Merry Christmas!

Howdy! I can't say it is a white Christmas here but I am in good
company! I am at Katie's house down the road along with three other
volunteers who came down from Mpumalanga and Limpopo. Chad will be
joining us for dinner soon. Katie and I showed our visitors to the top
of Isandlwana today and now we are preparing for Christmas dinner.
We'll be having a glazed ham with all the fixins if all goes to plan.
The Christmas tree pictured is the tree in my rondavel. The real fun
starts tomorrow though. All 6 of us are heading to the Drakensbergs
tomorrow until the new year. We will start at Giant's Castle and make
our way up the escarpment the first day and then straddle the South
Africa-Lesotho border until new years where we will end up at the Sani
Top Chalet. This establishment boasts the highest bar in all of
Africa! Gotta bring in the new year with style and class, as would be
expected of such a classy crew. I hope everyone at home is having a
wonderful Christmas and continues that into the New Year! You are all
in my thoughts this year!

Schools

Last Saturday morning I went to school in the morning to help the 12th graders prepare for the second part of their life sciences exam

It's time to plant!

On my walk to school the other day I stopped to see my sister and mom planting maize for the upcoming season

Isandlwana!

So this is the namesake geographical feature of the area. It is at the
base of this that the British made camp and were then decimated by Zulus
before retreating to Rorke's Drift. Now, it's just a rocky protuberance
that is fun to climb up. Actually, at the base of the other side is
Katie's village. Last Sunday I hiked to the top along with two other
PCVs, Chad and Katie. It was a gorgeous day and the view was pretty
cool from the top too. This is only 8km away from where my village is
for reference.

Bucket Brewing!

Some of you may be wondering how I have been keeping myself busy. One
project I began when I first arrived was to brew my own wine. Now
obviously I do not have access to all the fancy equipment that one would
use back home so I improvised a little. I decided the simplest (and
cheapest) set up would be a bucket with a blanket tied on top to vent
the resultant CO2 from fermentation. So I boiled together a bunch of
orange peels, 2 bananas, 1 pineapple, and 750 grams of raisins with 20
liters of water and a couple kilos of brown sugar. I let that cool down
in the bucket then added about 12 packets of bakers yeast the next day.
8 weeks later and you can see me here siphoning out the finished wine.
I ended up with about 12 liters of wine that really tastes pretty good
for coming out of a bucket! I will be entering a sample into the
homebrew competition at In-Service Training coming up in December.

Mangeni Falls!

Braai Time on top of Mangeni Falls, about 30k from Isandlwana

Fugitives Drift

Spent the night at Fugitives Drift and thought I would share some of the scenery. The fellow in the hat is Mr Ben Henderson, CEO of the David Rattray Foundation. We will be coordinating with him for the next two years.

. . .can you hear me now

Spoke too soon

It appears I may have spoke too soon on the weather (and integrity of my
roof..). Serious thunderstorms this weekend. They tend to come
quickly, dump rain like I have never seen before for about 30 min then
move on, typically accompanied by a good bit of thunder and lightning.
Though on Sunday I was taken aback by the size of the hail that was
raining down.

Good Morning America!

I am now ONLINE! Cell service is hardly anything to write home about
though, never thought I would see the day when I would miss Comcast (and
verizon for that matter). I
have been at site 4 weeks now and much has happened. I have settled
into my rondavel and more importantly have noted that the roof is mostly
waterproof. We are transitioning into summer here and with summer comes
the rain. I keep hearing it rains a lot here but have yet to see
anything that serious. The wind can be quite formidable at times but
that is it for now. As far as work goes I have completed my first round
of teacher interviews at Ntalantala, the high school, and will finish
the rest of the interviews at the primary school Ncepheni next week. I
am about to go into Nqutu here soon to get groceries and kerosene. It
is about a 25min combie ride into town from here. Nqutu has everything
you need but nothing you want, as they say around here. The grocery
store is not much different from one you may find in the states and
there are variety stores like Pep and Jetmart that sell all sorts of
stuff. There are also 'china shops' that also seem to sell everything
(again, everything you need, nothing you want). Ill attach some pics to
give you an idea of the area. It may seem rural (and it is) but luckily
it is quite pcv-dense. There are three other PCVs about 5miles due
west, another one 4miles south, and 3 more near Nqutu. Feel free to
engage me with your questions and comments. PEACE

Living History

If you spoke with me before I left yu may remember my hope that I
would be living in a grass hut. It seems I have come as close to that
as possible! Today I moved into my very own rondavel. Until I can
get some internet to post some pictures (I am once again relegated to
using my kindle) here is a brief description. My rondavel is a
circular concrete/mud-ish structure about 24ft across with a vaulted
thatch roof. No electricity so I am now dependent om parafin and
candles. What is even better than my abode is where it is. I am in
the historic region of Isandlwana. For more info look up Battle of
Isandlwana on wikipedia. The landscape is full of wandering plateaus
and valleys that seem to go on forever...

Now A PCV!!

Hey everyone, yesterday was swearing in! I am now officially a Peace
Corps Volunteer! Very exciting, right after the ceremony the KZNers
hopped in vans and headed to our supervisors workshops near St Lucia.
We will be here till Sunday when we goto site! Here are a couple
pictures from swearing in. The last one is me with two of the LCFs,
Nonjabulo on the left and my LCF Sebenzile on the right

Game Drive!

Last week we spent the day at a game park, there was not a whole lot to
see until the end when we saw a herd of giraffes!

Wheels in motion!

Things have been moving very quickly recently. Yesterday we were informed that swearing in is set for Thursday and we will move to site immediately afterwards. It has been a long time coming but at the same it seems time has just sped by since moving to homestays. There are about 20 of us that are going to KZN in the next week. I cannot wait to see my site. I am excited about living in a rondavel off the grid. I will be moving back into an internet blackzone for the next couple weeks until I get my new phone so I will try to update everytime I get the opportunity but it may be awhile. At the least I hope to get some pictures up from swearing in. I also went on my first game drive yesterday! It was pretty incredible, hopefully Ill get some pics of that up soon.

VIDEOS!

Hey I got online tonight and all of a sudden there is a 3G connection so I took the opportunity to upload some videos! They are not all that new, in fact I think they are both more than 6 weeks old but the content is still relevant.

Mmmm, Springbok!

Mmmm, springbok ribs!

Cookin in Phaahla!

Baregile delivered our groceries today from Peace Corps so I took the opportunity to cook dinner for my two sisters and nephew. I made latkes, macaroni in a white sauce with tomatoes, and this canned fish stuff. They LOVED it! Here's an action shot!

These are some pictures of the hinter land between ga-phahla and the college

Worry not!

As some of you may have read, there is a national civil service strike going on here. I want to emphasize that I am OKAY! In a nutshell the unions (including the teacher unions) are demanding an 8.6% pay increase along with R1000 for housing. The strike has been going on in earnest for two weeks and there does not appear to be an end in sight. The negotiations are very day to day, luckily the Peace Corps is in constant contact with the teachers unions so we are cool. They know what we are doing and we are completing our training at a private college in order to separate ourselves from the schools. That has sort of thrown a wrench into the training schedule, as we were supposed to travel to site last week to meet our supervisors, but more on that later. Since my last post I have been to two weddings, seen two cows slaughtered, walked a million miles, learned more isiZulu, bought a cell phone, received my site assignment, and most recently traveled to the Apartheid Museum in Joberg. Despite the strike things could not be better. I got my site assignment two weeks ago and am super pumped. I will be placed in a remote village near Nqutu, KZN. Living in a rondeval without electricity and a cattle kraal in the front yard, I will be working with two local schools, one primary and one high school. They both have requested help with science teaching as well as setting up computers and community projects. There are three other volunteers in my cluster, all near Nqutu. I can't wait to get to KZN, maybe see some green. It has not rained since we arrived in July and so you can imagine the landscape is quite desolate. Apparently that will all change when summer rolls around and it rains every day. Again, can't wait. It is hard to really describe the season now as winter. While it did dip into the 40s at night when I first got here, it has been hovering in the 50s at night now and well into the 70s during the day. Because of the strike it is hard to say what is in store for us the rest of training, I am looking to get an update on that tomorrow at the college. Tentatively we are still swearing in on Sept 16 so we will see. If anyone has any questions or anything of the sort please feel free to comment. Oh and here are some pictures. The first one is my house, I live here with my mom, her two (of five) daughters, and four kids (ages 14wks, 6, 7, 16). Next is a great sign we saw while walking to another pct's house. Then there is a picture of Ryan holding some part of one of the cows, me drinking the traditional “home brew” (always served in a bucket), me with some of the LCFs at the Apartheid Museum, and if there's room I will put some pictures of the brushy hinterland through which I walk to get to the college some days during the week.

Some Pics

Hey everyone, I finally made it to the internet place. Here are some pictures so far. First is just a sunset on the way back from Pretoria. Next is me in front of the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria. It is to commemorate the original settlers' trek from the cape area inland in the 1820s. After that is a picture of the classroom where we have been holding most of our training sessions. Unfortunately we are in the middle of a national civil service strike that includes teachers so we have been holding our sessions now back at the college. The next picture is of Sebenzile, she is my Language and Cross-cultural Facilitator (LCF). I spend about 4 hours a day with her and three other pct's working on learning isiZulu. It is going pretty well so far. I will update again soon. Oh the final picture is the view from my bedroom. Gotta love it.

I MADE IT

Howdy everyone. After an hour of playing around I finally figured out how to post with my kindle. Unfortunately it is very time consuming and cell coverage is spotty at best here. Speaking of here, I am in the village of Ga-Phaahla, near Siyabuswa in the northeast corner of Mpumalanga Province. I will be here until I complete training in September. In the mean time I am learning isiZulu and all about the school system here. Look for pictures and more to come in Sept when I can get some internet. Right now the nearest telkom phone is a 2mile jog into Siyabuswa. All the best to everyone at home

quick update

It is quarter after 2 AM and I am making final preparations to leave philly. Our bus leaves at 3 AM for JFK, where we will get an 11:15 flight to Johannesburg. The flight is only 15 hours . . .

Chillin at the Holidy INN

I just got situated here at the Holiday Inn and turned in some paper work. I got some more paperwork to go over and it looks like things will start in earnest tomorrow morning!

PACKED!

I was able to get all of that into this

Gear

So the journey begins

What's up everyone, I am writing to you from the floor of my friends house in Philly. I arrived here earlier in the day from Pittsburgh and managed to get most, if not all of my stuff packed into two bags for a grand total of 67 lbs of luggage ( well under the 100 lb limit). I am in awe that I was able to get everything packed, but sure enough it's all here (I hope). Tomorrow I will be trekking around Philadelphia getting some last minute odds and ends, then it all begins at 6 when I begin registration in Old City. As you can imagine I am quite excited and am happy that you all have decided to join me on this journey. Just to give you a tentative plan, I will be doing orientation stuff Monday night, all day Tuesday, then Wednesday morning we get on a bus to JFK for a direct flight to Johannesburg. Once there we will drive up to a local college for training, where after a week I will move in with a host family. I was forewarned that my internet access will be limited for the next 8 weeks, but I will try my best to keep the updates coming. Welcome aboard!