A Fun Week in the Life of Brittan

This week was busy, but awesomly busy with a mix of both work and social. All week I have been hard at work on getting Umhlaba Wami off the ground, writing a curriculum for the Life Skills groups at Thandanani, going to meetings, and brainstorming a video that I need to do for Thandanani. Eish. But I have also been training for track and hanging out with friends.

On Tuesday night I went to the movies with the volunteers I had met at Lily of the Valley. I actually have not been to the movies since I left the States, and I had no idea what movies were out... we chose the movie that fit the time we could go-- Sherlock Holmes. It was actually quite a good movie and well thought-out. Better yet, Tuesdays are "half-price cinema night," meaning I only paid R14 to watch the movie... Translation? About $1.93 for a movie. Awesome!

On Wednesday I went to Ingqwangele High School in the township of Snathing to talk to the principal about doing Umhlaba Wami there. South Africa is strange as in things go very slowly and then extremely fast: it took a while for me to be able to get to meet with Mr. Ngcobo, but within 20 minutes we had spoken, he said I could have a classroom, identified 10 children, and decided that the first workshop would start on Monday. Monday! Although in the beginning that was my planned date, I kind of thought I was aiming big-- how do you think of, develop, and impliment a program within 2 weeks? Apparently I am doing it. Awesome.

On Wednesday night I went with the YFC volunteers to Durban to watch a soccer game in the new stadium that they built for the World Cup! Awesome! It was South Africa vs. Zimbabwe. South Africa's team, or "Bafana Bafana," beat Zimbabwe 3-0. Do you know what that means? That Zimbabwe must be really bad because South Africa is not good at soccer in the slightest. It is kind of sad. But I loved the game. South African soccer fans are fantastic-- they are just as rowdy as those you see at American sports games, but half of the time they are all up in a crowd singing and dancing. One person stands up and starts doing a dance, and just like cheesy musicals, everyone around them pops up in perfect unison and joins in. Also, I ran to the store at the stadium and overpaid for a vuvuzela [the buzzing sound you hear in the back of South African soccer games produced by incredibly loud/annoying horns]. I took a plastic South African flag I bought, tied it to the bottom of the vuvuzela, and blew it like no other. I hate to toot my own horn [no pun intended], but I am an AMAZING vuvuzela blower. Really. For some reason when I blow the horn it almost sounds like a large ship coming into harbor. Everyone turns around in awe. Some of them clap. They asked, "How do you do it?" and was almost ashamed that an American could out-vuvuzela them. Perhaps all of those years of playing the flute paid off.

I am definitely bringing this vuvuzela home. I hope I can bring it to every sports game for the rest of my life. Maybe even a tennis match or a golf competition. America wont know what hit them! Unless it gets confiscated at the gate... America would do that to me.

Tomorrow I am waking up bright and early to go to Durban for a track meet, and then I am spending the rest of the day there to meet up with a girl who graduated my year from Harvard and just arrived in South Africa. Yay!