slow.

I can feel myself being pushed forward slowly so I'm leaning out off the bridge as the 2 holding me shout 5,4,3,2,1. They yell BUNGEE as they let go of my harness. I'm already off balance so I start free-falling. It seems like forever and a day before I begin to feel the cord, but I've got my eyes squeezed shut so I can't tell. All of a sudden I've changed direction and instead of falling I'm flying! This happens a few more times until I'm just swinging upside-down by my feet (feeling like the bands around my ankles could slip off at any minute). I try opening my eyes but all I see is a dizzying mess of trees, river and concrete bridge (way to high above me) so I shut them again. So lets clarify: I am currently hanging upside-down by my ankles, 216m under a bridge from and elaborate elastic band, wondering why on earth I'm so easy to persuade and why am I friends with a maniac again. Oh yes, and lets not forget, I am whimpering like a small child.

After the longest winch ride back to the brigde, I'm on solid concrete and feeling immensly proud of myself.

10/1/13

We haven't done anything today. We have both come down with something. I have another horrible head cold and Sarah's got her asthma cough, so we decided against kayaking and instead to have a lazy day at the backpackers. We've had to organise transport to Plettenberg Bay where we can get a shuttle to Knysna Elephant Park. Then we're going to catch our bus from either Knysna or Plett whichever is easier to get to.

In other news, cats in South Africa have scary ninja powers. In addition to the cat that got into a locked house at home, we woke up at 7am this morning after hearing a thump followed by a miaow I look down and there's a cat chilling at the end of my bed in our locked room. It appears to have fallen through the window!

11/1/13

We are both so ill it doesn't even bare thinking about. If we didn't have to do anything or go anywhere today it probably wouldn't be so bad. As it is, we had to be at Knysna Elephant Park this morning at 10am. That finished at maybe 12, giving us until 9pm when our bus comes. 9 hours to kill in Plett.

All we want to do is sleep. Instead we've been to 2 coffee shops before we decided to try and ask a backpackers if we could chill on their sofas for 5 hours. They said yes (albeit slightly reluctantly as we're not baz bus-ing) so that's what we're doing.

Today I rode an elephant called Chaka! It was absolutely breathtaking, elephants are HUGE, who knew?! To get on, you have to go up maybe 7 steps and stand on a platform, the elephant comes along side and Sarah just swings her leg over its back. I am apparently considerably shorter so I had to do a very dignified hop/jump/shuffle movement to not hang off one side. I would say it's mildly similar to riding a horse although I haven't ridden a horse for at least 10 years. An elephant's back is huge so you just straddle it's spine and it lumbers off. It has a very lolloping walk and it's spine rocks from side to side underneath you, it takes a little while to get used to. You really have to relax and roll with it. We then got to feed our elephants a small bucket of fruit and veg. They got beetroot, carrot, pumpkin and pineapple and they ate the tube seemingly without chewing! I would give Chaka a huge hunk of pineapple as big as my palm and he takes it from my hand with his trunk and lifts it to his mouth and is ready to take more food before he's even started chewing the previous piece!

Holidays

I got back from my holiday early this morning but don't worry, I wrote down all my adventures so I will try and type them up today and have them posted by tonight. But no promises. Because it's the whole of my holiday, there's an individual post for each day making the overall post absolutely massive. I was contemplating posting each days holiday on separate days starting today, but the kids start coming home on Monday and I've got the shift system I dreamed of getting but means I start at 6am and finish at 9pm so I'm going to be pretty wiped. Plus, it's highly likely that I'll forget. So you're getting the whole holiday in one massive block. Do with it as you will but hopefully there will be convenient places for you to pause reading should it be way to long!

Last Night-shift!

Last night-shift of this holiday! YAY I'm so tired it doesn't even bare thinking about. And I still have 8 hours to go.

I got to work with Sarah last night which was fun, we watched something like 10 episodes of 'How I Met Your Mother' and then a film called 'Angels' Share' which I wanted to go see with my Dad, but it only came out about a week before I left England and we didn't have time so he sent it out to me. He said in his letter that I could show it to the non-english people here so that they could see what 'real England' looks like. The problem is, is that the film is set in Scotland and none of the Germans/Swiss/Belgiums/French understand the Scottish volunteers even when they speak slowly and clearly. There isn't a hope on earth of them understanding a thick, fast Scottish accent combined with slang! But all in all it was a very good film.

5 hours left. I think I've talked about what night-shift is like if you have to change nappies or wake kids up to go to the toilet and about how it splits up the night quite nicely, you end up waiting for midnight, then 4am then 7am. But I'm almost certain I haven't talked about the excitement that is not waking kids up. Instead of waiting 4 hours at most, you are waiting 10 hours because that's all night-shift is. Waiting. And 10 hours is a long time to wait. There's the hour of death: the hours between about 3 and 5 (although sometimes it can start at 2) where absolutely nothing happens. All the kids are deeply asleep, anybody that's run away is usually back by then or they've decided not to come back until the morning, you're properly settled and getting bored. If I have to watch any more 'How I Met Your Mother' I might cry.

In happier news, me and Sarah are almost, definitely, certainly, probably going on holiday tomorrow! We managed to book a backpackers in Tsitsikamma, so the plan is to hopefully to a canopy tour and go to the Elephant park in Knysa (and get to ride a smellyfant!!!!!) maybe go quad biking and eat ostrich in Oudshoon if we have time. Sarah is definitely doing the highest bungee jump in the world (at least I think it's the highest) and if I trip and fall, so will I. It's set to be a busy few days! We're not sure if we have time to get to Oudshoon, but if we don't we're thinking of staying in the backpackers on Long Street on Saturday and going to Neighbourgoods, then find a drumming circle...as you do!

Animals on Night-shifts

This will quite probably amuse people in England who know me and Sarah. For those of you that don't, we've known each other only for about a year and a half, since we went on the same training together and we're very close friends. Tonight, I'm working my last set of night-shifts for this holiday, and guess who I'm working them with: Sarah! Yay. It's me Sarah and two Germans. One boy and one girl. Because there are 4 of us, we already worked out that one girl would get sent to the boys house and two girls would be working together upstairs in the girls house. Me and Sarah were under the assumption we would be in the girls house together and the two Germans would go to the boys house. This was assumed to the point that I'm not sure if Sarah took any entertainment with her tonight cause we were planning to watch some films on my laptop. (Dad, I still haven't watched Angels Share-hopefully if me and Sarah get to work in the same house, but could you maybe send out moonrise kingdom if you already bought it and watched it?). The geniuses amongst us will have maybe gathered that as it turns out, we are not together tonight. I got put in the boys house, she's in with the girls. And I'm so bored. Hopefully we can work together tomorrow.

It's midnight and I'm being eaten alive by mosquitoes. The boy I'm doing my shift with has already been sleeping and the weirdest thing possibly ever just happened. I was watching 'How I Met Your Mother' (As much as I tease my little brother, it's actually quite good), trying to avoid the mind boggling amount of mosquitoes buzzing around me when something catches my eye. There's a black cat slinking down the hallway. I take this for granted. It's not something one expects to see on a night-shift in a children's home. When it occurs to me that a cat probably shouldn't be in the boys house, I look back. It's creeping into one of the rooms near my mattress. Now two of the boys in particular we (the volunteers) think may have some form of autism, now I am not and will never claim to be an expert on autism, in fact I know very little, but these two boys fit the perfect stereotype of how a child with autism behaves (the stereotype in my head at least). And of course, they are sharing a room. The room the cat just went into. If either one of these boys wakes up with a cat on his face, he is going to freak out like nothing else seen on this earth. And I should point out that although I call them boys, I think they're about 15/16. Anyway, long story short, I wake up the other volunteer and together we herd the cat through the corridor, out of the other rooms it tries to slip into, down the stairs and out the kitchen door. I don't even like cats. Cats scare me a little bit. Cats creep me out. And if this one gave me fleas I'm going to cry.

It's 6.20am and I'm basically cross-eyed with tiredness. Something just occurred to me: Project Trust specifically told us not to surprise parents and friends with when we were coming back because sometimes folk in England wanted to organise a party and get a little annoyed when the child returns without warning. Knowing my family however, I've told them I'm going to surprise them. As much as a surprise party when I arrived would be awesome, I don't have nearly enough friends my own age to make it worthwhile and as much as I love the kids I used to look after (and the child inside me screams lets get a clown and a bouncy castle), it would be fantastically depressing to have a party where the only attendees were kids under 10 and their parents or friends of my parents. Awkward! Plus, my family would never throw that sort of shindig (for which I am overwhelmingly grateful) especially after +3 days of travelling-it pays to have musicians for parents, they totally get the whole “in-a-metal-box-on-wheels-with-50-other-people-for-5-days-travelling-through-the-middle-of-nowhere-stopping-only-to-pee” thing! Bare (/bear I have no idea which bear/bare it is and the more I think about it, the more stupid the combination of letters look) with me, it's 6.30am and I haven't slept for roughly 18 hours. It occurred to me that I'm almost certainly going to want to blog about my last days, last shifts etc. and I hope my family read this blog (if they don't I might not return. Ever.) Hrmph. What a conundrum. I suppose I could type the posts up then post them all at once, but I really like the almost live time blogging thing. Maybe I'll have to convince one of my technologically adept brothers to block my blog on all their gadgets!

...Actually...........

NYE (Nobody Yet Entertained)

OK, so I realised I hadn't yet done a post on what I did for my new year. Usually I don't do anything, my parents are both musicians and are therefore usually working NYE, my little brother is a party animal so is usually out which leaves me and my other little brother usually watching a film together then watching the fireworks over Manchester (his bedroom window is on the 2nd floor and we're also on top of a small hill so we have a nice view).

But of course, this is no usual new year. This is quite possibly the only new year I'll spend in SA, so I thought I should try and do something special. Now all the other volunteers seemed to be either going to a festival, or to Long Street to party. I'm not so much of a clubber so this doesn't seem like any fun to me. Luckily I found some other people who wanted a quieter new year, so me and two others went out for a lovely meal and then sat in the kitchen at home for a while. Then at midnight, we paid a visit to the few poor souls stuck on night-shift. We took some sparklers and LED balloons and paper streamers and the night-shift folk came outside (with the older girls) and we had a mini party. All the girls were singing and dancing, it was lekker. And I think I can safely say we had the most original new year of our lives!

Out of Date

Yesterday I posted in rant form about my room-mate and the annoying fan. And how I might have removed the blades of said fan. As I type this, I'm on night-shift (again) so the whole story is coming from my other roomie. Thing 1 is the roomie who likes the annoying fan, Thing 2 is the other roomie.

Things 1 and 2 went out tonight for a pizza or nachos with some other people, when they get back, Thing 1 goes into the bedroom and puts the fan on. Thing 2 comes in and sees the fan is on, but the blades are still missing, so the whole thing is making a noise (and I quote) 'like nothing has been removed but someone has shoved a damn branch in there' so I took that to mean a sort of clunking, whirring noise. Basically more annoying than previously. Thing 2 goes to the kitchen incredulous to call me and tell me. I tell her to go back to the bedroom and ask Thing 1 what's wrong with the fan, so she does then calls me back. Apparently Thing 1 said something along the lines of: “I don't know, I think it's broken, did you break it? It's making a funny noise. * puts her hand next to it * And it's not making any wind.” Then she goes back to reading AND LEAVES THE FAN WHIRRING AWAY! It appears that Thing 1 either hasn't noticed we have removed the blades, has noticed but just likes the noise the fan makes, or is pulling our legs and is pretending not to have noticed it has no blades. I thought it was probably the latter, but when I asked Thing 2, she said Thing 1 was pretty convincing. And Thing 1 isn't very good at tricking, winding people up or any sort of foolery. I don't know what to think any more!