First, sorry I still don't have any pictures of the car, life has been too busy, too rainy, or too dark, so again you will have to wait till the next post, my apologies.

Second, this will be the last post for a couple weeks, I am going on a two week holiday and doubt I will have time to post (same goes for email etc.)

And now for weekend adventures!

Saturday Terry and I met up with Bethany (a woman that we met at Eden, she has been doing some water education with the students) and went down to the Knysna Heads. They are gorgeous and we had a great time playing on them, picking up shells, and wading in the Indian Ocean.

Sunday I went with Xander, Suzi, Ryan, and Zenthia to a waterfall about a half mile from campus. It (like everything else here) was beautiful. Although unfortunately this picutre has the recently burned section of hill in the background, but that is where everyone was sitting so that is the picture I took.
After the waterfall we went down to Sedgefield and played on the beach for a little while. It was getting really cold as the sun was setting so we didn't stay for long, but hopefully somewhere that we will get to hang out some more.
Other accomplishment this week: I mailed some post cards. Really not that exciting of an accomplishment, but according to the Karatara post office it costs just a little more to send a post card from South Africa to the United States, then from the United States to the United States. I paid 5.10 Rand, or about 63 cents to mail two postcards. (I am not sure that I trust this, I am going to try sending the next ones from a different post office and see how much it costs me).

And now for my random South African observation, I haven't seen a single airplane since I have been here. I have seen a couple of jet trails, but that is it. Only adds to the quiet of the farm (which I am quite enjoying).

Good news and Bad news (which isn't as bad now)

So first of all, sorry this post was way later then I wanted it to be, every time I tried to post in the last several days the site wasn't exactly working. But you get a post now.

Before we get to the good and bad news there are kids (baby goats) on the farm!There are 13 of them at last count (and more on the way). They are adorable and I love watching the prance around. Also I found a chameleon in the garden on Friday. They really do change colors, and they have the coolest eyes (they can move in basically any direction pretty independent of each other).
Friday night Suzi (one of the women that works at Eden Campus, she is the Personal Development teacher) took Terry and I to the Wilderness market. Wilderness is a town near hear and they have an evening market every Friday. We had dinner and met up with some other Eden Campus people as well as Suzi's husband, had dinner and hung out.

And now for the good news and the bad news. We will start with the bad news (that is now not as bad): my camera broke. I have no idea what happened, I went to show Terry pictures of the chameleon on the way to the wilderness market it started up, extended the lens and then stopped, never to go again. I thought it might be the battery, but charging it didn't seem to help, and when I hit the power button the LED indicating it is on will illuminate, however it will only turn off by itself. Apparently getting a camera fixed around here isn't a speedy process, the closest person who will even look at it is in Cape Town (at 5ish hour drive from here). Apparently they will come pick it up but it could take a while before it is fixed and brought back. I went to a camera store to figure all this out, and thought I would just look around at cameras and prices. I ended up splurging and spending about $200 on a pretty nice Pentax point-and-shoot. Not too different from the Nikon Cool-Pix that just broke on me. So there were only a few days where I couldn't take pictures and I made Terry take them for me anyway (thanks Terry). Speaking of Terry and pictures he has posted a bunch and they are available here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2181576&id=63910133&l=e8d975aced

Now that we are done with the bad news, on to the good news!!! Suzi (that took us to the wilderness market) has lent Terry and I a car!!! Which means we are no longer stuck on the farm all the time, and we can get groceries when we need them, and man the possibilities are endless. It is a VW citigolf, really cute car, manual transmission, no power anything including steering (building those arm muscles :) ), but I am in love with it. We haven't taken any pictures of it yet, but there will be one in the next post - somebody yell at me if there isn't.

Today is Youth Day in South Africa. The commemoration of the Soweto riots in 1976 which started because the government decided that all black schools were going to teach in Africaans instead of English. The black students protested this and many were shot in violence with police (please forgive me if any of this is wrong, I am a newbie here). Youth Day is a public holiday (so no school) and I went with many of the Eden Campus students to a rally in Knysna. It ended up being quite the adventure for us to even get there - there were not enough seats on the but that Eden got, but the municipality was supposed to send a bus that came at 8:30am (the Eden one came at 7:30), after waiting around till 10:30 we decided to drive down. We thought there was a rally in Sedgefield, but there was no one there when we got there, so we went to one in Knysna, the first one we went to was just a bunch of kids playing soccer and basketball, so we went to another one. When we got there its location had been changed due to the rain, so we had to drive to yet another place. This was finally the right location but because it had changed places it was delayed and didn't start for another couple hours. And all of this after having awoken at 6am because I thought the bus was leaving Eden at 7am. Anyway once it got started it was mostly dance performances and musical performances, the mayor also came to talk and there was a DJ at one point, and a poet too. A good mix of things, and a mostly enjoyable day minus all the waiting around.

A day in the life (week one)

Work days go something like this:
A little after 7: wake up, swear it couldn't be this late since the sun isn't up, finally admit defeat and get out of bed

7:45ish: leave for work. I have a 20 to 30 minute bike ride to Eden Campus as the sun is rising. A very nice ride on a very inefficient bicycle.

8:30 classes at Eden start. I spend my mornings teaching/helping with math and IT. So far this has meant that Jamie (the math and IT teacher) has sent groups of students to work with me on practice problems.

1is: lunch!

From after lunch till around 5 anything is fair game. I have spent some time working one-on-one with Godgiven, who is really interested in math and wants to become a math teacher. I also worked with Terry to help install a solar panel that today we (well Terry actually) got hooked up to the electric fence that surrounds one of the gardens (shown below with the students out watering their assigned patches):Around 5: being 20 to 30 min bike ride back to Kooboo Berry farm, cook dinner, check email, and head to bed

In other news I did basically nothing all weekend and really enjoyed it. I needed the down time and enjoyed getting to sleep and relax.

Life on the Farm

The mountains here can be quite beautiful, this was the view from Yellow wood (were I go to get internet) a couple days ago.
Terry and I went for a walk around a bit of the farm last Sunday. The landscape varies pretty dramatically across the 40 hectare farm. This is from the river about a mile from the cottages.
The farm is mostly what you might find somewhere in America: chickens, horses, donkeys, cattle, goats, but partly something you would only find in Africa: elands, bontebok, and springbok. The animals are mostly free to roam around wherever they please, I often have heard grazing outside my cottage, as demonstrated by the goats:
The cottage I am living in is great. It has a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, another bedroom, and a small entryway. Between the two cottages (the one Terry is living in and the one I am living in) we have just about everything you would expect. We were able to make Quiche for dinner tonight, taking advantage of the free eggs here.

As I was getting home this evening the sunset turned a bright orange, so I turned around a snapped this picture.

A Map

I am figuring out how to use all sorts of new tools. I made this map so you can see where I am staying an working.

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&ptab=2&ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=114478330417158045351.00046b4db46cb513245dc

(hopefully that works, otherwise someone had better let me know).