5 weeks down and 8 to go!

I can't believe I'm already 2 days into my 5th week in Cape Town! My time here is going by so fast and I still have so much fun stuff to squeeze in before I leave. This past week has been very eventful and there hasn't been a boring moment...it probably helps that there are 16 other awesome volunteers to talk to all the time! 

Let's see, I'll start with last Sunday, the 13th October, when we had our Canadian Thanksgiving dinner and ate a ridiculous amount of chicken, stuffing, Yorkshire puddings...and um...tiramisu (not very Canadian I know, but it was delicious!) All the food was cooked by our volunteer coordinator Irine (her cooking is out of this world!) and Alanna (who is slightly less amazing in the kitchen but tells the BEST stories about her experiences in Africa!). Not only did the Thanksgiving dinner taste amazing but it also helped to raise lots of money for The Happy Africa Foundation THAF. 

Later on in the week we also took advantage of our new volunteer Sam, a hairdresser from the UK, and persuaded him to give some of us a trim for charity. We ended up going all out and attempted some avocado and oatmeal face masks. I say 'attempted' because they started slipping off our faces so we had to lie on the ground as the others spooned the mixture on to our faces so it didn't fall off - I don't remember the last time I laughed so much! All the money we raised that evening also went to THAF so we had a great fundraising week overall :)

Every morning at 6 am we've also started jogging or doing circuit training at the local park. Originally it started with just 3 of us (everyone else thought we were crazy for getting up so early) but we've managed to persuade some other volunteers to join us and it has turned in to a bit of a boot camp! It was great training for the Colour Run at Sea Point on Saturday where we ran 5km and then threw lots of coloured paint over each other! IT WAS AMAZINGGGG! 

I'm not really going in a chronological order here but on Thursday I went on project in the morning and volunteered with our over 30's volunteer Ervina at the Children of Hope Preschool. Before I went everyone laughed at me because I said I was scared of children (Seriously. Kids are terrifying.) but as soon as the kids saw me they all grabbed a different limb and dragged me in to the preschool. So it wasn't nearly as terrifying as I thought it would be, well it was, but I think I handled it quite well...I only made 3 kids cry because I made them share their toys...but I soon made up for it when I had a kid sitting on each shoulder trying to do the monkey bars. I have to admit that the conditions of the township which the preschool was in came as quite a surprise. I guess Cape Town hides the poverty of the area very well and, as a tourist, it would be easy to ignore the signs of poverty so prevalent in other parts of the city. It was great to get involved in one of the volunteer projects though because I hear so much about them from the other volunteers when they come home. The next project I really want to go to is GAPA (Grandmothers Against Poverty and Aids) because the grandmothers just seems like the most amazing people who are making such a big difference to their communities.

So I think that's all of the events from this week, I just have the weekend to catch you up on now. As you can probably guess, I tried to go sky diving again, for the 4th week running!  I had a really good feeling that this would be the week that I finally get to sky dive because the weather was so lovely...but as soon as Sunday came around the wind picked up and sky diving was cancelled again. Needless to say that I have signed up for it again this coming weekend so fingers crossed! Even although I didn't get a chance to go sky diving I still had a great weekend. We went to the colour run early on Saturday morning before going to the Biscuit Mill in the afternoon for some lunch and then to the rugby to see Western Province beat the Lions for the second week in a row. On Sunday we then went to a lovely food and craft market at Hout Bay and I bought some soup. Those of you who know me well will know how much I love soup, so this was quite an important moment (as well as finding porridge in the local supermarket)!

Well that's another week down and 8 more to go! 

Sarah x

Week 2...and a little bit of week 3!

This was written a wee while ago...I just haven’t had time to post it!

I’m coming to the end of my second week here and South Africa is feeling more like home. Last weekend was slightly less exciting than we had planned but it was still an adventure! Instead of going skydiving on Saturday (because it was too cloudy) we went to this incredible food market at the Old Biscuit Mill...it was every foodie’s dream! We definitely made it worth our while and ate copious amounts of food from almost every stall! The music was great, the sun was out and my belly was full, what more could I ask for! 

Oh and we went to this incredible Ethopian restaurant for dinner where you eat with your hands on this big pancake thing which was incredible!

Then on Sunday...oh Sunday. Sunday was an adventure. Jacinta and I decided that we would check out the Cheetah Outreach Centre at Somerset West to hold a little cheetah cub and walk with the adult cheetahs! On Sunday we decided that a taxi was too expensive to get there and, despite ample warnings not to get the train on a Sunday because they’re unsafe and only come once every hour, we still decided to get the train. Oh boy. When we got to the ticket station at Obs the lady gave us the wrong ticket so we got on the wrong train, only to realise after two stops that we were going in the opposite direction from where we needed to be. So on the second wrong stop we got off the train and then we had to go back to Obs to return our ticket. But we would have had to wait an hour for the train back to Obs so we had to get a taxi back to Obs, exchange our ticket, and then wait an hour for the correct train we needed to get to Cape Town. Once we got to Cape Town we had to wait ANOTHER hour to get the train to Somerset West. Phwoof. 2 hours gone and still an hour of travelling to do. So then once we arrived in Somerset West we asked for directions to the Cheetah Outreach Centre but no one knew where it was...except for one man who didn’t seem too certain. With “directions” in hand we started to make our way to the Cheetah Outreach Centre and were so relieved when we finally made it...only after 4 hours of travelling by train and on foot to get there! I will spare you from all the details about the Cheetah Outreach Centre but we basically travelled for 4 hours to stroke a cheetah for 30 seconds who was on a lead and looked very unhappy in a small enclosure. We couldn’t help but feel disappointed by our experience but we were so relieved we had taken the train in the end because if I had paid 1300 rand for 30 seconds we would have felt a lot worse!  But oh well, it was an experience and I’m glad I went because I learnt to never, ever take a train on a Sunday. Ever.

Because I wrote this post a while ago I’ve also had a second weekend gone by which I haven’t told you about! So here it goes! On Saturday we went back to the Old Biscuit Mill and grabbed some more delicious food and then we had an afternoon full of rugby. We watched a national rugby game at Newlands and then watched South Africa vs New Zealand at the local pub. The kiwi game was so tense and SA narrowly (well...maybe not so narrowly) lost in the end. The locals in the pub were getting very in to the game which reminded me of my dad and sister screaming at the TV when Scotland have a match. Then on Sunday we finally managed to go Shark Cage diving after 3 weeks of willing for the weather to improve. I can’t explain how excited I have been about I have been about shark cage diving and I thought my sea sickness would subside after the adrenaline started to rush...but god I was wrong! I spend about 99% of the time leaning over the edge of the boat as my breakfast resurfaced and couldn’t stand up long enough to put my wet suit on and navigate my way to the other side of the boat to see actually see a shark. But when I finally decided to heave my wet suit on and jump in the cage I saw my first shark up close and personal...

Gotta run now but I’ll be back in touch next week...hopefully, if I’m not too busy having fun and being all sociable with our 11 new volunteers!