I have very little tiime left in South Africa, and I am very sad about that. The other night I nearly jumped out of bed when I realized I will be sleeping in my own bed in two weeks. It kind of scared me. I am going to miss the ocean being right across the street and being able to go to it whever I feel like it, the potlucks our awesome group has put together throughout the semester, the scarey monkeys on campus, the kids at the AIDS Haven, the experience of living in a foreign country, absolutely everything (except maybe my cooking, I’m ready for some home cooked meals). I feel as if there is a lot I haven’t done, I need more time and that is something I don’t have.
So we finally had our exciting shark dive this last weekend. We went on Saturday morning at 7am. Now that it is staying darker longer, getting up before 7 is really hard (it used to be hard to stay asleep after 6 because of the stupid sun shining into the room). Within five minutes I went from laying asleep in bed to riding on a truck on the way to the harbor. Not everything went that smoothly, though. The swells were a little larger than expected (and by a little I mean a lot). The dive site was right outside the bay next to an old ship wreck. Well, it was high tide, the swells were huge, the sunken ship was creating some of the biggest waves I have seen since coming here, and the dive site was about 5 meters from the boat. Since the instructor didn’t feel like risking our lives, we decided to head to a smaller wreck in the bay where the swells wouldn’t be so hard. I was fine with that. One problem, they couldn’t find the wreck. Now that option one and two were out we were left with going out to a bouy and seeing the reefs and fish out there. We did get to see our sharks. They weren’t huge, probably just 5 feet in length, or something like that, and we saw quite a few of them. I don’t know what some of the fish were thinking but they were following us and swimming among us. It was amazing. I guess I’m going to miss being able to see this type of stuff back at home too. My scuba certification is going to be gathering dust.
We have one graduating senior in our group (Justin) and since he could not make it to his graduation, we decided to hold one for him. It was so funny. He didn’t know a thing about it and we had set everything up on the roof; it looked almost real. He got a gown and cap, flowers, someone said a prayer, someone wrote, a poem, his hysterical mother (someone from our group played his mother) was wailing, he gave a have drunken speech and almost cried. Everyone had a great time.
Volunteering at the Haven has been really fun the last couple of weeks because we have bascially given up doing much constructive stuff with the kids and we don’t really want to punish them anymore because we won’t get to see them. At times it has been a bit hectic. I wish I had more time with some of these kids. We were sent there to get them ready for school or help them along with their development. All of the kids have shown tremedous improvement. Siya, a boy about a year and a half (I’ve talked about him before), wouldn’t talk, smile, or do anything back in Februayr. Now everytime we walk into the nursery he gives us his sly smile and runs to us. He will smile at anyone now for any reason. He walks, talks a little, and plays with other kids. All of the kids have made improvements as impressive as this. I just wish we could be there longer to experience more of it.
I have been up to my earlobes in homework these last couple of weeks and it doesn’t look as if it is going to let up any time until after my last final. The only thing keeping me from going crazy is knowing the faster I get done with my papers the faster it will all be over. The other night I spent five hours working on two papers, for lit and sem, while the rest of the group went to a braai out in the townships. I got the papers done but then the next two days I worked non stop on another paper, this time for biology. Speaking of biology, we got to take our first test over and if I did not get at least an 80% on it I am going to be very disappointed. The questions we were given I knew better than the first test, I wrote a ton on each question, and I gave all the information that was given to us in our study packet. I can’t wait to get it back.
Like how I’m mixing up the serious with the not serious paragraphs here. I don’t want to overload you too much on the sentimental stuff.
Anyway, my homework is calling me…
Peace.
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