August 2

I know it’s been a few days since I’ve written, but the past few days have been the same routine.  I work at the college for a few hours, go to the school for one and a half hours and then go back to the college until five.  I am really enjoying teaching Grade 4 English, but it is also hard.  On Thursday, I tried to teach them rhyming words, but they had a hard time with it.  They had to come up with rhyming words for the word ‘lid’.  Some of them said ‘bird’, because when they say the word bird, they do not say the ‘r’.  This also makes spelling a challenge for them.

At the college, I've been given a huge package of papers that I need to make into a study guide.  I’m hoping that a lot of the material is already on someone’s computer, but if not, I need to retype it all.  I will have one and a half weeks to do this, so it’ll keep me busy. 

Last night I moved back to the farm, along with three people from the United States.  It is good to be back at the farm and have a little more space.  In a way, it feels like I've come home.  I was greeted by the dogs and by the kids enthusiastically.  I am sleeping in a different room with only one bed, but I don’t mind since it still gives me more room than at the college. 

Today we went to Hartbeespoortdam.  This was about 1 ½ hrs away.   Hartbeespoortdam is a lake that has a dam for irrigation on one part of it.  It is a tourist destination, so as we entered the town, we could see that is a wealthier than the area where I live.  The dam was fairly large with about 6 gates and also was built quite high up. We walked across the dam and took some pictures.  

An arch that you had to drive through.

Looking down the dam 

Driving over the dam

Very green water.  

We also had heard that there was a local African market here.  We drove around for a bit and couldn’t find it.  Instead we found a modern shopping mall.  We went shopping for a bit (but didn’t buy anything).  This mall was very modern, and just about reminded me of home except that the main aisle did not have any ceiling – it was an open-air concept. 

For lunch, we stopped at an Italian restaurant and had pizza.  So I was a Canadian in South Africa eating Italian food!!  On our way out, we asked for directions to the African market.  It was easy to find it after this.  This market contained a lot of small vendors who sold things like dirt bike gear, clocks, food, books, toys, candles, etc.  We were hoping for more African vendors, but we still enjoyed it.  (Later on, we found out that this was actually the wrong market – there was a better one a little ways away.)

The road on the way to the market - very pretty.  

A neat red flowering tree.  

Entrance to the market

Browsing for goodies

The only African shop we found.  

After visiting this area, we headed back home.  Since we now live at the farm, we have to make our own meals and so we stopped at the grocery store.  We hope to be having some ‘regular’ English meals like spaghetti, pancakes, and chicken wraps.