Orangpples

I got back yesterday from a week away from site. I spent all of last week with 10 other volunteers preparing for the next group of volunteers – SA20 – to arrive late next month at what Peace Corps calls General Training of Trainers or GTOT. This means I was at the training college in Marapyane were my Pre-Service Training (PST) was held last July. Instead of spending a night in Pretoria to catch the Peace Corps provided transport at 10am I decided to stay with my PST host family before GTOT started. It was great to spend the night with them and see how they were doing. In the morning I made my way vie public transport from their small village to the training college. It was amazing to realize how easy that actually was, but I never once did it during the three months of PST last year.

We put a lot of work into designing the schedule and divided up when we will all return to facilitate sessions at SA20’s PST. SA 20 will be replacing the SA 16 education volunteers leaving over the next few months and will mostly be on the opposite side of the country from me in the North West Province so I’m glade I’ll get a chance to meet them at PST. They will also all be learning Tswana. At our PST people learned 5 of South Africas 9 official languages: Sepdi, Tsonga, SiSwati, iNdebele, and Zulu. With so many languages being learned large group sessions had to always use English and practicing with people not in your language group was basically impossible. Our PST was a microcosm of the linguistic soup that makes up South Africa, but it wasn’t very conducive for learning or cross communication. It will be interesting to see how SA 20’s language training goes.

Sunday also happened to be the start of the FIFA Confederations Cup here in South Africa. There has been lots of build up to this international event in the news media. The Confederations Cup is a test run for the World Cup next year and from what I saw in Pretoria earlier this week I think they’ll be ready. I actually got to go to the USA vs Italy game on Monday night, and although it was 1 – 3 Italy it was very fun. There were plenty of buses between remote parking centers and the stadium and roads were closed around the stadium making it easy to walk there. Wait lines going in weren’t very long at all, though it did take a while to get out. My one complaint would be that there was very little order in the concession and bathroom lines during half time, it was pretty much a free for all mob and you had to force your self to the front to get anything. Never having been to a World Cup game before I’m not sure how much of a chaotic mad house half time concessions are but I think there’s was some room improvement. Maybe putting up queuing lines or something.

Coming back to site always requires a major mental shift. Your going from constantly being around other Americans where conversations that seem normal and not forced to being the only person from your cultural back ground and understanding. But its also nice to be back to the familiar routine, sounds, and feel of my little street in the township. There’s about one and a half weeks left in the school term here before a month long break. I want to try to get the ground work for projects I want to work on next term done in that time. The first week of break I’m planning to do math prep classes for the grade 12 students at a few high schools in this area. In November all South African 12^th graders have to take matriculation tests to pass high school and over the next few months they will all put enormous amounts of energy into studying. I’m hoping to give them some tools that will make their studying easier and more efficient. After that I’m planning to go on a trip from Cape Town through the Eastern and Western Cape with a few other volunteers and a good friend from high school who’s coming to visit. So I also have a lot of work to do planning all the details of that trip.