What an incredible day! Tesha, Nathan, and I went on an amazing adventure with our neighbor’s son Heinz. First, I feel the need to describe our neighbors a bit. They are incredibly, interestingly eccentric and kind. They come from Germany and have lived here since Heinz was young (I’m guessing about twenty-five years). Dieter speaks so quickly in his German/South African accent and is usually incredibly difficult to understand. Brenna has three windy white curls protruding from her chin mole and a little dog with long, white hair. The dog’s balding and has patches of bright pink skin peering through it’s fur. I can hardly look at it! But they are seriously the NICEST people I’ve met in a long time! Dieter walked us to call our families the second night when we were really freaked out, Brenna continually gives me advice, from shopping to laundering (which I must learn to do by hand). Their son Heinz has offered to drive us around whenever he has a day off (he’s a baker).

So, anyway, today, we went with Heinz on a three-hour car ride around "my mountain" stopping at Clifton Beach, Hout Bay, and various other spots for an entirely new perspective of this country. Let me tell you, it was spectacular!

We overlooked the city and various suburbs, saw some amazing Oceanside apartments and mansions, a castle (pictured), beautiful mountains, seals, a police helicopter (looking for Nathan), dolphins, lots of people… it was beautiful. Then we hiked up part of Table Mountain and had yet another amazing view. We ended up having to leave Tesha for the wolves (seriously, we left her on the trail as she refused to hike any further!), but it turned out that when we reached "the top," there were about six different trails to choose from the shortest of which was an hour long. We couldn’t leave Tesha for that long, so we turned back, but we’re definitely going back soon because you can hike all the way to the cable cars at the top of Table Mountain or through Kirstenbosch Gardens! By the end of the day all of us had shaky legs (literally), and decided to head home for some much-needed relaxation.

My first week of school went pretty well. It’s so different from what I expected. The girls color A LOT. I teach my first lesson on evens and odds on Monday, so I’m excited to plan plan plan away tomorrow afternoon. Hopefully, my teacher won’t mind if they do something besides dittos or … COLORING! My teacher, Mrs. Meyer (pronounced Mayor) is very nice, though. She’s older and we’ve had some interesting discussions on the end of Apartheid and how the education in South Africa has changed since then. She explained how difficult it is to reconcile the ideals versus the realities of this nation. While every group of individuals wants to be heard and respected, the schools can only do so much.
I volunteered to help one of the other third grade teachers with the Swim Team, so that should be fun.

Finally, a short anecdote from the classroom:

Roxi: Miss Heinz, Miss Heinz, I got a 10 out of 10 on my Maths (pronounced Mats)
homework. Oh wait, in America you say Math (pronounced Mat).

Me: Actually, we say Math –th –th (emphasizing the -th sound).

Roxi: -th –th (she repeats with her tongue shoved between her teeth and halfway
sticking out of her mouth). [She shakes her head and looks at me like I'm crazy]

P.S. Just tried handwashing laundry... = not fun!

Also, check out new pictures!