My First Few Weeks

Linda and I at the beach
View from the place we ate lunch on the drive from Jo'burg to Durban

Hi Everyone!

I decided to start this blog so you can all get a little taste of my experiences here in South Africa. This post is kind of long, but I'm trying to quickly summarize what I have done so far!

I arrived in Johannesburg 2/1/08. We stayed in a hostel there until 2/4/08. While there we visited the Apartheid Museum, toured Nelson Manela's house, toured Soweto, hmmmm I know there's more! Well on 2/4/08 we drove 9 hours to Durban and stopped for lunch (see first picture) at this gorgeous place! When we arrived to Durban we stayed at a hostel and continued Orientation until Friday when we moved in with our first homestay families.

I live with a Zulu family named the Majola's in an area outside of Durban called Cato Manor. My specific neighboorhood is called Bonella. I live with My Gogo (Grandma) Khulu (Grandpa), their son (Thabo who is 33) and Thabo's son Linda (who is 11 years old). I will be staying with them until 3/1/07 and then I head to my rural homestay.

The family could not be any nicer to me and I really love staying with them! At first when I got dropped off on 2/8/07 I was a little nervous, but immidiately Gogo was calling me her baby, hugging, etc. Linda jokes with me and calls me tomatisi (tomato) and I call him zambane (potato) because I always have a sunburn! During the weekdays I go to school then come home do homework, hang out with Linda, go for walks and watch TV with them (their favorite show is The Biggest Loser South Africa!)

The Majola's live in a 2 Story apartment-type house. All the students live with in several miles of each other. The people in Bonella are primarily Zulu, but there are some Indian families. People are very friendly and welcoming for the most part. My Gogo does not let me walk alone around the neighborhood, Linda and I always go together. I try to avoid going out at night as much as possible also. The first few days people would come up to me and say "what are you doing here you need to get a cab and get out of here." But I just explain why I'm here and Linda does also, so you can tell people are very caring protective.

Linda is so fun! The first 15 minutes I was in the house he was helping me unpack and wanting to shoot a music video with my camera! He's funny...when we go for walks he'll pick up bricks to protect me from rabid dogs (he's really afraid of them though so he claims every dog is rabid!) or when we walk near tall grass where there are supposedly pythons! On Valentine's day he woke me up at 5:30 so I could take pictures of him (they can wear regular clothes not uniform on Valentines Day) because he was going to be in the school fashion show and trying to win "Mr. Valentine" for the second year in a row!

We get picked up every morning around 7:30 and dropped off at our classroom which is about 10 minutes away. Its funny...it feels like elementary school again!
I have been learning Zulu (we have had about 2 weeks of class). Its been fun/challenging and my homestay family loves to tease me about my pronunciation. The clicks are really hard! There are three different clicks for the letters Q, C, and X. In the afternoons we have lectures in either: Reconciliation and Development Seminar or Field Study Seminar. We have lecturers primarily from the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal. We also go on field trips during the week. We have been to an aquarium, 2 informal settlements, and the local market (Warwick Junction).


There are 28 kids in my program, 23 girls and 5 guys. Our 2 main teachers are from South Africa, a man named John and a woman named Vanessa.

I miss you and love you all! I will try and post as often as possible!