More Guest Blogs from South Africa

Today we have Andrew Czyszczon writing about his experience so far:

Hi everyone,

I'm Andrew, a Junior studying Mechanical Engineering. I'd like to share a bit about my day today, which is similar each day in structure but offers new experiences and adventures daily . Since St. Paul's Primary School is the furthest of the 3, we left the volunteer house around 7:15AM and arrived at the school about 15 minutes later. The past few days we've been working with some 5th-7th graders who come in early to get extra help with their math work. The first week or so I was primarily with fourth grade classes, spending at least one day with each class and also moving around with specific teachers (i.e. math, technology, etc.). This opportunity has allowed me to get to know some of those students individually, even creating super-cool handshakes with several of them. Last night while going to the local grocery store for some snacks one of the kids spotted me from across the store and yelled my name while frantically waving. Today, I was actually with a few 2nd grade and 3rd grade classes which was a new experience. They were probably just as rowdy as the 4th graders, but at a slightly lower volume. During the day today as well I was able to grade some practice exams with Melissa which I think the teachers appreciated because it allow them extra time to work with the children.

The nice thing about working at the school furthest from the house is that we are near "downtown" Cape Town as well as several museums. After work today we visited a museum known as the "Slave Lodge," which formerly housed slaves of the Dutch East India Company in the 17th and 18th centuries. I found it pretty interesting to learn that slaves  were actually brought to South Africa from other countries including Indonesia, Mozambique, Madagascar, as well as West Africa where a majority of slaves brought to the Americas were from. The museum building also housed several interesting exhibits relating to the region, from weapons and treasures of the original Dutch settlers to a silent film and photographs from an Italian anthropologist/movie director who visited the Zulu people in South Africa in the 1920s.

Following our visit to the museum we decided that it would be nice to walk back to the house and stop for food along the way. Once we determined where we were in the city we decided to find a restaurant we learned about during our initial tour, the East Asian Bazaar. The restaurant itself was over a block long and had counters where an incredible variety of Indian food was being prepared. After eating the walk back proved necessary and fortunately we had amazing weather to enjoy along the way.

Hope you've enjoyed reading this blog...and now back to South Africa.

-Andrew

Nathan's footnote:
Tomorrow we will be launching water bottle rockets.  Oh yes, I'm bringing MindSET to South Africa.