Yep, we're still alive. And very busy, which I think is a good sign.

We had a wonderful holiday to Oman with my sister and Tyler. (See pics here.) Oman is very different from the UAE, although it's just next door. It's still a developing country, with a slower pace of life. We were shocked that its capital, Muscat, has no high-rises, and were quickly out viewing gorgeous canyons, cool crystal-blue wadis, mountains, and the seas of sand. Though we had the best time ever with Suzy and Tyler, we were happy to return home from the trip, and happy to be happy to return home from the trip, if you know what I mean! Reflecting on 2012, we've built a nice life here. We're on the road to recovery emotionally and financially since our whirlwind Peace Corps experience, and finally able to do things for ourselves, like save money and pay down student loans, diet in the New Year (no more all-you-eat-and-drink meals for the time being...), and do more simply fun stay-at-home projects like George Clooney movie marathons.

Tim has started at the naval college at physics faculty, and it sounds like he may also be able to teach a few classes at a very nearby (blocks from our flat...) women's college next month. In all ways things are looking much better for him than they did a few months back, when he was teaching tenth-grade maths.

And life continues onward...I'm participating in a conference in Muscat in a few weeks, and we're already planning holidays for the summer, the next time we get a chunk of time off. Life is good.

2011 was a tough year for us, no doubt, but of course we weren't the only ones. Hope life similarly continues to improve for our friends and family in 2012!

I've never been a huge Thanksgiving fan, owing in part to the celebration of turkey, which I don't eat. However this year, we have attended/will attend at least 2 Thanksgiving parties--and bring the green bean casserole and cranberry sauce. And I've heard of 2 more, pending confirmation.

Here, such a holiday is an excuse to visit with friends and family--none of our parties here for Thanksgiving are exclusively American events. My first Thanksgiving out of the country was in England, where the Americans of Cambridge had a special meal. British cuisine being what it is, I remember being fairly unimpressed, especially when combined with Americans in Cambridge being as they are (that is, snotty...not to crudely stereotype--of course I did have some great friends among Americans).

In Peace Corps in South Africa we had one sanctioned Thanksgiving party our first year, which was nicer than I expected it to be. And last year, we had KFC (known locally as "Kentucky") with our host family, seeing the day as fantastic excuse to treat the people who looked after us and sheltered us.

Although Ramadan was a huge deal here, fortunately December is also a thorough holiday season in Abu Dhabi as well. National Day (which we think very appropriately named) is on December 2. The United Arab Emirates celebrates 40 years as a modern nation-state this December, and just as in the states, nationalistic junk is on sale everywhere, and it's great fun. The UAE flag colors are red, green, white, and black, which means that everything looks very Christmas-y around town, with neon red, green, and white lights decorating buildings all over. We're also looking forward to the day itself, which we expect to be celebrated with a parade along the beach front of fancy cars suitably bedazzled, horrendous traffic, silly string, and related mayhem.

Being an avid explorer of nationalism wherever I go, I can't help but pause in the grocery store at the cowboy hats striped in red, green, and white, and scarves and shawls embroidered with images of the ruler of the UAE today, and/or the founder/father of the country, the late Sheikh Zayed. However, recently the Christmas trees in the same aisle also caught my eye. Though we passed by the gold metallic reindeer statues and neon pink metallic pine trees, we couldn't help but pick up a 5-foot green tree, along with plenty of ornaments and lights. We decorated our first Christmas tree together this week, which was great fun.

While we will be celebrating the winter holidays in the Middle East this year, we still feel like we have some of the best parts of American culture available to us in Abu Dhabi, including friends, turkey, cranberries, and family (my sister is coming!)...but no miserable weather--only sunny skies and moderate temperatures! Also unlike in the past, we have proper mobile phone service and fast internet for fairly hassle-free birthday calls, chats, and Skypes. Have fun and be in touch over the break. We'll be thinking of you.

Last month was the first month is over 2 years that we didn't post anything. I think it's fair to say that in the nearly 5 months we've lived in Abu Dhabi, blogging has become less of a priority.

There are a number of reasons for this.

For one, when we were in Peace Corps, we saw blogging as an important part of our work, because one of the major goals of the Peace Corps is to share with Americans the cultures and lifestyles in foreign lands. It was our job, in a sense, to share our daily lives, or what could be said of some general interest about our daily lives, with "the folks back home." Turns out our careers in Abu Dhabi don't prioritize cross-cultural or international understanding in quite the same way.

Another reason is that we are busier, and less lonely. We missed friends and family back home very badly in South Africa, because America had been our only home before. Also, as the only white people for some 5 miles in any direction in a fairly homogeneous Zulu-speaking black South-Africa context, we missed communicating complex thoughts in English day-to-day, which we couldn't do "in real life." Add to this that social life sort of stops after 5 pm in the village, and that we couldn't afford to do anything on a regular basis but sit at home....blogging was actually a social activity for us there, which is hard to imagine in many situations.

Finally, we just don't have the time now. Tim and I are both working 40 hours per week (and me, often much more outside of normal office hours...). Plus, the "home" we look back on today is as much a virtual network today of Peace Corps Volunteers and friends and family everywhere then a physical community we are trying to stay in contact with. Our "home" is the internet in a weird way now. When people here ask us where "home" is, we find ourselves hard-pressed to give any kind of succinct answer. South Africa has to come up. Then, Oregon, and California. But what about Illinois? And Washington?

On the plus side in all of this, is that we have much more of a social network here, day to day, than we had in South Africa, which also occupies our spare time more than it did in South Africa. We have friends! Yay! Not all of them are work colleagues, but many are. As in America, the sky is the limit now for us as far as socializing goes, so we just don't find ourselves sitting at home, praying for emails after writing blogs, the way we kind of did in South Africa.

Finally, we don't have as much to blog about. Our life is very much like any grown-up life in America, or at least within certain demographic and geographic parameters. We wake up, take showers, eat cereal and drink coffee, go to work, come home, eat dinner either out or using our kitchen with normal grocery-store food...what's to share? Sure, it was really freaking unbelievable hot in summer, and the norms here are Muslim, rather than Christian. There are some things that do set us apart from the folks back home, but we now find ourselves too busy to prioritize sharing them, especially since there aren't that many.

Tim is overdue for blogs about all the touristic fun he had with our Peace Corps friend Trevor last month, and we also enjoyed a great time with Katie and Emily from England last month. We still need to sell you a trip to Abu Dhabi for 2012, etc. Not to mention that Tim has a job now! Teaching math! But working full-time in normal grown-up jobs and blogging frequently just don't go hand-in-hand, so I guess he/we'll get to all that when we're able.

In the meantime, rest assured that life is good for us in Abu Dhabi, and be in touch. Stay on Facebook, and connect to us on chat, that's still our best bet. Or make a Skype date. Write an email, keep us posted on things. We still miss you! Just not as horribly and pathetically as we did when we were lowly (poor, and depressed) Peace Corps Volunteers.

Living and working outside of the US can be daunting at times. Our first experience with this was as Peace Corps Volunteers in rural South Africa. However, the mission of Peace Corps Volunteers is to constantly and consistently engage in and adapt to the local culture. In other places of the world, foreign workers are more isolated. Here in Abu Dhabi, local people and even Arabs in general form a minority in the population. Most of our social interactions here are with other westerners and the primary social activity we share is eating and drinking.

When Liz and I lived in Champaign, we greatly enjoyed the diversity of dining experiences allotted to us by living in a college town from dollar sushi night at KO Fusion to Sunday Brunch at Escobar. Sushi and Brunch just aren't words that come up much in a Peace Corps Volunteer's lexicon. So addition to enjoying a return to air conditioned climate, flush toilets and having our own car, we have also enjoyed a return to fine dining.

Abu Dhabi doesn't really have much of a 'scene' like one might find in the right neighborhoods of America's hipper cities and downtowns. I would say there are 3 unique types of dining in Abu Dhabi: local restaurants, mall restaurants, and hotel restaurants. Local restaurants are largely standard Arabic or Lebanese food and we have a favorite one which we go to often enough. Mall restaurants include all sorts of fast foods options like KFC, Pizza Hut and Burger King in addition to many casual dining experiences with all sorts of different cuisines think P.F. Changs or T.G.I. Fridays. There are two things that you absolutely won't find in any of these establishments: pork products and alcohol.

By now, we are finding it increasingly difficult to stay away from hotel restaurants. There isn't really a sufficient tourism industry in Abu Dhabi to support all of these high-end restaurants and bars but expats are highly interested in their offerings and thus there is stiff competition between them resulting in all sorts of promotions. Every Friday, all over town are brunch buffets offering not only all-you-can eat but all-you-can drink as well. Last Friday we went to a Dim Sum brunch where the fare was all asian dumplings and noodles and an unlimited drink package. We were joined by colleagues from Liz's work and spent the greater part of the afternoon socializing.

That night we had dinner at a Belgian Beer Cafe with another couple from America that also works in the education sector. The Belgian Beer offers a full range of belgian beers and also that most sought after of infidel guilty pleasures, pork! The Belgian Beer Cafe was not offering any promotion that evening so enter the other best friend of the hungry and thirsty expat, the Entertainer Coupon book. Yeah, you know the type like I used to have to sell in elementary school with thousands of dollars of savings inside all in the form of buy one get ones. You won't find many expat couples without one of these books and they are happily accepted all over town.

Last night, Liz and I enjoyed an unlimited sushi special which for about 30 USD we could eat sushi until we were ready to explode. Of course, the drinks were outrageous and not included in the special but over all it was quite the special night and a good value. A la carte sushi offerings are priced at a premium around town so if sushi is your favorite cuisine, (as it is mine), then such an offering is the way to go.

Still yet on our list of activities to enjoy but also available all over town just about any night of the week is 'Ladies Night'. At many hotel bars/restaurants, there is a night where women drink for free. So while these places are totally priced and pitched towards the high impact tourist thanks to our Entertainer book and regular weekly specials we find that by choosing the right places on the right nights, we can afford to dine in luxury often enough.

All of these places are top-notch in terms of service really. OK one time we went to a place where the buffet was extremely decadent and included chocolate fountains and cheese cakes and fresh breads and a carvery and everything you would hope for and we hoped to use our Entertainer book coupons only to find that they were not accepted for the buffet dinner. This was so surprising because our party of five had sat there for several minutes and no one had offered us an a la carte menu so we didn't even know there was an offering besides the buffet. That was an expensive disappointment but typically, it's the sort of place where the waiter pushes your chair in behind you, places your napkin on your lap for you and is certain at every moment that your every need is cared for. And really that buffet was fantastic.

I know a lot of people reading this blog are from the US and its true that in the US that hanging out at malls and hotels might sound rather bizarre. True, we don't really experience the sort of charming restaurants you might find in a place like New York, Chicago, Portland or most college towns; not every city has the history or infrastructure of those places. An unlike those places where the mall and almost every hotel are located far from where anyone lives, here in Abu Dhabi, most are located on the most envied real estate on the island. There is no 'old Abu Dhabi'. Such a thing never existed! So while that lived-in local charming feeling that hipsters find so important is hard to find, we are forced to grow accustomed to such charms as complimentary valet parking, marble walled hotel lobbies with elaborate chandeliers, restrooms with a triangle of rolled up hand towels so that no coarse paper towel need touch my delicate hands, and tableware and decor that makes us feel like we've entered a class that was before unattainable. None of these will replace those places we used to haunt where everyone knew our names, but it's great to have a place to go to feel taken care of and well fed.

August was a very slow month here in Abu Dhabi, I may have mentioned previously. With Ramadan and the heat of summer the university all but shut down, along with the banks, the malls, the government offices.

This month has been another story altogether. The days are longer as Ramadan is over, so I am working 8-5 again (and then some...), 5 days per week (it was 9-2 before). Everyone is back, and there is so much to do.

My main task at work is to be the point of contact, the creator of workflow procedures, and the instigator of processes for developing, reviewing, revising, approving, and publishing policies and procedures for the whole of the institution (17 colleges across the country). I don't write the policies or approve them by myself--I facilitate people in various departments doing so.

This is good work for me to do, since my academic background and prior experience (in South Africa) has focused heavily on educational policy and higher education in particular. While this work might seem dull to some people, I actually find it interesting at times. Try writing a complicated human resources procedure for taking leave in a number of different circumstances in a way that makes sense to Indians and Americans alike, not to mention those who speak and read English as a fourth or fifth language. To have rather than to take; to credit for rather than to credit to--it's amazingly challenging sometimes to write clear rules and steps, and obviously very important for a large system to function effectively, consistently, and transparently, as well.

Policies aren't all that I do here, though, as I've discovered in the last 2 weeks. There is also planning. In this case, the planning of massive events. I got my first taste of work-related stress last week helping to plan the annual conference held here for all faculty and staff. Collaborating closely within a team consisting of 2 of my supervisors and some assistants in our division and liaisons from elsewhere in the colleges, I helped to coordinate the efforts of technical staff, college venue organizers, and institutional leaders in order to host a show for some 1,500 participants, featuring a handful of distinguished guest speakers from around the globe. 2 of our distinguished guests were former supervisors and friends of mine, which provided me with some impetus to help ensure a successful event, but it is also the case that few volunteer for these challenging events, so there was really a lot for us to do.

This was hard for me since I am not used to being closely supervised, and being new on the job, I did require a certain amount of supervision in order to follow expectations. Normally I am on my own in work, though I do not mind working closely with others, so I felt a lot of pressure to perform well and not make mistakes.

However the event was successful as a whole, and even with the stress things were not so bad. I got to have some nice meals with my guests and enjoyed showing them around the colleges. I also got to know my supervisors here much better, and discovered that I enjoy their company. A lot of jokers around here, so things stay more or less calm most of the time. I'm such a dork that I didn't even mind working throughout my weekend, especially since I got a day off to sleep in this week, as well as another day-and-a-half to tour the colleges with my guests, getting to know campus life, which is removed from the central administration. It is Thursday (last day of the week here), and I am definitely ready for the weekend. But it was nice to feel like a part of something larger, and to feel like I have more or less passed my first big on-the-job test here.

Now we have another, much larger event on the horizon, which I am more nervous about, although of course many more people are helping to work on it than on the conference of this last week. Dozens of Nobel laureates, university presidents, country leaders, and other "world thinkers" will descend in Dubai in 1 short month in a spectacular display of celebration to hopefully open the minds and expand the perspectives and opportunities of local youth. Arabian horses will literally gallop along a stage whose background is the Burj Khalifa (world's tallest building), and I will be no doubt be marching around, once again, in my charcoal-grey suit and dress shoes, trying to help things go smoothly.

Work-related travel is also on the horizon as we also export these grand large-scale intellectual events, possibly to Ireland and Korea next year.

As this is my first "real" "grow-up" job, apart from the various part-time jobs of my studies and my time in South Africa volunteering, this has been a time of reflection for me as I've had to dive in to new situations with as much poise as possible (and sometimes that's not much!); grin and bear or, alternately, protest effectively various tasks, to establish positive but productive first impressions; and balance work and life, leisure and stress, overall, in a way that I've never had to before. More than ever I find myself so grateful at the end of the day no matter what happens during it to have a generous loving husband by my side. And, of course to a lesser extent, I am also so happy during this tumultuous time in American history to have a unique and sweet kitten at home, mostly-running air conditioning and hot and cold water, reliable private transport, and health care, and job security, and enough money to buy groceries, pay bills, and then some. While Tim continues to wait patiently for wheels to turn on his side for work, not all people are as fortunate as we are--all this, and life isn't even bad between 8 and 5.

In general Ramadan has really slowed down life here. Most of the month I was alone with little to do on the job, as nearly everyone I work with was on a long holiday. After a few days of fasting and drinking no water during the shortened work hours of 9-2, and after many afternoons and evenings spent bored to tears with nothing going on, not even shopping or banking, until dinnertime (Iftar), I could see why. Though we have enjoyed spending a lot of time at home together, where we are free to eat and drink, exercise, and listen to music as we please, the holy month has made our settling-in process slower, as businesses and banks only operate during my work hours and then again, around 9 in the evening, my normal bedtime. Nonetheless we're pretty much completely legal here. Driver's licenses, health insurance cards, Emirates' identification, resident's visas, telcom account, you name, it we got it now.

Including a brand-spanking-new 2011 Ford Fusion! I can't believe we bought new, but it made sense in some important ways. We're paying very little month-to-month (with a fair interest rate) for a vehicle that meets our needs, especially as Tim is going to be in it for an hour or two every day commuting off the island for work at the Naval College. There is also much added security in buying new in case anything goes wrong mechanically in the next few years. Abu Dhabi does not have much of a car repair or maintenance culture, so that kind of thing is not as easy or cheap as it can be in the states, making buying used more of a financial risk. I'll keep carpooling with colleagues to work, myself, as there are others in our building who work at my same office. For Tim, having cruise control and automated blue-tooth voice-activated phone and media services are extremely helpful perks we would pay outrageously for in a rental car (if that was even an option, which it isn't now, with residential parking permits now required where we live).

Work picked up for me this last week as everyone got back from their long summer holidays, and my job began in earnest. Since then I've been quite busy coordinating communications and logistics involved with a major conference the university puts on for faculty and new staff. The conference takes place the week after next, but with the 5-day end-of-Ramadan holiday happening this week (woo hoo!), that meant that my supervisor and I had a ton to do with very little time to do it. As I was also exploring some new roles in my job, this has been an exciting but stressful time at work. I am also very excited to have two guests of my own--a supervisor from Illinois, and another from Portland State--as key invited speakers. Dr. Candyce will even stick around after the conference to stay at our home for a few days and see some of the local sites. I'm looking forward to her visit.

We had a surprise visitor this last week, however: my Uncle John! This was a real treat as I had not seen him for nearly 3 years. He was working locally so he managed to spend a few days here with us before flying out to Brazil. I was slightly bummed out, because if it had been 1 week earlier I could have easily taken a day off work, and if it had been 1 week later I would have had the week off...but as it was, there was no way I could take a day off this last week! However Tim was fairly free, so they were able to hang out and visit during the day, and at least my hours were only 9-2! Of course, 1 evening was also interrupted, as I was invited to a documentary screening at the UAE Crown Prince's palace here in town, which was attended by our Chancellor (and Minister of Education for UAE) Sheik Nahyan and Vice Chancellor, as well as the Crown Prince of Bahrain and the Sheik of Dubai. This was a very interesting if unfortunately timed event in this case. A colleague and I went together, where we were seated in a ladies section as major political leaders entered and were greeted. Then we watched a film about the UAE in Afghanistan. The major security force from the Middle East in Afghanistan today, the UAE military is known especially for provisioning health care to women in Afghanistan, who will only go to UAE-army female doctors rather than take health care in an integrated setting. The video showed how religious similarities helped the UAE as an allied force to work with people on the ground and fight the Taliban, while of course regional differences in cultures, customs, and language separated the soldiers from the civilians. It was an educational and interesting event, and luckily Tim and Uncle John were not too bitter that I had to visit the Crown Prince for an evening!

For Uncle John's last night in town we went to one of our favorite local restaurants which is in walking distance: Lebanese Flower. Though we can get very tasty hummous and pita ("Arabian bread") at our local grocery store for about $1, and falafel for not much more, Lebanese flower is not much more expensive, while it also offers a great, authentic cultural experience. We also invited a new colleague/neighbor Kate, who also comes from the Pacific Northwest. It was a great way to send Uncle John off, and we're thankful we got to visit with him for a time we did.

We are excited to also await many other visitors in the months to come. Katie from England, and Peace Corps Volunteer Trevor will be visiting on his way home, and maybe a few more Peace Corps, as Abu Dhabi is not out-of-the-way for those buying cheap tickets back to the states at the end of service. And my sister Suzy is coming for my birthday/Christmas! I cannot wait to have Suzy here!

And there's one more guest to our home, but that one is here to stay: a new kitty we got last night named Mr. Fox! We saw three cats yesterday at their foster homes here, and were happy to take Mr. Fox home with us right away, after also getting a litter box and a kitty carrier (Feline Friends is the only resource here for strays and other abandoned cats in Abu Dhabi, and is awesome to work with). Mr. Fox was picked up off the street at 5 months, and has spent 5 months living in a small room of the house of a loving foster family, so he is still getting used to life here. He is playing with us and rubbing up against us but still quite shy for us to pet him. He woke us up this morning with loud meowing and since then we've been taking shifts playing with him while the other sleeps. He seems to be getting used to us pretty quickly all things considered, so we are hopeful that he will soon feel at home here with us. He is a beautiful white-and-ginger Arabian Mau with the sweetest face and biggest eyes...and a big meow! We're happy to build roots here in Abu Dhabi this last month, to have a family.

Lately I've been thinking about being expat--what that means. I hear people throwing around this term, usually in a negative way. The "ugly expat," we know, is a person who goes to another country and acts as if they expect things to be the way they are back home. Then there is a whole subcategory, of the foreign aid-working expat. Blogs are devoted to stereotyping this group, usually in an amusing way. I related to these stereotypes as a Peace Corps Volunteer in South Africa, though I was an unpaid, temporary volunteer, rather than a traditional, more permanently based, aid worker, then. The expat aid worker is said to brag about their rough conditions--the harsher the better--and enjoy posting on Facebook about funny or wacky cultural encounters, things like that.

The longer I live outside the U.S. the less these stereotypes resonate with me, however. Expats move abroad because of so many different situations, and they are as diverse, if not more diverse, than "nationals": people living in their "own" country. Sure, there are "ugly expats," who want nothing to do with local culture or are unable to appreciate it due to a lack of information or experience, or fear. But more likely, this stereotype reflects an expat on a bad day, or one who is on their way "home," or not adjusting well. One time at a grocery store here, I felt exemplary of the ugly expat. First, the line I got into and unloaded my groceries at hit a speed bump, and I waited while watching four or five people who were behind me got rung up at another register. Then, mysteriously, my bank card didn't go through. Discombobulated upon paying with cash I had just taken out and trying to organize myself before leaving, I loudly (and passive-aggressively) said "excuse me," to the man who had bagged my groceries, who then had them in hand and was on his way out to the parking lot to help me, presumably to put the groceries in my fancy expat car (silly, we are only getting our fancy expat car on Saturday!). A slight hush fell around me, as I had become the ugly expat. But really it was just a frustrating situation! Or not...you decide.

But, the thing is, the bagger was an expat, as was the lady who rung me up. Expats aren't all rich and white.

Another interesting thing about being an expat is the degree of openness in the society you enter into, to you being yourself. I have been so impressed here in Abu Dhabi about the tolerance to others exhibited by nationals, and fellow expats from different places. Especially compared with South Africa. Admit to partaking ever in alcohol in the wrong crowd in South Africa, or that you have a different religious orientation than they do, and you are prejudged harshly by people you had previously thought of as open and friendly. Here it is broadly accepted that people do different things, depending on where they come from. Some people in America complain about Muslims practicing their religion more or less privately, while in Abu Dhabi governmental organizations and workplaces make substantive arrangements to accommodate Christian and other non-national norms. White women (usually tourists, not expats) who walk around here dressed like hookers are generally treated with respect by people from here and abroad, while some women who wear various (non-Christian or Catholic) head coverings in the United States can be harassed or otherwise victimized for dressing differently than the local norms.

The tolerance of UAE society is exceptional, of course. The UAE has depended on expats to transmit knowledge and help build a society literally from the sand up in the last forty years, wisely recognizing that money without diverse and lengthy experience does not make a strong, sustainable society flourish. In Abu Dhabi and Dubai nationals are thus a small minority compared with the many foreigners who work for better wages than they can get back home (be they high or low by your standards).

So, being a non-ugly expat is surely easier here than it is in some places, like South Africa, where in less open environments expats are known for going to bars in tight groups and getting wasted, stuff like that. Here there is a flourishing, but open, expat culture. Americans, Brits, and Aussies and the like go to buffet breakfasts on the weekends and fancy hotel restaurants to have nice meals and drinks, while Indians, Lebanese, and others also have strong cultural traditions they are able to bring with them at ease. And in the mix always are Emirates, who enjoy diverse food and drink ("mocktails") and expat culture as a gift which is part and parcel of living in their home country.

I was a bit worried at first, after our immersive South African experience, that we would be too removed from Arab or Emirati culture as an expat worker here. But I do not feel this way now. Though it is not every day that I interact with nationals, many days I do, and I also work closely with Lebanese, Palestinian, and Sudanese Arab speakers. I also work with Americans, Aussies and South Africans, and tons of Indians. This country really is a fantastic melting pot.

Perhaps this is why the "expat" concept of a culture of isolated foreigners hiding out or lashing out in foreign lands ceases to resonate with me these days. Or perhaps I am becoming comfortably numb to the issues, with all the air conditioning, running water, and fantastic Thai take-out I have been consuming lately. Am I a foreign aid worker? Not in the traditional or stereotypical sense these days, though I am helping develop a young nation in higher education. There are no updates bragging about the extreme conditions we live in (other than the extremely luxurious conditions!), but wacky cultural interchanges can still happen, and do. In sum, while I still want to avoid the ugly expat stereotype myself, I am beginning to wonder how truthful it is as a generalization about people who go abroad to live and work. It is a unique situation, but then again, so would be our life in the United States.

For those of you who know the same amount about Islam and Arabic culture and language as I did a few weeks ago, "Ramadan kareem" is the common greeting for the month of Ramadan and is best translated, "Ramadan is generous." Sometimes people say, "Ramadan mubarak", which would translate to "Ramadan is a blessing." Living somewhere where the customs of Ramadan are protected by law, I have been trying to come to terms with these concepts.

Even though we are not Muslims, Ramadan has a definite effect on our lives. These effects are both good and challenging. For instance, Liz gets to take advantage of reduced working hours and her regular 8-5 hours are reduced to 9-2. However, she is accustomed to drinking tea all day long she is not permitted to do so in her office. If she wants a cup of tea, she must go to a special room.

It is very common for businesses and especially restaurants to have special Ramadan business hours. For example, the McDonald's close to us is open from 6pm to 4am and offers take-away only from 6pm to Iftar (approx. 7pm). Muslims are compelled to fast during this month, from sunrise to sunset. During the fasting hours, they must abstain from food or drink of any kind including water, juice, or even chewing gum. They also abstain from smoking and if they listen to music it is religious in content. The UAE government supports the custom in a number of ways. Certain foodstuffs are subsidized during the month and food sellers are asked to pass the saving along to fasters. Indeed there are tents all over where a poor faster can enjoy an evening meal for free. Not all of these supports are completely generous. For instance, someone caught eating or drinking in public could receive a fine or even a prison sentence from the police although, with discretion, the officer may only give a warning.

Some people have asked if we are fasting. The short answer is no but we are trying to at least be in the spirit of it. Liz is fasting during her work hours. Myself I am trying to reduce my caloric intake during the whole month and I am no longer enjoying any lunches at the mall. To be honest though, as much as I like the idea of getting into the spirit of Ramadan, I think maybe my feelings are closer to the stereotypes of how Jews feel at Christmas parties. We are especially struggling to get any shopping done. We went car shopping at 10pm last week. Liz who held the only driver's license between us that night prefers not to drive at night but had to test drive a car while very tired on roads full of people with questionable blood sugar.

There are a few parallels between Ramadan here in the Gulf and Christmastime in the West. Malls are specially decorated and it is sale season. Special offers are abounding. Iftar feasts and buffets replace the Christmas Party. A general spirit of generosity abounds as giving to charity is part of the Ramadan custom. Young children may fast for a few hours in proportion to their age motivated by the thoughts of special treats and gifts from their parents. People are getting time off of work and spending more time with their families. It's nice. The customs of the fast also have a similar effect as the western custom of New Year's resolutions. Smokers who must already go most of the day without a cigarette often choose this month to end that habit. In general, Ramadan is a time to examine the habits in one's life and to take advantage of the time to reexamine then and make adjustments.

Ramadan is based on a lunar calendar. It moves forward in the solar calendar about 10 to 11 days each year. This fast is a particularly challenging one as it is falling around the longest days in the hottest part of the year. Imagine walking 20 minutes in 110degree heat with high humidity and being bound by your faith to not have a refreshing glass of water. One reason for the fast is so everyone can know what it means to go without even if just for the course of the day. I really respect and admire the devotion that Muslims have to this sort of thought and compassion. I know that I am not up for it myself.

In other news, I have not blogged about getting a job. I have been offered a 3 month contract to teach Physics at the UAE Naval College. The details of my teaching duty are still TBA as the Dean is on vacation and it is up to him to decide. All the same, I am very excited. I am currently in the process of security checks and degree attestations but the pay is generous and the work hours are great. This is all more than we expected and hoped for. The idea of this 3 month contract is to be a trial hire and with my success I should get a 3 year contract.

Oh and btw, we did end up buying a car. We decided to go with the mid-range Ford Fusion. It was on sale for Ramadan and I think it will be a great car for us. It just arrived in the port yesterday and is going through customs. After that, the dealer will prepare the insurance and the registration and we should be in the car as early as Saturday. After that, we will have to register to park it and buy a parking permit but that will be the last bureaucratic hurdle to tackle for awhile.

We had the most wonderful trip to Europe this last month. I'm afraid this will be a short novel, but hopefully it'll be interesting reading for family, at least! By the way, here are some of the amazing pictures from the trip which Tim took, of Paris, Switzerland, and Venice and Rome. I have been delighted to find that he takes stunning pictures in the city and the mountains as well as in the bush.

We left Abu Dhabi on a Tuesday night with Lufthansa and connected in Frankfurt to Paris. Somewhat delirious from the red-eye in Frankfurt, we were delighted to explore the airportwhich features, among other things, many pork products every ten yards or so, which gave us all the assurance we needed that we were not in the Middle East any more!

When we arrived at the airport in Paris we hit a bit of a stumbling block as there were massive lines full of tourists to take the train into town. We could not use automated machines with our credit cards, so we decided to take a taxi to our hotel. Our driver was from Morocco, and we impressed him with our extremely poor and limited Arabic as he got us through town, to our very basic hotel (with the world's smallest elevator) near Place de la Republique.

After a bit of rest and a shower, we hit the streets for a nice (late) cafe lunch, and after that we took the Metro to Notre Dame, not far from where we stayed. Tim thoughtfully prepared for us to be able to listen to Rick Steve's audio tours at several points during our vacation, and we enjoyed hearing his take on the history of the cathedral and the religious symbolism of its design. After, we walked back through a nice neighborhood to our hotel, and enjoyed a two-course dinner before an early bedtime.

The next day we did our best to rise early and took the Metro to the Eiffel Tower, where we enjoyed the scenery but steered clear of the long lines to go up. From there we took the Metro to the Arc de Triumph, built prematurely for Napoleon, which we did go up. From the Arc we could see most of Paris, and it was nice to get an orientation to the city.

In the afternoon we went to Montmartre, where we had lunch at a popular local bakery. After that we took a free tour with Discover Tours, which is run at a nice, leisurely pace by French university students. We saw Moulin Rouge, the bakery from Amelie, and got to know the place a little better, which sits on a hill overlooking Paris and is now quite touristic thanks to its quaint, artsy feel. From there we also entered the stunning Sacre Coeur basilica, and the Dali museum.

In the evening we had dinner and took a boat cruise through the heart of Paris. The cruise was pleasant, and as the sun set we saw the Eiffel Tower and other monuments being to glow and sparkle. This was a long day, and we ended up sleeping in a bit in the morning from all the activity!

Our final day in Paris was only slightly more laid back. In the morning we walked through the Louvre (not through the museum, but through the buildings) on route to the D'Orsay Museum, which focuses more on impressionism and the best of early-modern European and especially French art. It was once again made more meaningful thanks to Tim's Rick Steve's guide, though unfortunately some of the exhibits had been moved around so that the guide was difficult to use in its set order.

After the museum we grabbed baguette sandwich lunches on our way to the Rodin Museum and statue park, where we got to cut in line, arms full of food, as we had purchased a combo pass at the D'Orsay. After eating at a fine picnic bench stop in the park, we enjoyed walking around the gardens and former home of Rodin at a leisurely pace, taking pictures with La Penseur (the thinker) and other sculptures.

From there we headed back to our hotel for a quick nap before our evening activities. First we went to the science and technology museum near our hotel, which featured all kinds of inventions and machines from all of human history, from ancient cameras and music players to old vehicles and Foucault's pendulum. Then we went to a slightly fancier-than-usual dinner which we were grateful that Tim had booked ahead. We enjoyed eating nearly everything we ordered in Paris, though sometimes the price was a bit high! After dinner walking through the neighborhood we stumbled along a local concert in a park, and we enjoyed listening to live rock music in a thick crowd of Parisians...though we were hating life in the morning, when we had an early train ride to Neuchatel, Switzerland.

This was our first of 5 days using the EuroRail pass, and by far our fanciest train ride. Sitting in a silent first class car we were given wonderful breakfast meals with extra croissants to take with us, before I dozed off, while Tim watched the green hills roll larger and larger, until we were in a country of mountains and lakes: Switzerland.

We knew we were somewhere enchanting as we connected in Lausanne, on Lake Geneva, and Neuchatel was like a modern-day fairy-tale land with charming houses cluttering the steep narrow lanes taking us from the train session to our hotel on the lake. Our hotel room was much nicer than the cheap room I found us in Paris, and after checking in and relaxing a bit, we explored the quaint town, including its main church and its old medieval prison with a panoramic watchtower.

The main reason Tim chose Neuchatel town however was so that we could get in a fantastic day hike in a nearby village. In the morning we had a big breakfast before a ten-minute train ride to the entrance of the Creux de Van trail. Though the weather was not great when we arrived, and thunder struck as we entered the deep, dark, forest up the mountain, things cleared up along the way so that we could see stunning sights as we made it through 14 switchbacks to the top of the amphitheater. However after getting a nice clear view from the top the weather turned again dramatically, and we got soaked to the bone in pelting rain as cool wind rushed past. Fortunately the hike featured many stopping and rest points, and the next one was our planned lunch stop. Taking a detour from the hiking trail we were nervous about what we would encounter as we got colder and more hungry, and were relieved to see a charming farmhouse in the distance, with smoke rising from the fire chimney. Inside we sat by the fireplace and I ordered Fondue and Tim had a wonderful mustard pork and a hot chocolate.

Reluctant to get back in the cold and wet weather we enjoyed the fire and company of other startled Swiss hikers, who eventually teamed up with us to take a taxi back to the town we started from, as the sudden, massive rain storm made the hike down the hill not only unpleasant but possibly dangerous. So our hike in the mountains turned into more of a cultural experience as we commiserated and took turns warming ourselves at the fireplace in rural mountain Switzerland.

The next day we entered the even more magical landscape of the Alps as we took another first-class train (or rather a series of trains--we were continually impressed with the Swiss rail system) to Interlaken, at the base of the mountains Jungfrau (virgin), Monsch (Monk), and Eiger (ogre). A great map of the region is here.

From Interlaken we took an old-fashioned narrow-gauge train to Lauterbrunnen which sits in the valley beneath the mountains. With the windows of the train open we could smell the alpine air while watching the slushy river rush past, until we arrived in a place surrounded by tall peaks, stunning, wispy waterfalls...and many more tourists than we ran into in either Paris or Neuchatel.

Running to catch a seat on yet another train (I think that was our fourth train that day) we started going straight up a mountain to our hotel in Wengen, which is about one-third the way up to the top, at 4180 feet (Jungfrau is nearly 14,000 feet). From there our hotel seemed about a mile away, all up hill, but the views from the room were worth it. As we sat on our balcony with snacks, we could see Jungfrau and another smaller mountain, Breithorn, which faded in and out of view as clouds came and went. We had our first taste of German Swiss cuisine and culture in town before making an early night of it, and as day turned to night the moon rose from behind the pink glittering mountains, causing many astonished sighs to emerge from hotel balconies surrounding us, and providing Tim with some spontaneously picture-perfect moments.

Though Tim had planned to go to the Jungfrau region more for great hiking opportunities, once I got to the place I became fascinated with the idea that we could take a train all the way to the top. With the weather volatile in such mountainous areas I learned that only on a clear day was the trek worth it, which costs over $100 per person even with our rail pass. In the morning the weather was ideal, and we had reason to believe it wouldn't stay that way, so we thought about what we would and would not regret later in life with regard to spending money, and departed Wengen to Jungfrau.

The train ride was a bit scary as it seemed to be straight up, but the scenery was amazing as we ascended green grassy hills to snow-covered valleys and peaks. After a long time in a tunnel going up and up and up we arrived at the Jungfrau station, which boasts several viewing points, walking paths through the snow with great views of the major glacier, and an awesome ice palace, which I had to go back to for a second time because I enjoyed it so much. It was wonderful to be under the glacier, to see the stacks of ice, and to see what the world looks like from one of its higher points.

After making the most of Jungfrau, we stopped at Kleine-Scheiddeg, the highest ski resort in area, about two-thirds up, and a good middle point between Jungfrau and Wengen to snap some more shots and enjoy the day. That evening we were exhausted from the movement, elevation, and commotion, and rested as well as we could in our hotel which was inferior in most regards, except for the view.

Our last day in the region was a rainy one. However Tim had just the plan for a rainy day: a small walk to Trummelbach Falls, which features one of the largest (in quantity) waterfalls in the world, which rushes from the glaciers and snows of the alps to sea level through rock. Feeling slightly discouraged by bad weather and high costs at this mid-point in our holiday, we were inspired by an English lady we met in the line going up, who reminded us that most people save up their whole lives to go to Switzerland, and that maybe there are 15 days a year as beautiful as was the day we visited Jungfrau. Though the line was a bit long, the falls were awesome, shooting through canyons at amazing speeds, giving a great real-world demonstration of how erosion works. It was a great rainy-day activity.

The next morning we departed the alps for Lucerne, our last stop in Switzerland. Planned mostly as a convenient layover by Tim, once I remembered that my foreign-exchange student friend from high school Corinne was Swiss, and from Lucerne, I was fortunate to be able to make a plan to also see her there. We spent the day seeing the sights of town, like the town walls, the big church, and a dying Lion sculpture which Mark Twain declared was the saddest piece of rock ever, before Corinne met up with us for dinner and drinks. After 14 years it was amazing to see an old friend, and in her own stomping grounds for the first time, and it was also to nice to hear a local perspective on the world, which can sometimes be hard to get traveling as a couple.

Finally we left Switzerland for Venice and Rome, our last two stops. They say Europe is fantastic for the many cultural landscapes you find clustered tightly together, and Tim gasped in astonishment as building and construction patterns changed as we entered Italy, more rugged, and less glitzy and quaint, than Switzerland. We also found Americans for the first time in our travels in Italy, which was full of them!

However the places were still remarkable. Once in Venice we took a ferry to our accommodation which was a bed and breakfast out of a traditional residence overlooking the touristic alleyways of the city. Once settled in we proceeded with our usual wandering, grabbing snacks and delicious, cheaper dinner, along the way (I ate tuna and onion pizza about five times on this trip--my favorite Italian combo!). The next day we did light sight-seeing and wandering through the town, going up the watch tower and through St. Mark's and other beautiful churches. We even took a gondola ride, which I enjoyed far more than I thought I would, though the main canal through Venice is not for the faint-hearted in the middle of summer (talk about congestion!). The back allies were peaceful and thought-provoking in comparison.

In the evening, exhausted though we were, we were given no choice but to enjoy Venice's largest annual event which we only accidentally stumbled upon, which is a civil event celebrating the end of the Bubonic Plague with fireworks to match the glitter of Venice's churches and basilicas, which jealous Romans were known to suggest did more to promote Venice than any higher power. (We had no choice because it was really loud outside during before bedtime!) It was by far the most extravagant fireworks display we'd ever seen, but I was grateful to sleep soundly after it was finished, as we raced along with everyone else in Venice through cramped allies back to our rooms.

Our last stop, Rome, was also a bit more frantic, with too many tourists along with Romans who we had to sift through in order to do anything. Upon arriving we went to Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, and the Colosseum, the latter of which was positively overrun with tourists. However our wait that day paid off in the morning, when our combo tickets got us past the lines at the Forum, the main Ancient Roman ruins. The Forum came alive for us with the help of Rick Steve's audio tour, which reminded us of how these ruins once formed a civilization we Westerners associate ourselves with this to this day, of democracy and liberty. The guide also mentioned to us that low-life scum like tourists and sight-seers would be around even in Ancient Rome, along with souvenir hawkers and the rest!

After a reflective walk around the ruins of Ancient Rome we took a glass elevator ride up the Vittoriano Monument, a particularly grand building, to see all of Rome.

At the suggestion of our guest house, we went to the Vatican in the evening, first to the Sistine Chapel, via the rest of the ornate Vatican Museum, and then to St. Peter's Basilica. Again we enjoyed Rick Steve's historical impressions as we learned where the Pope stays and other interesting facts about the artworks, the buildings, and the place. After a fantastic dinner (mmmm Italian pizza...) we were thankful for having a nice guesthouse and air conditioning and slept in our last day in Europe.

On our last day we checked out a few more major Roman attractions, including the Spanish Steps and another viewpoint of Rome, this time taking a nice leisurely walk on very sore feet. We ate and went to bed early, as we had a taxi pick us up at 4 the next morning for our return trip to Frankfurt at 6ish and Abu Dhabi around 11.

We arrived back in the evening, and were very sorry to find that our bags, which had been very hastily and strangely checked at Frankfurt (they were not oversized, and there was plenty of room on the plane), did not make it to Abu Dhabi, causing some hardship for ourselves and other victims of this strange plot, who only wanted the bags they carefully prepared for carry-on to arrive with them. The next day the bags arrived to our door step however, Shannon and Sam departed, and our new life in our new apartment really began.

Now we have telcom (Skype!), gas (home-cooked meals!), functioning bank accounts and the rest. Life is hot and interesting with Ramadan nearing (more on that later), but overwhelmingly comfortable and satisfying after a whirlwind year and a fun but fast-paced European adventure. Now to earn that dough!

Since we arrived back from our vacation in Europe (to be blogged about soon), we have been moving into our permanent apartment in Abu Dhabi. The woman who I replaced at work (and her husband) lived in the flat we are now in. We purchased much of their furniture from them before they left, which has made moving up 9 stories, from the guest apartment to #901, a breeze. Mostly we just had some personal items we brought with us to take up the elevator. At this point we are still waiting for telcom, and we need to turn on the gas to use the stove and buy a few household items, like dish- and silverware, some bedding, and some wall decorations. But so far, so good.

We are still far from completing our relocation. Transportation is a slight issue; we'd like to drive ourselves around, but new parking regulations make renting cars an issue. (Taxis are cheap and convenient, in the meantime.) My bank has been grumpy due to me changing (work-provided) mobile phones, and Tim's residency visa requires him to go through the process I went through a few weeks back, from medical examinations to application translations, to fingerprinting. It seems like a never-ending to-do list continues to confront us after a month of residing in Abu Dhabi.

All the same, with each passing week I can feel us shaking off some of the "funk" left with us from our Peace Corps/South Africa experience.

A year ago right now, our life enter into a tornado which we are now just beginning to recover from. First, our home in Swartruggens became an active site in the national teaching strike, with armed police officers walking the hallways of our building while union leaders met with our main supervisors. We moved into our beloved friend and colleague Palma's home as an emergency measure, only to have the unthinkable happen, when Palma passed away suddenly from an emergency heart surgery. After all of this our work there became impossible, and Peace Corps was on the lookout for a new site for us. As months passed in uncertainty we stayed in Pretoria and with Peace Corps friends, playing a delicate waiting game while still technically placed in the North-West Province Department of Education.

It was not until October that we had a new home and work site, and we were delighted this time for the opportunity to "rough it," without indoor plumbing. We quickly adapted to a new province and new language group...only to have disaster strike once more, as we discovered that child abuse masquerading as corporal punishment was commonplace (and endorsed) at our new site. Most volunteers have 2 or 3 schools to avoid this situation, which can leave a volunteer in a vulnerable place politically should he or she find beatings in their school excessive or unreasonable, or sickening to one's stomach or emotional well-being. But with only the one school, we wound up with little choice (save changing sites once again, which was a lengthy ordeal the first time) than turning our heads, hearts, and minds away, as we were forced each day at school to defend our choice to not beat learners to self-conscious educators.

After one last wonderful South African holiday with my dad and step-mom we made the difficult choice to leave Peace Corps, to be unemployed in the states. We were coming home from school (when we were going to school...) with boxing gloves on, ultimately failing to really cope with violence we were witnessing. It would take long-term rest and repair to heal from the feelings of hopelessness, guilt, shock, and fear which go hand-in-hand with witnessing violence and being powerless to stop it. Yet it still remained uncertain when we would even begin the healing process, as being homeless, unemployed, and 30 is not an ideal state to be in, even with an awesome family and social network in the states, and even with PhDs and a strong relationship.

Since making that choice a few short months ago, things have changed quickly. A few days back in the states and I was offered a job. The rest is history.

Life so far is comfortable here, and as we've adapted we have also begun to forget what it felt like when we were in the Peace Corps--at least the bad parts of it! Our lives from even a few months ago seem so distant from life today, like it happened five years ago that we were living in the North-West Province when the teacher strike began...It's like we've teleported to a stable, comfortable, relatively low-stress life.

Finally we have a home. We have few friends and no family with us in Abu Dhabi, but it feels good in this stage of life to finally feel like we are providing for ourselves, are autonomous and free to make our own choices about where and how to live, can afford to buy whatever groceries and other items we want, have great health care, and so on. So far I'm digging this 8-5 more than I thought I would, with a wonderful loving husband, and a beautiful high-rise apartment complete with his/hers bathrooms as my home. And the best part of it is that it is all permanent, for the foreseeable future...well, until we get antsy for those high-rises on the beach.

So my last blog was about some of the similarities between living in South Africa and in the UAE. Another similarity is that we have still have the travel bug in a serious way and living abroad gives us access to a lot that would be out of reach if we lived in the US. This evening we leave for our first vacation of this adventure but we had a bit of a break last weekend in celebration of my birthday.

My Birthday was last Thursday and in the UAE as well as many other countries I shared this holiday with the observance of the Prophet's Ascension. Despite daily encouragements to pray, I still know little more about the practice of Islam than before we moved. The actual holiday was earlier in the week but it was observed on Thursday to make for a long weekend. For me, all weekends are long but it was a day off for Liz! She and her trainer at work, Shannon, made a booking for us to go to the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the world's tallest building. Topping Taipei 101 by some 60% extra height, the Burj is really a remarkable architechural feat. I was really looking forward to it.

However, Liz had even more in mind. On Wednesday afternoon, Liz called me from work and told me that I needed to pack an overnight bag and meet her in the lobby of our building at 4 o'clock. She had no more details for me. There are many 4 and 5 star hotels in Abu Dhabi which are more or less empty at the moment because the weather her is forbodingly hot and some industries such as education are shut down for the summer. Thus they are offering deep discounts so I thought maybe we were going to have a staycation for the night similar to what we did for Liz's last Birthday in Jozini. When the taxi began taking us off of the island, I knew we would be headed Yas Island. Further, than that and a taxi would start being really hugely expensive.

What's on Yas Island you may ask? The answer would be not a whole lot. There's a golf course, an IKEA that furnishes most of Abu Dhabi's middle class, a world class formula one race track and Ferrari World. I was so excited to go to Ferrari World! This was a such a great suprise. After about a 20 minute taxi ride we checked into a rather nice hotel room with a great view of the race track and the Yas Hotel and shared a toast from the mini-bar. Then we headed off to Ferrari World.

Ferrari World is still pretty new and they don't have too many attractions but what attracted me the most was the world's fastest roller coaster which goes about 240 kmph (150 mph) which is about half again as fast as any roller coaster I have ever been on. The ride was totally intense!! I would recommend any thrill ride enthusiast to make the trek to Ferrari World. That ride is worth the price of admission. The place was pretty empty. I don't know if that is because it's an off season or because it was Wednesday evening but we never waited more than 20 minutes for anything and many rides we walked right on. This was a fantastic suprise!

One thing about living here that is an adjustment is all the women walking around with their faces covered. This custom is followed to differing degrees by different women from different families and tribes but is a part of my day to day experience. Most young women are covering their hair but not their face. One Thursday afternoon I was getting lunch at the nearest mall, (an activity that may be the subject of a future blog), and it was funny to see the teenage Emiratis in their traditional dress behaving every bit the same as teenagers would in an American mall, girls with too much makeup, boys brimming with youthful confidence and bravado eyeing each other curiously and ambitiously.

One of the first times I ever spoke to someone with a veiled face was in Durban, in South Africa. She was working at the bunny chow stand and I was suprised by how pleasant sounding and happy her voice was. In my mind, the veil means seriousness. I expected the voice to be grumpy. In general I will admit that I am a little scared of such women. Afterall, when did I see a TV show or a movie where Arab Muslims were happy go lucky? Perhaps this is why if I had to guess whether or not the face I couldn't see was smiling or not, I would usually guess not. This is certainly not always the case. At Ferrari World, there were many women of different ages wearing veils and scarves. Ferrari World provides hoods to go over and goggles to wrap around so as to not disturb their placement on someones head while they go flying through space and time at 150mph. It's good to know that having fun and wearing a veil are not mutually exclusive!

The next day we were picked up by Sam and Shannon and we headed to Dubai. On the way into the city we could see the Burj Al Arab, the worlds first so-called 7 star hotel. Then we headed into the city center where we spent the afternoon in the Dubai Mall in the shadow of the Burj Khalifa. The mall is enormous and houses so much. Many high-end designers are present as well as a gold market. There's a Hershey store that is likely the largest outside of Hershey, PA and a Bloomingdales where you can get a little brown bag. There's an aquarium and underwater zoo which Liz and I visited. There's an ice-skating rink, a fashion catwalk...the list goes on. The indoor-ski slope is at the Mall of the Emirates which is a few miles away so we didn't see that. We had Yo! Sushi for a meal while we were there before heading to our elevator ride.

The Burj Khalifa has over 200 floors but the observatory is on the 124th floor. This is still significantly higher than you get in the Sears Tower or the Empire State Building but it's amazing to be so high up and yet to feel like you are at the base of a 80 story building. The weather was hazy so you couldn't see far but you did get a nice few of the city and we watched the sun set low into the arabian gulf. It was really a great visit.

After our elevator ride, Sam and Shannon had made a booking for us to have cocktails at the Armani Hotel which is inside the tower. Although it seemed like it should be obvious, actually getting to the entrance of the world's tallest building was a task. Yes, it's the same Armani that makes designer suits and overpriced t-shirts. From the lounge we could see the Dubai Fountain display it's nightly shows.

We returned to the mall, they are adjacent, to get dinner and found it packed! No wonder that Ferrari World was empty! Apparently the national pasttime is shopping!

Now we are headed to Europe for two weeks. It really is the off-season and Liz was encouraged to take some leave even though she just started. I was able to book the flights with frequent flyer miles we acquired over the course of our PC experience. We are going to spend a few days in Paris, then a week in Switzerland exploring different places with cheeses named after them and the alps and then a few days in Venice then Rome. I have never been to Europe and am looking forward to it. I promise to take lots of photos!

I just heard back today that I had passed the interview stage for a position as Physics Faculty at the Naval College. Should this lead to a job offer, this added income with be completely unnecessary for our sustained survival in Abu Dhabi and will no doubt enable us to get on top of all the student loans we took out over the course of our education while at the same time opening up new lifestyle options that before we've only dreamed of. For me, since it will be a 40 minute commute each way, I am wondering what kind of car I should get. I am thinking something like certified pre-owned mini cooper but we shall see.

We've been in Abu Dhabi for 1 week now, and I have been "at work" in my new job also for 1 week now (though much of the time has been spent with administrative matters rather than on-the-job training). It is a whole new lifestyle from that we grew accustomed to while in third-world (not to be confused with first-world) South Africa, and 7 weeks in the United States was not a lot of time to get readjusted to the first world, which is where we find ourselves today (well, sort of--more on that below). Though we did get some good practice in with consuming things (shopping, flushing toilets, etc.) which no doubt helped prepare us for this next adventure, as Tim mentioned, we still find ourselves on a regular (hourly?) basis reflecting on the many differences between living in a rural village in South Africa and living in a highly modern city in the United Arab Emirates. Here are some of the more obvious ones:

1. Infrastructure

We lived on a dirt road, off of a gravel road, which led to a very poor, potholed "tarred" road in Makhonyeni while serving as Peace Corps volunteers. From there we were six kilometers from town, which had only the bare essentials in terms of groceries. Thus we ate the same things every day (oatmeal, peanut-butter sandwiches, and veggies and sauce with rice and beans or noodles for dinner).

Here we live on an eight-lane road which extends to 14 lanes at the major intersection a few blocks down. No, we do not live next to a freeway (there are many traffic lights). The place is just made for driving. Another block or so from the nearest main intersection is one of the biggest malls in Abu Dhabi, which has 3 floors above ground level and 2 below; Coldstone Creamery, Hardee's, Fuddruckers, and Pizza Hut--among some more locally based, more palatable options; a large grocery store; a Body Shop, Steve Madden, and a bajillion other stores. We also live a block away from a grocery store that has more than three times the produce our "shopping town" in South Africa had; normal household items including name-brand cosmetics; Jiffy peanut butter and Kraft macaroni and cheese; salmon, yogurt, granola, frozen pizzas, and soy milk; and one of the awesomest Asian foods sections I have ever seen. Not far from us is a Spinney's, another grocery store which is favored among expats for its selection of international foods. Life is definitely more convenient now.

2. Housing

In South Africa, with the Peace Corps, the two-room cement hut we had could easily be placed entirely within the living/dining open area of our guest apartment here. In South Africa, our toilet was a "long-drop" 50 yards away, while we cleaned ourselves, our dishes, and our clothes in buckets (note: not at the same time). Our bed was a "full" bed, which we barely fit on, and our air conditioner was a single fan.

In addition to indoor plumbing and air conditioning our new home has 2 and a half bathrooms, and a dishwater! We have a king size bed, 2 balconies to view the city from 11 stories up...it's a step up for us.

3. Work

My theory on this one is that unpaid employees are simply not highly valued in a workplace, which is why Tim and I often struggled to be heard in a way in line with our level of experience and education in South Africa. In any case we grappled constantly with the Peace Corps in South Africa to feel like anything we were good at, or keen on doing, was possible work for us. Rather, we normally felt underutilized and undervalued as we were not necessarily good at or enthusiastic about the few tasks suggested as work for us (such as classroom teaching). Clearly there were divergent expectations regarding our roles between ourselves and our supervisors at the institutions that we worked at.

Not a lot can be said with confidence about my work and possible opportunities for Tim here as we have only been here for one week, but against this backdrop I immediately feel grateful to be doing work which is appropriate for me to do--which I have relevant experience for, and interest in. As Tim engages in interview processes for possible opportunities it is also clear that those he interacts with are making efforts to appreciate his talents and strengths while his own interests and motivations are also being considered...at least initially. It is nice to feel like you are valued for the things you can do well, and like people want you to succeed, grow professionally, and function personally in a new environment in a productive, healthy, smooth way. This stuff was much harder in South Africa.

One thing I did not realize about Abu Dhabi before arriving is that in some ways it is considered by many to be a "developing" place. Fourteen lanes the street we live on has, yet the United Arab Emirates is an extremely young, if prosperous country, and may be experiencing growing pains from developing differently than other countries have before it, given aspects of the context here. This makes us reflect differently on the term "developing country," which now seems like a euphemism in the context of many countries in Africa, which are far from economic independence and prosperity, as the term better fits Abu Dhabi, which is literally growing upwards and outwards at an astonishing pace, as we find our niches here. This context makes me happy we had the time we had in a rural village in Africa, despite all the differences between that place and this one, as it has given us more patience and strength than we had before in situations of cross-cultural misunderstanding, bureaucratic bungling, confusing social hierarchies, etc...which are simply part and parcel of living in a diverse developing country. At any rate it is very cool to feel again, as we felt in South Africa, like we are part of living history, and maybe just might be able to make a positive effect on life here as we in turn are changed and grow through our time here.

Today is Saturday, which is the end of the weekend here. Tonight we are going to have our first hotel meal with 2 other couples, which I understand is a common activity for some expats (the only place one can purchase alcohol for immediate consumption here, but that's another story). There's still a lot for us to get done (getting residence visas, proper internet set up, etc.) but we are taking things one day at a time, and enjoying opportunities to shop in malls, cook amazing experimental Thai-noodle lunches (I have such an awesome husband!), and get to know new places and new people...when not sleeping like logs at night. Talk to you later.

So to the extent that this blog has a regular readership, there has been a clamoring for a blog addressing what life is like in Abu Dhabi. This blog began as a Peace Corps journal and indeed the Peace Corps experience was the first time in my life I ever experienced being immersed in a new culture. I find myself comparing my arrival in Abu Dhabi with my arrival in South Africa much of the time.

The biggest similarity between the two is that experience of continually asking yourself questions like, "What's going on?", "What's happening now?", "Why is it happening?", and "Why is it happening in the manner that it is?". Fortunately, my time in South Africa has taught me to go with the flow. Thus I want to inaugurate my Abu Dhabi blogging with the following tale of mystery and adventure.

Yesterday morning, I decided that I would get some of our nicer clothes dry-cleaned and pressed as it had been a long time for some items and being tossed into a suitcase never helps a blazer. Liz is already working and I have been trying to spend my free time helping us to get settled in and doing whatever housekeeping needs to be done, etc. We still don't have a car or TV and this internet connection is on a prepaid data bundle so there's not too much to do in the house. Outside it's HOT.

Anyway...dry cleaning. We have a book that specializes in helping expatriates with their day to day challenges and there was a section on cleaning and laundry services that explained that almost all laundry services offer free pick-up and delivery. They did not however recommend any chains or drop any phone numbers. On our second day here, the new yellow pages had arrived. So I thought I would open up the yellow pages and pick a place with a nice advertisement. I found hundreds of dry-cleaners in the yellow pages but not a single one had paid for ad space. This was rather daunting. Finally I googled dry cleaner and the name of our neighborhood and a single entry returned. I called. Pioneer Laundries did indeed offer free pick-up and delivery which led to yet another challenge. There is no street address system in Abu Dhabi. After being passed around to several people in the laundromat and overcoming seemingly every accent of English to be found on an Indian Ocean shore, I was told that someone would be by in an hour.

In about an hour or so, indeed I hear a knock on the door. A middle-aged man from somewhere on the Indian sub-continent (I still can't tell Indian from Pakistani from Bangladeshi), is standing there without a uniform of any kind asking if I called for a laundry pick-up. I hand him a big armful of some of our nicest clothes and he begins to walk away. At this point, I was really confused. I usually get some sort of ticket or receipt when I give my clothes to be cleaned in an effort to protect the cleaner from being accused of theft. I usually have a quoted price for the service. I usually have a rough estimate of the time it will be finished. I start with the ticket problem. He kindly explains that I must pay later when he come back with the finished laundry. "No, no..." I hopelessly try to explain. He gives me a phone number which he claims is his own...close enough. I ask, "how much will it be" he says he doesn't know for just a jacket but that a whole suit is 18 dirhams. 18 dirhams isn't quite $5 so for dry cleaning and delivery this seems like a good price. He thinks it will be less because it isn't the whole suit. I ask if that includes pressing and delivery. He explains that it includes everything. He tells me he'll be back same time tomorrow unless I want to pay for urgent service. Accustomed to the slow pace of job searching, and forseeing a wealth of free-time, I tell him that the same time tomorrow sounds good to me. He leaves and I feel a little panic that I have just inadvertently donated some of our finest apparel to the less-fortunate. I have a second moment of panic when I imagine him holding said clothes for a king's ransom. I know I'm so paranoid right?

One's mind does funny things when one doesn't have any clue what is happening or why. Btw, we bought a Nintendo Wii :D

This morning around 10 Liz calls to tell me that I am to arrive at her office by 11:30 for a meeting with her, the head of her division who is a vice provost, and the vice-chancellor of the entire university. Wow! What's going on?! I had met the vice provost a few days earlier in hopes he could point me in the right direction, employment-wise. This seems like great news right? Except that I hadn't bathed and the good folks from Pioneer Laundry had not yet called on me so I didn't have a jacket to wear. The Vice-Chancellor is an important guy and meetings with him are not to be missed. Liz had given me instructions on how to direct a taxi to her office and explained that I should give myself 40 minutes in case there was a traffic problem or we got lost etc. I quickly called the phone number that I had yesterday been given. The guy who I had talked to yesterday picked up on the 2nd ring! He knew who I was and said he was going to be at my place in 30 minutes. I asked, 15? he said sure. 35 minutes later he came!!! Yay!!! The bill was 78Dirhams. ~$24 Not too shabby for 6 jackets and a pair of pants delivered to my door in what can only be called prompt timing by any developing world standard.

The meeting with the Vice-Chancellor was strange. He is a very friendly man and he greeted Liz and I warmly. He is the first emirati I have had an extended conversation with besides the passport control officer. Why Liz and I had a meeting with him remains shrouded in mystery but I think the fact that he took time out of his day to meet us and that he has our CVs is a great thing!

Life is going well so far. School closes in July so Liz was encouraged to take some leave so in 3 weeks or so we are going to Europe and I have a job interview tomorrow for a job in the same office Liz works in doing work similar to what I did in South Africa. I'm excited. I bought a new shirt and time today. I have a clean blazer to wear, and I am looking forward to what's to come.

In all the news and excitement of our latest transition it sometimes feels like our life and work of the last few years (in South Africa) gets glossed over. Yet we still relate to the various challenges Peace Corps Volunteers face, like recent budget reductions Volunteers in South Africa are dealing with today, and of course we can never forget our time in South Africa, which has certainly changed us in many ways.

Attached below is my Description of Service, a standard document created by the Volunteer at the end of service which must be approved by the higher-ups at post. This document can be used to briefly (in 2 pages) describe one's service over 2+ years, and also can serve as a letter of recommendation, as an official acknowledgement of service by Peace Corps staff. It's also a more succinct description of what I did in the Peace Corps than you would ever likely get from talking to me.

Description of Peace Corps Service

Elizabeth Jeanne Jackson

Republic of South Africa (2009-2011)

Introduction

Elizabeth Jackson began Peace Corps training July 24, 2009. Upon successfully completing a two-month intensive training and Setswana language program in the Mpumalanga Province in South Africa, Elizabeth was sworn-in as a Peace Corps Volunteer on September 17, 2009. From September 17, 2009, to April 16, 2011, she served as an Education Specialist in South Africa with the Schools and Community Resources Project.

Elizabeth served as a Policies and Management Specialist at Kgetleng River Area Office in the North-West Province from September 2009 to October 2010. At the Area Office Elizabeth supported school leaders from over 200 rural schools through workshops and school visits, also building the capacity of her counterparts. Elizabeth relocated and served as a Teacher Trainer at Sinethezekile Combined School in the KwaZulu-Natal Province from November 2010 to April 2011. Throughout her two years of service Elizabeth showed essential signs of cross-cultural adaptation and the skills needed to transfer this knowledge to other aspects of life.

Training

Elizabeth completed eight weeks of pre-service training in Marapyane, Mpumalanga. This training included:

105 hours of language training in Setswana 54 hours of technical training (e.g. pedagogy, school administration)41 hours of Peace Corps core training (e.g. community empowerment, volunteer resiliency38 hours of cross-cultural training36 hours of personal health, medical, and safety/security training Living with a host family, Elizabeth began to adapt to rural South Africa life, passing her Setswana Language Proficiency Interview in the last few weeks of pre-service training.

Elizabeth also completed in-service, Life Skills, and Mid-service trainings during her time as a volunteer.

Site Activities: Kgetleng River Area Office

As a Policies and Management Specialist at Kgetleng River Area Office, Elizabeth's tasks included:

Organizing, developing, and delivering an initiation workshop for new principals, deputy principals, and heads of department in the area on topics related to policy, leadership and management, budgeting and finances, curriculum, and roles and responsibilities, in collaboration with the Area Manager, Circuit Managers, Lead Curriculum Specialist, and other Education Management specialistsDeveloping, evaluating, and delivering quarterly 3-day workshops for School Governing Body leaders throughout the area on topics related to policy development, leadership and management, and budgeting and finances, in collaboration with other Management and Governance specialistsDeveloping and delivering workshops for student leaders and educator liaisons throughout the area related to roles and responsibilities, national and regional policies, and related topicsOrganizing, managing, and administering the election of local Representative Council of Learners members to representative bodies at the regional and district levelsSupporting and monitoring school leadership practices in the area via regular school visits/auditsImproving the professionalism and effectiveness of practices in the Education Management and Governance Division related to workshop preparation, development, and delivery; duty and role clarification; the reduction of redundancies in work efforts between the division and other units; and enabling transportation collaboration between departments for school monitoring visitsServing as a consultant to colleagues at the Area Office and within the Peace Corps Volunteer community on issues related to education policies in a dynamic policy environment While serving at Kgetleng River Area Office Elizabeth also assisted with the following outside tasks:

Teaching and assisting educators at one local high school in History and Life OrientationAssisting with the administration of a regional-level National Science Week learner eventAssisting with various project proposals for other Peace Corps Volunteers throughout the countryConsulting on a learner-feedback survey to evaluate the effects of HIV/AIDS education on learnersAssisting local school leaders with HIV/AIDS school policy developmentAssisting local educators with doctoral dissertation projects in educational research Site Activities: Sinethezekile Combined School

During Elizabeth’s 6-month service at Sinethezekile Combined School, her tasks included the following:

Developing and delivering weekly workshops for teachers in English education on topics related to literacy, teaching, public speaking education, reading and writing, and so onAssisting English educators to prepare for classes, developing resources, and teaching classesHolding workshops for educators to lead and organize student clubs for debate, newspaper, and dramaHelping educators with higher education coursework in education, anthropology, English, etc.Counseling educators on the use of alternative classroom management practices While serving at Sinethezekile Elizabeth also assisted with the following outside tasks:

Administering eye examinations and helping with related administrative tasks for OneSight during its weeklong visit to the area to provide people with eye care and recycled eye glassesHelping draw up a needs assessment and write a grant proposal for the Maputaland Community Radio Station, which serves a disadvantaged community with independent news coverageFundraising for the KLM Foundation, helping high-achieving youth receive a quality education Peace Corps Support Activities

Elizabeth was also highly active in Peace Corps administration, assisting with various tasks:

Preparing and giving sessions for in-service trainings related to curriculum and school policiesAssisting with Education sector pre-service training, helping revise the training work schedule; evaluating, revising, and developing content related to the history of education in South Africa, South African education policy, economic disparity, community ownership and local empowerment, philosophy of education, educational organization and leadership, and related topics; delivering sessions on these topics among others; collaborating with other trainers; training local language trainers; and reporting and giving feedback regarding the effectiveness of training componentsHelping orientate Peace Corps Response Volunteers to South African educational organizationConsulting and collaborating with staff to ensure that Education sector competencies, tasks, knowledge, and attitudes reflect contemporary practices and the context of education todayParticipating in online Volunteer support forums to help inform incoming VolunteersWriting articles for the Volunteer Newsletter on topics like travel and Volunteer loan financing Peace Corps Goals Two and Three Activities

In addition to building local professional capacities at site and working with Peace Corps administration, Elizabeth was instrumental in sharing United States culture with South Africans and South African culture with citizens of the United States. Elizabeth’s activities in support of these goals include:

Sharing culture with classrooms in Mpumalanga, North-West, and KwaZulu-Natal ProvincesSharing culture with host families, friends, and colleagues through relationships, attending parties, gatherings, and other social events, and sharing a generous spirit regarding differenceParticipating in the World Wise Schools program, writing letters to classes in St. Louis, MissouriSharing pictures and blogs and emails about life in South Africa with friends in the United StatesLearning and speaking intermediate-low Setswana and novice-level isiZulu and Afrikaans Pursuant to section 5(f) of the Peace Corps Act, 22 U.S.C. & 2504 (f), as amended, any former Peace Corps Volunteer employed by the United States Government following his/her Peace Corps Volunteer service is entitled to have any period of satisfactory Peace Corps service credited for the purpose of retirement, seniority, reduction in force, leave and other privileges based on length of Government Service. This is to certify that in accordance with Executive Order 11103 of April 10, 1963, that Elizabeth Jackson served satisfactorily as a Peace Corps volunteer. Her service ended on April 15, 2011. Her benefits under the Executive Order extend for a period of one year after termination of volunteer service, except that the employing agency may extend the period for up to three years or a former volunteer who enters military service, pursues study at a recognized institution of higher learning, or engages in other activities which, in the view of the appointing agency, warrants extension of the period. (Country Director Signature and Date)

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of planning, visiting with family and friends, and traveling. It's been a great, though extremely hectic time, and we are looking forward to a few weeks now of relaxation back in north Washington before we fly out to Abu Dhabi June 9. It's been great to share stories of South Africa with people we have missed, and share anxieties and excitements about our future adventure. It's been a busy time.

I thought I would add today to some comments Tim has made recently about our culture shock. You don't expect to have culture shock in your native land, so it's really interesting to try and process what is going on. For me, consumption has been surprisingly challenging: not the consumption of food (which has for some time been a priority for me when it comes to spending), but of water, data, and other things (clothes) since we've been back.

When we moved to a small and basic 2-room building in a rural village in South Africa, I was surprised to find how much I didn't actually miss running water and indoor plumbing. Don't get me wrong--bathing was much less effective from within a large bucket, with a gallon or so of water, and without air conditioning I sometimes felt like I would die of overheating without showers and pools of cool running water at my disposal. Tim would also insert here that I was never the one responsible for carrying buckets of water from the tap to our house, a labor-intensive task. However on the whole the lack of running water was not a lot to write home about, and our pit toilet was superb by pit toilet standards (it had a door and a roof, a nice view and some privacy, some ventilation possibility, and was used mostly just by Tim and me).

I delight in baths and showers now, but still see little need for a flushing toilet. In some situations it is clearly extremely helpful, but it uses so much water, and it seems obsessively sanitary to me now to flush every single time it is used. I want to remain abstract on this point here, but in general there are some "mellow" situations where flushing a gallon of water down the toilet just seems excessive.

Similarly I had grown accustomed to extremely limited online data access while in South Africa. YouTube was not possible, and usually we used the internet without viewing any images, which would have cost us significantly as we were paying for our internet by data quantity on our meager Peace Corps living allowance. So it took a few days of being back in America surfing the web before I stopped feeling guilty for browsing randomly with all images loading. I think I am getting used to this one more quickly, but it is funny what a year of limited internet capabilities does to one's perspective.

There are other areas where I struggle to consume normally. I need to buy a lot of new clothes for my next adventure, as my style has changed over time as have the demands of my professional life. The thought of going to a nice clothing store terrifies me, however, and this is the weirdest one of all, because I am pretty sure I spent the last 2 years in South Africa fantasizing about shopping for nice clothes! In South Africa it seems I became more of a cheapskate than I already was. Tim is just going to have to desert me at a mall or outlet complex full of women's clothing stores and not get me until I spend some cash, because I am so far being very successful in resisting any luxurious, but completely necessary at this point, clothes shopping.

As we continue processing our experiences here we will try and share more in the weeks to come before we are off to Abu Dhabi where we are confident that a host of new cultural norms will surprise and intrigue us.

Two days after we arrived in Mount Vernon, Washington, United States, I received an email from a university I had recently interviewed for a job with. I enjoyed the interview, which was conducted via video-conference call while I was in Pretoria, and so I was happy to hear that a job offer was on its way. The job is with the Higher Colleges of Technology of the United Arab Emirates, located in Abu Dhabi, and I was delighted to accept the offer earlier this week. The job will start in mid-June.

As the recent posts from Tim suggest, we have been experiencing some culture shock, and this new position naturally adds to our general feeling at the moment of being overwhelmed, shocked, jolted out of any sense of normalness, etc. Here we are, back in the states, for the first time in 2 years, and we're already filing mountains of paperwork (our marriage certificate needs to be signed by Hilary Clinton, no joke!) and researching international shipping rates to move our lives across the world again.

Obviously all of this has come with a lot of soul searching, which may not be transparent these days, as we've been playing our cards close to our heart and also trying our to take the days one at a time, since when we decided we wanted to begin the process of leaving South Africa, to our present situation. I submit the following Frequently Asked Questions to try and help those curious to figure out what is going on with us these days.

United Arab Emirates? The Middle East? Isn't that dangerous?

No, it isn't. It is true that the UAE is surrounded by Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, and Oman. It's also true that a lot of countries around Africa and the Middle East have recently experienced protests and government actions in response having to do with the quality of life of citizens and related issues. However the UAE is one of the richest countries in the world, with most citizens living very well (the Abu Dhabi area is the seventh largest supplier of oil in the world), and the citizens are not motivated to protest just because other nearby societies are. The citizens of the UAE are comfortable and Abu Dhabi is one of the safest cities in the world by any standard.

Will you speak Arabic? Need to wear a headscarf?

We're looking forward to learning some Arabic, but it's not expected or necessary, nor is wearing traditional clothing, which Emirates do wear, but which they do not expect (or desire) of foreigners. By different measures (and in different areas), 5-20% of the population of the UAE is Emirates (citizens). Most people there are Asians (mostly Indians and Pakistanis) with a significant chunk of the population comprised of Westerners (Europeans and Americans). By any measure Abu Dhabi is one of the most cosmopolitan cities on the planet, and our ways and norms will be reasonably tolerated (we will need what Tim lovingly calls a "Beer and Bacon License," but that's a discussion for a different blog post). Public displays of affection are not cool there (beyond holding hands), but this is not something we really value, anyway.

You just got to America. Do you hate America or something? Why are you leaving so fast?

We started applying for jobs earlier this year, and I applied to many jobs both within and outside the United States. I have received several interviews for positions outside the states, but I have had little positive feedback from any employers here. Abu Dhabi is one of very few cities that is not so far experiencing reactions to the worldwide recession (CNN has called the city the richest city in the world), and as UAE commonly hires Westerners in higher education, I just lucked out. We are not confident that if we committed to a national job search within the United States that we would find success in a reasonable amount of time, and we are enjoying traveling and living life in interesting places (though we hope to maintain running water and climate control in the future). Early June is soon. But opportunity is not guaranteed to knock in August or September, or October, or November.

What is the job?

It's an administrative position with a largest higher education institution in the UAE, Higher Colleges of Technology. My title will be Policy and Planning Coordinator. I'll be working with university policies and educational statistics and research, and possibly with quality assurance and institutional research. Benefits are very good (44 days of paid holiday leave per year, for example) and opportunities for career advancement are also possible. We're in for a 3-year contract.

What will Tim do?

At this point we have several contacts for teaching in higher education for Tim. Tim may be able to begin teaching physics at the same institution or a different institution in Abu Dhabi this Fall.

Do you hate us? Why won't you stay in America?

We're sorry we don't have longer to relax after our adventure in South Africa. However, some of those 44 days of annual paid holiday leave can be spent in the states (yearly airfare home is also provided), and there should be some left over, should you want to meet up with us in the UAE or anywhere in Europe, Asia, or Africa. Start planning your trips now. Dubai is well known as a tourist destination with an indoor ski mountain in the middle of the desert, and Dubai is an hour or two away. Let's do this. Pick a time and place.

What will it be like? I want to know more.

The position I will be taking is now filled by another American woman who lives with her husband in Abu Dhabi, and I have been fortunate to be able to make contact with her and learn a lot from her about the work and lifestyle there. Her blog is Finding Abu Dhabi and I encourage you to take a look if you want to know more about life in the UAE.

I title this blog "Rags to Riches" because it is so strange for us to experience, among other things, going from a life where needing new pants or more groceries could cause serious financial hardship, to having enough money to get by, and looking forward to a relatively lucrative career. 3 weeks ago our home was a 2-room house without running water or climate control in a rural village off the tar road in Africa, and now we are planning for a spacious apartment in the city, with a few bedrooms and bathrooms, and a balcony with a great city view, in the Middle East. It's all weird, and shocking. But we are optimistic that we will prosper, and we plan to continue to share our adventures with you (in this blog space) in the future.

OK, so Part 1 was rather light-hearted and this one really shouldn't be seen to be anymore serious. Race is often a sensitive topic. One thing that we noticed in South Africa was that race was not as serious of a topic as it is in the USA. For me, it seems like there's an idea that if we as Americans discuss race we are opening ourselves up to a trap where we might have to come face to face with our own biases and prejudices and might find that ourselves wanting in racial and cultural enlightenment. We have heard indicators that in Gauteng Provence (Pretoria/Johannesburg) that race conscienceness is diminishing with time. However, people often enjoyed discussions of race and culture with us when we lived in the rural areas and we were very conscience of our race, being the only white people.

Coming back to America, this was a bit of a source of trepidation. Peace Corps gives you tips, training and suggestions to integrate into a local culture. We learned that we must greet and enquire as to a person's well-being before getting to the point. We learned the secret handshakes, (hold your right forearm with you left hand and shake, then grasp thumbs then shake again). We also learned the secret greetings, (Sawubona Bhuti! Ninjani? Siyaphila nati.). This was useful. Even when we were in an urban area we could instantly distinguish ourselves as cool white people by dropping a few words in Zulu or waving hello with both hands.

When we flew back to the US we started in Johannesburg and landed in Atlanta. This is an amazing transition to make because ironically, the racial demographic of the two places is very similar. In both airports you will find the overwhelming majority of travelers are white and the overwhelming majority of employees working in the airport are black. Upon arriving in Atlanta, I had an urge to greet every black employee in Zulu and felt a little strange when they didn't enquire about my well-being before getting to the point. Race and culture are related but they are not the same thing. When I wished a black TSA employee a good day he kind of chuckled at me like that didn't happen from every person to walk through his scanner. While Peace Corps taught me how to distinguish myself as a racially enlightened person in South Africa, the experience didn't give me a lot of tips for the American South at all.

Spending a few days in the Pacific Northwest, I am reminded of the every growing latino or hispanic population. I recall experiences in southern California where people would express resentment about this growing population despite the obvious benefits to the southern California economy. When we think of South Africa, we so often find ourselves considering things through the lens of the history of apartheid and racial segregation which led to widespread, senseless loss of human life and dignity. However, despite our own history and despite current trends, we do not use such a lens to discuss the United States. In the west, we have a rapidly growing immigrant population with a different race and culture than what has long been dominant in the area. Certainly there isn't a segregation de jure, but there is a segregation de facto and sometimes a palpable tension amongst the two groups. So we find ourselves wondering if greeting and saying thank you in Spanish wouldn't help to bridge things a little. Certainly many have overcome frustration, embarrassment and criticism to learn English. Why shouldn't we all learn enough Spanish to have a polite conversation enquiring as to someone's well-being?

If there's one thing that I learned in South Africa, it's that what works in a suburban area of the US will often fail to work in rural SA. Certainly I would be naive to assume that the opposite was not true. But I think that America must stop avoiding frank and open discussions about the different races and cultures that make up this nation or we will forever be blinded to our own biases and prejudices and that will be the biggest trap for us at all. We cannot see the ways in which we consider one group better than another, those ways are bound to become systematically enshrined and history is doomed to repeat itself.

So I want to share some of the thoughts and and feelings about coming back and also share news as the next adventure for Tim and Liz unfolds so while this began as a Peace Corps Blog, we will continue to update this blog every so often to keep our friends and families and the occasional stranger abreast as to what is up in our life.

So some aspects of returning have been somewhat humorous really. One of the more practical adaptations to make regards money. It seems I no longer have any intuitive grasp as to the value of a dollar. Is a price high? Is it a good price? I have no idea. It's funny because I would routinely translate prices in Rands to Dollars while I was in South Africa, but apparently at some point, those translations seemed to lose their meaning.

When you join Peace Corps, you arrive at a staging event and PC gives you a bunch of money for per diem. I don't remember how much it was, but it was more than we could manage to spend even on a rather extravagant dinner and drinks. I think it was like $200 each. Upon returning, PC gives you $32. Thirty-two dollars is roughly two-hundred rands. In SA it was routine for me to have several hundred rand in my wallet. Credit card machines often have fees or are non-existent. Even the ATM charged per transaction so I would take out lots of cash to reduce the number of transactions. Having R1000 in my wallet was no biggie. What I'm trying to get at is that 32

I write from the Peace Corps office where we are having a few hours of computing time before we fly back to the United States. We had a wonderful last South African holiday the last two weeks and want to share our experiences with everyone here. My dad and step-mom flew into Durban about 2 Wednesdays ago, and we hired a Toyota Avanza (somewhere in between an SUV, a minivan, and a sedan) from Durban to pick them up and bring them back to Jozini, where we stayed at the beautiful Tiger Lodge for a few evenings. Thursday, we spent the day at the school and saying good-bye to our host family in Makhonyeni. Everyone at school was thrilled to meet my parents, especially the children, who were thrilled in the middle of a week of examinations to mug for Julie's camera, ask them some questions about their travels, and say good-bye to Tim and me. They met many of our friends among the educators, toured the school grounds, visited with the lunch ladies, and just enjoyed learning about South African education at the ground level. In the afternoon we stayed a few hours in our tiny village home, doing some final packing and giving the folks a tour of the place, from the pit toilet to the outside tap to our indoor washing and bathing system. It was wonderful to share this experience with my dad and step-mom, because it can often be isolating to live in the village and have very poor means of communicating with everyone back in the states, so to share with them and receive their reactions was great. We sometimes take for granted as Peace Corps volunteers a life without running water and air conditioning, as this is something we came for willingly, and it was refreshing in this context to be impressive to Americans more accustomed to the normal American lifestyle. Tony and Julie brought some gifts from America for our host father, and we spent about an hour with him and host mother under the shade of the tree in our yard, drinking some Coke and visiting. Solomon and Julie enjoyed discussing animal care in the United States versus South Africa, and Solomon and Siphiwe were grateful to receive all of our household items as a small gift for their kindness and generosity over the course of our stay in KwaZulu-Natal (actually, it is Peace Corps policy to leave goods purchased with Peace Corps funds to the community upon finishing service, though not all volunteers do so). After taking some photos, singing some songs, and praying we bid our African family farewell for the time being, promising to stay in good touch, sending them the photos we took through the mail after we print them out from the states. That afternoon we had a boat cruise in Jozini dam with the Tiger Lodge, and it was a lovely, warm day for bird watching on the dam and a swim in the pool. That evening we celebrated Tony and Julie's twenty-first wedding anniversary, and also decided to do a tour through Tembe Elephant Park nearby with the lodge the following morning. Tembe is about an hour away from Jozini, and we had 3 hours there in a big open-air vehicle to find elephants and other animals. The first place the guide took us to was a watering hole with a hide for our viewing, and there we saw many different antelope species, including many male kudu, impala, nyala, a water buck, and more. We enjoyed spotting plenty of antelope and birds throughout the park, though we did not see too many elephants. However at the end of the tour we returned to the watering hole we had first seen and saw 7 or 8 elephants playing in the water, giving themselves dust bathes, and so on. We enjoyed the time to watch the elephants and antelopes interact and enjoy the spot, before we headed back to the lodge. That afternoon we drove a short distance to the Mkhuze Game Reserve, another park Tim and I had never been to but which we enjoyed very much. Our accommodation was a quaint chalet where impala and nyala antelopes were at home in the surrounding bush, and Tim made a terrific braai (traditional South African barbeque) with meat on the grill, butternut squash, rice, and salads for dinner. That night we did a night drive through the park, and saw a porcupine, a huge owl, many nocturnal bird species, huge spiders, and more. The next morning we did a short game drive, where we saw tons of rhinos and antelopes and enjoyed the scenery of the park. It was a nice, quiet park experience, and we enjoyed the place although the game viewing was not the most amazing. From there we traveled to St. Lucia for the weekend. St. Lucia was one of our favorite destinations here in South Africa so we were thrilled to share it with my parents. The afternoon we arrived we did a hippo and croc cruise along the estuary, where we saw many fish eagles, a buffalo, and many other birds, and of course, tons of hippos and crocs. Tim took some amazing shots and we enjoyed meeting other tourists on our cruise. That night a hippo wandered through the backyard of our chalets for some snacks (mowing down grass), and it was a special experience for us all to watch it from our back porch. The next day we traveled through the game park/nature reserve there, which as a World Heritage Site boasts half a dozen different ecosystems in the same place, and there we saw many kudu, buffalo, hippos, monkeys, water buck, and many adorable tiny antelopes. From St. Lucia it was about an hour's drive to Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Game Reserve, one of our favorite reserves. The first day we drove around much of the Imfolozi side of the park, where we saw many buffalo, rhino, kudu, giraffe, and zebra. At one point we saw a rhino nursing, which we really enjoyed witnessing. However, we were on the lookout much of the time for elephant, which we saw much evidence of (tons of fresh poop), but we only saw a few from a distance on the way to our lodge. That night Tim made another terrific braai, giving Tony and Julie another opportunity to try some traditional South African foods. The next morning we took our time getting started on a game drive, as it was foggy and cold up in the mountains, with low visibility. However within minutes of leaving our camp (that's the human cage within the park, to keep the humans and the other animals safe from each other after dark), we ran into an enormous bull elephant on the road. We were excited to be so close to an elephant, though we didn't drive right up to him, watching him rather from what we thought was a safe distance. All of the sudden the elephant seemed to notice us, as if for the first time. He stepped forward into the road, looking directly at us, and raised his ears, to make himself look larger. Before we could think about what was happening, he charged. I immediately began reversing as if our lives depended on it (in all honesty, it probably isn't true that our lives did actually depend on it, but no doubt we would have been in some serious trouble with the rental company for a bashed up vehicle and four thoroughly soiled seats if he had decided to inspect or fight our vehicle...to say nothing of our mental health). I was in the driver's seat and remained calm, as was required, and it is a mystery to us all how I managed to successfully reverse on a mountainous narrow dirt road away from the giant elephant as I normally cannot reverse very well at all here in South Africa, with the driver's seat on the other side of the car. After about five seconds of the elephant keeping pace with us in reverse he slowed his jog down to a walk, and within ten more seconds he was out of sight as we had rounded a corner, watching him get smaller and smaller from behind the windshield. It was a mock charge, meant to scare any car/creature with any common sense away from the beast, but we were fortunate to escape any major damage as this elephant had really not been provoked by us in any way (we weren't really approaching him, and we weren't making any noises or moving outside the windows or anything). Normally they are supposed to give some warnings before a charge or mock charge, but I guess this is common behavior among the lone male elephants in this particular park, and it is not as if animal behavior is ever completely predictable. As Julie explained, a bull elephant can be like a dog chasing the mail man away, considering himself triumphant each time he warns the car/mail man away. In any case, it terrified us. After getting far away from the elephant, we first thought we would take a different route, crossing the path again where we had left the bull, further down the road. However we quickly discovered the bull had followed us some way to the main road, and decided to try an entirely different direction. Within a few minutes it was clear we weren't enjoying ourselves, however, instead just waiting for the next angry elephant to charge. As we returned back to the human cage to collect our bearings, we saw that elephant had emerged right up the main road, going a good half-mile our direction since we had seen him last. I raced past him and collapsed with fear upon returning to our safe human cage, where we told the totally unimpressed camp staff about our seemingly near-death experience. We took it easy the rest of the day, playing some games of Scrabble and enjoying the lovely views from our Hilltop Lodge. That night we did a final night drive, however, determined not to allow that elephant to ruin game viewing for us. The first thing the driver did was take the same path where we saw the elephant that day, but that was not too bad as elephants don't tend to stay in the same place very long so we were fairly confident we wouldn't see him again, there. Then we came across a different massive elephant male. The game truck drove right up to him, to our horror, but actually this male was older and a lovely creature, though we do have some terrific pics of Tony looking adamantly away from the elephant who he probably could have reached out and touched if we wanted. In any case it was good to have a more peaceful elephant encounter. On the night drive we also rhino and a family of spotted hyena jogging along the road, which was a very special experience for all of us. Mostly we just enjoyed the cruising around in the bush at night however, and savored our last safari-type experience in the African wild. The next day we left the park, and headed to Amphitheatre Backpackers. It was a long day in the car on some bad roads, and when we got to the backpackers the beautiful Drakensburg escarpment nearby was completely obscured by stormy rainy weather. We awoke to clear skies the next morning however, and were able to prove that there was indeed a beautiful mountain range nearby. Then we traveled to Golden Gate Highlands Park in the Free State, our final destination of our trip. For two days we enjoyed pleasant hikes through beautiful mountains and caves, with one stop into the quaint tourist town of Clarens for some shopping and high-end snacking. It was a great chance to catch our breath after a very eventful holiday, and we also enjoyed seeing a black-backed jackal and hartebeest and blesbok along with the usual suspects in the beautiful reserve. From there we all went to Pretoria for one last evening, where we stayed at a nice guesthouse and ordered Chinese takeout. Then on Tony and Julie's last day here we went to the Ann van Dyke De Wildt Cheetah Centre and Maropeng, a museum that is part of the Crade of Humankind here in South Africa. At the cheetah center we enjoyed seeing many cheetah and some cheetah running, we pet an ambassador cheetah (who goes to schools to help with conservation education), and saw many vultures and other cat species, as well as wild dog puppies and grown wild dogs, who "hunted" our vehicle for their lunch. It was a fun and educational experience, and the museum at Maropeng was also a great experience, where we learned about the history of humankind, evolution, the evidence here in South Africa, and other related topics. Then we took the folks back to the airport, and began our own journey out of South Africa, ending our service beginning the very next day. Before this trip we were looking forward to returning to the states more than we are looking forward to it now, but we are also full of mixed emotions. South Africa is a stunning country, where it has been our privilege to stay and travel and enjoy ourselves. In any case it was truly wonderful to share our experiene and time here with family back home, and with mixed emotions we are looking forward to wherever life takes us next, and of course enjoying some of the best of America in the coming weeks or months upon our return later today.

This is it! This is the last blog post that I will write from South Africa for the foreseeable future. Today is the last day of our Peace Corps service! It's time to move on. I'm sitting here in the Peace Corps office watching the minutes pass until they will take us to the airport and eventually we will board a plane that will take us back across the Atlantic Ocean, the Tropic of Capricorn, the Equator, and the Tropic of Cancer back to Pacific Northwest where in the next month we hope to travel to see our friends and family who we have missed so much during our time here. So much is going through my head that I am not sure what to say or to write about. Liz has already shared the things she will miss and won't miss about this place and my own list doesn't differ too much from hers. I have already shared about some of the challenges we found ourselves facing at our school but I don't want to focus on that either. We are leaving because it is the right thing for us to do right now. The job search continues slowly but optimistically as we have both been short-listed or interviewed for a number of positions. It would have been nice to get a job offer before we leave, but staying seems to decrease the chances of getting that offer. Human resources is relying so heavily on the internet these days that I have just not had the patience for it while living in a rural Africa. It's hard to write a really good cover letter when your day-to-day life challenges your self-confidence and self-esteem. Our own health and safety and the strength of our relationship with each other are high priorities in our life and over time, throughout all the challenges we faced, we have put pressure on those things and it has been getting harder and harder to see the rewards of our service. In the past week, we have returned from another wonderful South African vacation and reported to Peace Corps headquarters to resign. As you may imagine, there are all sorts of bureaucratic hoops to jump through and bells to ring before we make it home but we have jumped through them with alacrity and with a sense of loss. We were flattered that a number of staff were suprised to see us here resigning, implying that they had always had great faith in us completing our service. We have had many goodbyes from friends and colleagues we will miss. We have provided stool samples, blood samples and been given instructions as to how to eradicate traces of malaria from our bodies. We have met with the Country Director and enjoyed her gratitude and hope for our future. All in all it has been a pleasant week. Before we left for holiday we felt ready to get out of South Africa. After our holiday we felt sad to leave South Africa but still looked forward to ending our Peace Corps service. Now I feel more ambivalent. I wish that things had worked out better for us and that we could have continued on and even extended our service for a 3rd year. I am nervous about readjusting to life in America and about having to rely on the generosity of friends and family when we arrive there. We have learned to navigate this culture, to give others the benefit of the doubt, to say 'hello' in 4 different languages, to appreciate our privileges and opportunities, and to not have to know why things are the way they are or even what the hell is goin on. We are nervous that the US will seem a foreign place to us. We've also had time to contemplate on the successes of our service. We have thought about the individual lives we've touched. I have enjoyed sharing culture with our colleagues and with strangers we meet and I think there is a real value in that as part of the Peace Corps' mission. While changing sites to a new area with a different language and culture was a bit of an adjustment, I feel lucky to have been able to see the way things are in different places and to get a more well-rounded picture of South Africa. I think about how we've made an impact on the Peace Corps South Africa organization through our participation in training and development events. I think about the few who have visited us here who will go back and share how South Africa is a wonderful place to travel. I think about how I have grown as a person and how my partnership with Liz has been strengthened. I think about the many who have read this blog and have shared that it interested them or prepared them for coming into their own Peace Corps adventure. I think we have done this thing right and it's time to go before we jump the whale as they say. So I want to thank those that have supported and sheltered us here and they are too many to name and have provided us with too many different kinds of support for us to understand. They will be missed as well as kept track of and until we meet again I say Siyabonga Kakhulu, Re a leboga, Baie Dankie, and Thank You Very Much!

I try to write some thoughtful reflections on things, but I never get very far. I'm the sort of person who likes to focus on the future rather than the present when things get challenging--why focus on the horrific heat and humidity when there are jobs to apply for?--so really I have been trying my hardest to stay focused on that which I can change rather than on those things I can't.

I never thought at this point in my service I would be excited to go back to America, but I really am. There's a whole list of things I miss, look forward to, and will surely appreciate more than I ever did before, about living in the first world (of course, people live in the first world in South Africa--but not Peace Corps Volunteers). In no particular order:

1. Doing the laundry.

This falls into the (large) category of things that I think most of my compatriots and I shamefully take for granted in modern America, judging by some (American) people's pathetic Facebook statuses about having to do the laundry, and, indeed, my own past wimpiness about it. You mean you have to collect your dirty clothes, possibly into a receptacle, move them in their entirety to a machine, put them in the machine with soap (and possibly quarters), and push a button? The horror! Lest I sound overly mocking, I was definitely the worst offender. I was known to mysteriously start napping when it was time for "us"--Tim and I--to do the wash.

Try doing it without a washing machine, or even a sink with running water. This requires a big bucket, and lots and lots of plunging with your hands or other utensils. And lots of wringing out and re-plunging. And the clothes don't even really get clean.

Not everyone in the first world has a dryer though they sure are prolific in the states. On this side drying in not too horrible (see #2, below), but good luck if it rains or stays cool and humid throughout the day. Then you have moldy, not-quite-clean clothes.

OK, so getting to a laundromat is not too fun. Still, I'm really looking forward to laundry in America.

2. The lack of inescapable heat (and humidity).

I thought I was over this one, until the rains stopped completely while the temperature sky-rocketed, which I would have thought was impossible, since it was already really hot. For about 2 weeks now it has been 100F degrees during the day, going down to 80 in the evening and around 70 before the sun rises (when we start running). We have a fan, but sometimes you just want it to not be that hot, you know? Like when you turn on the air conditioning, or go to someone else's house with air conditioning, or to a coffee shop with air conditioning.

Our school staff room has air conditioning, but it also sometimes has corporal punishment happening, so it is not always a safe haven.

The humidity is also relentless. Running with sunglasses on around or after sunrise, my sunglasses are perpetually fogged over. Sweat doesn't evaporate so your body starts working in overdrive, like a car stuck in first gear for too long. I was pleased to discover that 1,000,000% humidity actually means we are training much harder that we would be otherwise, since our race is at a much higher elevation...but a day without horrific heat or humidity would be nice, too.

3. Indoor plumbing.

This has been remarkably easy to do without, but as the heat increases so do my yearnings for running water, hot and cold, shooting out shower heads, going down sink and toilet drains, that kind of thing. Now I see it as the kind of thing one *can* do without, but is also really worth appreciating when one has it. Going to a hotel where I can flush when I'm done and don't have to pee in a bucket at night makes me feel like the Queen of England now. In a way, I feel like I could live anywhere in the world now...as long as there is precious indoor plumbing.

4. Fast internet.

Also on the list of "are you seriously complaining about this when you live in America?" is fast, usually working internet access. This is something which I think really separates the global haves from the have-nots these days, as you can get internet in a lot of places now, but the *kind* of internet the first world takes for granted is *not* available universally. I feel this divide on a regular basis in rural South Africa when I try to stay in touch with friends, network and apply for jobs, and just entertain myself. Everyone these days seems to want to share videos, songs, and webpages filled with images, and none of this is accessible at our internet speed. One of my best friends made a website for friends and family living far away about her wedding plans which is totally non-loadable for me (I think it's the music, or something about the initial download). Kind of a bummer. More of a bummer are job application websites which require clicking a million different buttons, or clicking a million buttons which thereafter require other minor things to load which one has to wait for lacking high-speed internet. Filling out a few pages of information which would take a few minutes with fast internet can take hours for us. This is just one reason why it is worth going home without a job: it's hard to get a job from here.

Which reminds me...

5. Talking on the phone.

I was not big into talking on the phone before--hence like running water, this is something I have come to regard as a sign of living the high life now, because I don't miss it as much as I am looking forward to it. I had to reschedule a job interview a few weeks back because my cell reception was so bad (and land lines don't exist in our village). Talking on the phone is also beyond our budget on our Peace Corps Living Allowance, so we never do it even when we can. It will be nice in America to make and receive phone calls, keep in touch with the folks back home, that sort of thing.

6. Casual drinking.

Though healthy living has been one awesome benefit of our service--we've hardly ever been sick here, and eat vegetables and whole grains for nearly every meal--it will be nice to once again be in a social context where a few glasses of wine or beer on a night out doesn't distinguish you as part of a deviant class, whose members range from casual drinkers to serious alcoholics. In relation, I know Tim and I both miss craft beers, fine wines, and mixed drinks. In the village we do not buy any alcohol, though we may smuggle some back from shopping in town occasionally (as recommended by Peace Corps/South Africa). It'll be nice to be somewhere once again where there is a spectrum of normal to unhealthy drinking, rather than a solid line distinguishing drinkers from nondrinkers, where Tim and I are never sure where we fit, since we don't want to be (nor do we see ourselves as) social deviants just because we sometimes enjoy a drink or two. It'll be nice to be able to suggest grabbing a beer with a colleague again without worrying about (a) what that colleague will think of me, and (b) whether than colleague can drink moderately rather than heavily.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I feel like I am being negative about South Africa now. Let's look at the flip side--some things I'll miss about my rural South African life.

1. Being healthy, on a budget.

It's hard to know whether this one is just me, because in America I found it hard to buy groceries in an economical way and cook them and be healthy, and much easier and more worthwhile to go out to eat to get healthy foods (if you know me, you know this is true, though I know it sounds laughable)...so long as I was earning enough to include the expense in my budget. Here, there are no restaurants in our area, and our diet is very limited but very healthy. Surprisingly vegan items are very cheap, whereas in America I remember many of them being quite expensive. We eat probably 95% vegan here--just some eggs, and yogurt with my cereal--and lots of vegetables and fruits and grains all the time. We are not struggling for protein with veggie burgers and hot dogs available at our grocery store, and soyamince--a beef enhancement product which is respectable in a sauce--is very cheap and everywhere. I think I'll even bring some home to show my vegetarian friends the wonder of cheap, readily available meat substitute in the developing world.

2. Animals.

The ones in the parks and in Botswana and Zimbabwe, and the ones we live with, the goats who hide in our garage during the rain, the cows who eat our discarded onion peelings and other produce waste, the chickens who come over at dinner time every night for scraps...

3. Being open about race.

I realize this is a major generalization, but America has some funny issues with everyone being the same. It would be nice if men and women were identical, and black and white people were the same in every way except their skin color...or would it? It's a question worth pondering. But the question I find myself pondering more often here is why it is taboo in many settings in America to really talk about these things. It's as if one is a racist or a feminist or a misogynist if they bring up the issue at all, and everyone who prefers that no one talk about it is free of biases. I don't think so.

Here, people talk about skin color, and not just black and white, but shades in between. Some whites (Afrikaners) and other whites (British) sometimes have problems with each other, as occasionally do some blacks and other blacks (there are a lot of different language groups). People are different from each other, and skin color is one characteristic among others that makes a difference for identity wherever you go. The skin tones and other differences have a historical meaning, from the Apartheid era. Apartheid ended in 1994, but guess what? Most adults remember it, and it has effected their lives. I would argue likewise in America that we do not live in a colorblind society just because legislation started encouraging us to some forty or fifty years ago, and wishing it was so doesn't make it so. I challenge anyone who thinks talking about or mentioning race is "boring" or inappropriate to think about and say what they really mean.

4. Respecting one's elders.

There are ways to do this which benefit me personally (the Zulu way) and ways which do not (the Setswana way), but I like regarding my principal and my landlord as "father" and older women as "mother," and I like when people who are younger than me are courteous to me and it's not in some fake, "Can I help you with that, ma'am?" kind of forced way. It's just part of a general politeness.

Also related is greeting people traditionally, which is hard for a lot of volunteers (including myself) at first, but which is awesome, when you think about it. Don't ask me for a favor, before asking me how I am doing today! Again, there are more and less authentic ways people can express interest in one another as part of a social habit or custom of everyday life, but it will still be sad to me in America when people want to get over the pleasantries, when pleasantries are nice.

In relation...

5. A slower pace of life.

Sometimes this infuriates me as I am mad multi-tasker, or I was, before I came here. But the reasons greeting people is regarded as mere pleasantries in many places in America (primarily the cities, on the East Coast, if I may once again generalize and stereotype American culture broadly...) is that people are in a hurry. Greeting "works" here, because people are actually (and able to be) interested in each other. In the village there is no balance required between the demands of work and the demands of socializing--socializing usually comes before work. You could even say that socializing is more systematic and extensive here (at least in the village) than in the states, that people take socializing more seriously, in fact. But now I am afraid I am crossing the line between identifying things I will miss about my particularly situation here and commenting on social differences, and this blog is already overlong and full of questionable generalizations.

We are planning at this point to return to America in mid-April. Among our major priorities will be visiting folks all along the West Coast and in Champaign, Illinois. Please have your washing machines, indoor plumbing, air conditioning, and microbrews ready, and your high-speed internet and cell phones at hand. We'll bring the slower pace of life and the Soyamince, the social justice and race talk, and the old-timey respect for elders and manners. Get ready.

This post has been brewing for a few weeks and I feel like it's time to make some announcement of our intentions. This post will serve as a prequel to upcoming posts that will or could occur at a time when bridges have been burnt and we are coping with the same struggles as our countrymen. That's right, at this point, Liz and I are becoming certain that we will resign from Peace Corps before the end of April. In the months to come, we will share dispassionate rational pleas about why we chose to leave Peace Corps but this post will be emotional and intimate and you, my reader, may feel free to dismiss me as someone who simply does not feel the same way you would. I've been feeling rather emotional about one point in particular, and that is regular exposure to the beating of children disguised as corporal punishment.

I feel that this is a sensitive issue and I have not worked closely with individuals who have been a part of my disturbance regarding this issue. I want to make that clear. When we first arrived at this site, we witnessed a few isolated incidences of corporal punishment, but we didn't raise any red flags because we assumed that the learners we saw being punished must have done something dreadful.

When I was a young child, corporal punishment was a norm in both my home and my school, and I can remember times that it was both effective and when it failed. I spend about 2 years in a public school in rural Kansas where corporal punishment could be dealt out by the principal. Mythic images of our principal and the paddle that he was rumored to wield scared many of my 5 year old colleagues into submission. In my home, a thin wooden plank with a leather strap wrapped around the handle hung on me and my brother's bedroom door handle as a reminder of the cost of misbehavior. I never visited the principal and his paddle but I had many visits with the paddle that hung on my bedroom door and I can say that at the time I hated it, but in my adult life I don't resent it, or my parents, or feel like I was abused.

In both cases, at school and at home, I understood that this was something that would occur after I defied other strategies to keep me in line. People are sensitive to this issue. Some would say I suffered abuse at the hands of my parents but I would never sympathize with this feeling. With the wisdom of my most current experiences I can remember so vividly them saying, "This hurts me more than it hurts you," and despite the incredulity I felt as a 6 year old defiant punk, I'm now certain that this was true.

I must have been 6 years old when my older brother tensed his buttocks as firmly as he could muster and the paddle split down the center. Our paddle was never the same after that. I vaguely remember some failed solution involving Elmer's glue, but after that, my parents were left to other methods. My brother and I weren't overly troubled children, but from time to time we exerted our will more than it was our place to, but we were typically aware of the boundaries and respectful towards them. I like to think that we seldom needed punishment and that we seldom received it. I served a few detentions in middle school for talking to a girl I had a crush on after the bell, but at least I got to serve those detentions with that girl.

The point I want to make is that I am not ideologically opposed to corporal punishment. I think there is a realm in which it can be effective. I am also not ideologically approving of it either! I think there are realms in which it becomes physical abuse and introduces violence into innocent lives without serving a single other purpose. I believe that for myself, I could probably find a line where one side would be normal appropriate punishment and the other would be inexcusable abuse, but I would be hard-pressed to defend it against another who thought the line should be moved one way or another. I believe that the spectrum of human vulnerability is varied and what might steer one child straight might traumatize another and keep them from fulfilling their potential. In light of this belief, I support South Africa's constitutional ban on corporal punishment. Whether a particular form of punishment is constructive or traumatizing is a subject of research I am not well-educated in, nor is it a subject I care to explore further. I am more interested in whether or not a particular form of punishment is effective in motivating people towards good citizenship or not. In this vein, and in light of my personal experience with both, I strongly endorse positive motivations as opposed to corporal punishment.

Liz and I have faced our share of challenges in the Peace Corps. The death of Liz's grandmother, a highly criticizable training, and the unavailabilty of housing at the site Peace Corps vetted for us was just the beginning. Soon after arriving, you may recall, the curriculum advisor I was to work with fell ill and passed on. The office where we worked asked me to step into his shoes which at the time I felt would be a great opportunity. The truth was, I acted as a bureaucrat charged with ensuring policy over quality and having far too much authority for an unpaid foreigner. Liz was assigned to a unit comprised of two uncaring near-retirees. She managed to accomplish a lot despite that challenge but the roof finally fell through when our closest friend, supervisor and dearest ally at the office, Palma, died of complications in a surgery.

We still felt commited to Peace Corps and Peace Corps managed to find us another place to work. We arrived full of optimism and excitement. The new site offered more of the stereotypical Peace Corps amenities such as a long-drop outdoor toilet, a walk to the water-tap, and bucket baths. We adapted to these things without too much fuss and were eager to have a great second year of service serving at our school.

On Facebook, I have been fairly critical of our school, but this hasn't really been fair. This school has so much going for it. The only criticism I can make is that there are a few select educators, maybe 1 in 10, who abuse coporal punishment. I believe that Peace Corps volunteers are the most effective when they can work with people with small gaps in their qualifications who have a desire to close those gaps. I have had some success with such individuals at our school. Many volunteers complain of principals who are entirely absent from schools and educators who watch TV in the staff room rather than teach learners. Other volunteers struggle with educators who boldly misinform learners due to lack of knowledge and understanding on their own part and who don't want to hear how they are wrong from any American.

Liz and I do not face these struggles at our school. Educators go to class well prepared. The principal runs a tight ship and leads by example. Extramural activities such as choir, sports and chess are alive and well. The educators are well qualified in their subject area and motivated to be the best teacher they can be. Really...there's just one big problem.

Our school is reputed throughout the region for enforcing strict discipline. This means that corporal punishment is ubiquitous in our school. It is my sincere belief that 9 out of 10 educators are constantly looking for ways to reduce their use of it. Most educators look to use it in a scarce and fairly structured the way that I really struggle to make a good argument against. The problem is, is that there are over 50 educators at our school. This leaves 4 or 5 'policemen', (in the post-apartheid state, "policeman" becomes slang for someone who beats another without reason) who are seldom seen without a length of PVC pipe in their hand and who wear the biggest smiles when that pipe is being swung at learners. This creates such horror stories from children as, "When I grow up, I want to be a teacher so that I can beat learners." With 20 classrooms sharing the same courtyard, this means in any given class period, there is bound to be the disturbance of the painful howls of children being beaten.

These educators are not bad people. No doubt they had it rougher than you can imagine. The education system they grew up with was designed to keep black people from asking hard questions about the world around them and as products of it, I think it's suprising that we don't have more policemen at our school than we do.

As mentioned before, our school is reputed for the use of corporal punishment. It is also the most overcrowded school in the area. This means that there is community support for corporal punishment. Corporal punishment is no doubt being used in homes and the impression we get is that the parents expect the school to support this method of discipline. The school management supports corporal punishment, and indeed occassionally takes part in it. The regional education officials seem to condone it. Everyone seems to know that it is illegal but are skeptical that a learner will ever complain. For me, calling the authorities is not really option while I am staying here at the generosity of the community and would be ineffective after I leave. I mourn for the learners who grow up thinking that beating on vulnerable people is normal.

I need to get out of this place before I my skin toughens further, and with only a few months left in our service, that means that we will not be asking the Peace Corps for yet another site. Liz's father and step-mother will be visiting at the end of March through early April. Soon after we may resign from Peace Corps and start the next chapter of our lives. We have been applying to various jobs and are hopeful that before our savings run out we will be gainfully employed at a level commensurate to our qualification and experience. In the immediate future we hope to survive on the generosity of our family and look forward to sharing much more of our amazing, wonderful experience with friend and family back in the US.

I hope this lengthy essay challenges you to think about the privileges you've had in your life and that you can share with me the perspective that despite always being able to look at others who always had a little bit more, that for most of us in America, we can find far more who have had far less and have struggled to succeed over far greater obstacles.

Again we find ourselves looking into the future as we contemplate the close of our service later this year. Right now we are considering various opportunities for extending with Peace Corps in South Africa, and also for seeking full-time, paid employment wherever they might want a physicist or a physical science educator, or an educational studies researcher, administrator, or professor. It's not a fun time to be on the job market, so do let us know if you have any wise ideas, job leads, favorite employers, etc. Generally speaking we would love to go anywhere and do anything, so long as we are using skills we have and earning some dough... We are officially on the job market!

So we've really started really actually working at our new site and so far things have been going well overall. I am privileged to work with two qualified educators in Grade 11 Physics and Math. I give some minimal assistance in preparing lecture presentations and assignments and give an occasional comment on the quality of these educators' presentation. Where I really seem useful is when the learners are assigned classwork. I work with two classes, one having about 70 learners and the other having 60. With two of us, we are able to give learners some individual attention from time to time although I fear we may be getting quite a bit behind because this takes a lot of time.

Working in a school is certainly more interesting than working in a regional office. Free periods in the staff room give time to share personal time with our coworkers where in the office we'd be sitting alone in our office in our down time. We also have to cope with being in an awkward situation as goes for volunteers. That is, I have more than one idea about how the standard of education at our school could be increased but certainly no one has asked for either or our inputs on the manner. For myself, I have been charged with increasing the quality of results in Physics and Maths but I doubt that anything I do could ever actually succeed at that. The results in these subjects at our school are already well above the Provincial and National performance which means that there is already a lot being done well here. What's going wrong that keeps the results at 60%? I have a few ideas but I don't think my principal would be very interested in hearing them. The school has enormous class sizes and while the student to teacher ratio is about 35 to 1, the physical classroom space is so limited that classroom sizes are often twice this size. Thus, no space could be devoted to having a laboratory or even having some room to do a demonstration in front of the classroom. As it is, I'm sure that I'm doing no harm. I hope to start playing chess with some learners in the upcoming weeks.

Liz is working with some English educators and is also struggling with very crowded classrooms. One of her counterpart educators is lacking any kind of formal training in education and hopefully over time, she will be able to impart a lot of wisdom to her. She has also already begun to meet with learners to support their efforts to increase the use of English language at the school. We both kind of feel that it's horribly unfair to ask these learners to write their exams in English but this one is something that seems to be here to stay. These learners only use English in the classroom and in the schoolyard and at home they don't use it all unless they are watching English language television programming. We like to think that our very presence is giving more educators the opportunity to practice their English which we hope will trickle down to an increased confidence with the learners. Liz's group has the goal of giving the opportunity for educators to practice speaking in English with each other while at the same time promoting and supporting extracurricular activities such as a school newspaper or a drama club. She's only had one meeting but so far the interest is keen.

As we continue on, I'm sure more challenges will present themselves but I think the rest of our service will be good. Neither of us is optimistic that we will really change the overall quality of education at our school, but each day presents interesting challenges and exciting victories so the work is fun. We are happy to continue to live immersed in a different culture and to share our foreign ways. We are developing friendships and working relationships at a steady pace and are learning more and more all of the time.

The Peace Corps has three goals for its overseas mission. The primary goal in most people's minds is to provide skilled volunteers to developing areas of the world to lend a hand in trying to build up local capacity. Another major goal is more diplomatic: trying to raise awareness about the diversity and goodness--generosity, kindness, willing to sacrifice--of Americans, via the volunteer as a representative of the states. Officially, it is "to promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served." You're welcome, stateside Americans.

The third goal is to promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans. Peace Corps encourages this by moving us into homes and families in the areas we serve, and recommending our participation in community events that are cultural in nature, like weddings, funerals, and other common social get-togethers which may differ in the details from our side to this side. Peace Corps also encourages our host families and supervisors to invite us to events so that we can learn from each other culturally as well as professionally.

In theory this all might sound like fun and games--and it certainly did for me, coming from stateside and having enjoyed the cultural aspects of leisure travel in the past--but in practice I am sorry to say it is often a handful. These are, after all, cultural differences we are talking about and planning to explore here. Such as differing gender roles. Differing views of and relationships with alcohol and drugs. Things can get hectic fast for volunteers placed in rural areas unlike any place they have ever been before, with people drinking heavily, treating females differently and having different expectations of how females are supposed to act, and so on. For example, school or community leaders drinking heavily before driving you home after a planned school event or community event is not uncommon, however undesirable it is both to Peace Corps and to the volunteer who strive to culturally integrate while not taking safety risks.

On the more mundane side of things, sometimes it is not fun to try to integrate, because it is exhausting. Remember that foreign exchange student, or foreign graduate student, or other foreign person you knew around town? Remember how sometimes he or she was a little bit reserved (a stereotype, perhaps, as I certainly can also think of many "foreign" friends I have had who were great at integrating in the states, but nonetheless...)? It is tiring to not know what you are doing! On a daily basis! Almost every time you leave the house! Most of the time when Tim and I are not actively following people around and asking them what they are doing and what is going to happen next, we are confused! In this situation, the only thing you can do short of integrating better (which is not always easy) is to mellow out a little bit. Fortunately where we are now, people will live and let live, especially with us foreigners. As we gave the exchange student/foreign grad student some slack regarding everyday social competencies, we are also given slack every day, and we are fortunate we can be ourselves without risk of offense or being seen as complete morons (well, on the other hand, a certain ignorance is assumed, which can sometimes be annoying, but overall it's a good deal to be treated like you are a little slow).

Sometimes leaving the house can feel like a chore in this context. In fact, I feel obligated to socialize even when I don't want to, because my reason for not wanting to is sheer laziness. It isn't ordinary sheer laziness, but the laziness you have when everyday acts are social "events." It's enough to make some volunteers hermits.

All of this is a very long lead-up to why I'm sharing our day today with you all online. Today was a good day for cultural integration.

Yesterday one of my counterparts invited Tim and I to participate in a cultural event hosted by his family in a nearby village. They slaughtered a cow yesterday, and had a thanksgiving event today. Our only concern/excuse was that we needed to do grocery shopping either yesterday or today. Sunday it can be hard to get to and from town without hitch hiking. We left school yesterday (Friday) without making any plans, and we weren't sure if we would hear from him again or not. But we knew he had our number. We find ourselves giving out our phone numbers constantly here, to people we've just met. Though everyone seems to want to arrange an event and tells us they will call, rarely do people call. It seems to be customary here that once someone invites you over, you call to make the arrangements or re-invite yourself over. We don't have it all figured out. If we were lonelier, we would have people to call, and we would feel free to invite ourselves out with them. Often we are shamefully lazy in the way I've just mentioned, even when awesome people invite us to do awesome things (and then there is also the American expectation that the host arrange everything and call you, rather than the expectation that seems common here that you start "harassing" someone as soon as they make what you might perceive, as an American, as an offhand/open-ended/nonchalant invitation).

Today Sakhile called us, and we had done our grocery shopping yesterday, so we were free today. Not having our own transport is another factor that makes us lazy in all of this. But in this case he offered to pick us up from town, drive us back, and informed us that today we would be part of a program before having a lunch, and then get home sometime thereafter. Why not?

We got to town around 9:30, and he picked us up as agreed upon. He lives about 10K a different direction. When we arrived the family was there (he has 9 brothers, from 2 mothers in a polygamous relationship with 1 father). He served Tim some meat from the cow, and we chatted with a few brothers about polygamy back in the day, their travels in the United States, and our work in South Africa.

About an hour after we arrived, the program began. We all sat under a large tent (I associate it with the circus, but it's just a tent to offer some shade), with plastic chairs and a sound system with microphones and a keyboard. The event starting with singing and some relaxed dancing, and then several speeches in isiZulu (we don't know isiZulu). This took about 3 or 4 hours under the hot sun. Sure, we were in the shade, but not moving, and not knowing what people are saying, in 90+ degrees is tough. It used to be tougher for us, but South Africans seem a little better at patience than Americans. There is a slower pace of life.

In events like these, we stand out as distinguished guests, which used to worry me. Even among Afrikaners in events we are mentioned and recognized as distinguished guests, which can be a little embarrassing, but I guess not every event is attended by Americans here in South Africa.

We were sad to not see Sakhile, my counterpart, participating more. As the youngest brother he has responsibilities to his family that no other brothers have, and since he is the only unmarried one, he was also prohibited from dancing with his brothers.

There was also some cultural dancing by some local area youth, some in animal furs dancing in the hot sun. A fantastic meal was then served, and Tim and I were among the first served, partly because Sakhile was worried I wouldn't have enough to eat, although half a dozen fantastic salads were served, including a traditional green salad, a salsa-type mix, potato salad, slaw, mashed butternut squash, beets, and a yummy carrot-and-bean curry. I hate to not eat meat at such events (though I continue to not eat meat), because it's socially awkward, and in this situation I was also weary of the fact that men are usually served before women (and children). However, I also felt fortunate to be thought of as a foreign guest, and have also experienced not having enough to eat at such events, so I accepted the offer of being among the first served as graciously as I could.

A few fellow educators began to show up as we started eating, and while I was happy to see them I was also weary of the fact that the day was progressing rapidly while Sakhile was busy with family matters and we were far from home (well, far from home, without transport). When we saw that one educator was leaving after finishing his food, and discovered he was headed in our direction, we invited ourselves along with him. Though Sakhile said he could take us home, we saw that he was so immersed in serving others the whole time that we were there, that we didn't want to cause him stress, though it was impossible to say when or if he would finish with his responsibilities and join the party (we didn't even see him eat, we just saw him serving others).

Though he had left briefly to run an errand at that time, I called to let him know we were going with another educator back to town, and I thanked him for thinking of us.

Mthethwa, the educator we went back with, seemed reluctant to take us, but we sort of forced ourselves on him when we discovered he was going our way and had space in his car, because one can get tired and want to go home quickly once one starts to get that feeling in rural South Africa, as an American (in our experience). We discovered his clutch was not in great shape, though he felt compelled to take us with him, and he took us to the very scenic dam wall, where he and some educators were going to have a few beers.

At that point Tim and I could have asked to be taken to town to get a taxi home, or to our home specifically, if we felt like we were in a bad situation. But we did not. While in many contexts with alcohol in South Africa drinking is heavy and people are wasted and embarrassing (and really excited to talk to the Americans), Mthethwa's friends were really cool. All fellow educators, no one was drinking to get drunk, and people were neither overly concerned with or interested in Tim or I (which can stress us out), nor avoiding us in the small group. It was a friendly and mature group.

I was the only woman there, which is what I have come to expect. Most women have children shortly after finishing high school in the rural South African environment, and then are more socially conservative, staying home. As Mthethwa explained to us, even his girlfriend was at home today, and they have challenges every weekend when Mthethwa wants to go out and grab a few beers with his friends, since she does not really approve of drinking and prefers to stay at home. However, I often feel like an honorary man in these contexts. I am treated with respect, as a married woman (and in front of my husband), but I am also treated in a friendly way, since I am out drinking with the guys. It's not a bad place to be, though sometimes I would like some more female friends. The whole situation has Tim and I feeling like 18 year-olds hanging out with 21 year-olds back in the states, as we are sort of helpless and dependent on others' maturity and kindness to some extent, while also trying to feel out whether the situation is safe or unsafe, deviant or tolerable, according to both U.S. and South African standards. Luckily, we felt relaxed and at home in this situation, and happy to be in a mellow, light-hearted, pleasant environment as the day began to cool down.

We were not far from our home at the dam wall, and as soon as we asked to be taken home (after 1 or 2 beers), we were taken by Mthethwa (though we asked him to just drop us at the side of the road to our village, since we felt bad that we had forced him to drive us with his bad clutch). Today was a bit tiring, but not bad at all. People made us feel at home as the only white people or Americans around for miles, and welcomed us as fellows, and fortunately differences were not so stark that we were troubled in any way, such as by patriarchal rules, anti-vegetarian norms, weird gender expectations, insanely drunk people, etc. Today was a successful day with cultural integration.

The last year has really been quite the year for us. Since the Christmas holiday a year ago, we've enjoyed 5 amazing vacations in southern Africa and at this point it's hard for me to know which one has been the best. When we joined the Peace Corps, we certainly had travel experiences in mind and were pleased to learn about the generous leave we'd receive as part of our service. We have been very lucky to be able to do all of the things that we have done and to see all of the things we have seen. We've seen more of South Africa than most South Africans, rich or poor, will ever see and we've seen more of Botswana than most Botswanans will ever see. The range of what can experience, see, and do in southern Africa far exceeds what one could experience, see and do in the states and in a much smaller space. Start saving your money. Take the time off work. Come out here and see the place. It's a different world. In our latest trip we explored the south-eastern part of South Africa and were quite pleased with much of what we found.

First we started in Durban. We took a public taxi from Jozini to Durban and were quite comfortable as it was not over-crowded or full of crying children, and the driver had a taste in music that was relatively quite tolerable. We started a day earlier than we had planned and having never been in Durban were a little lost when we arrived. We told a young man we wanted to go to Florida Rd. and he shoved us on a local taxi going the wrong way and tried to charge us double, (the naive white person's rate). Luckily, everyone else on the taxi had our backs and helped us get to where we were going. It was late lunch time so we headed straight toward the highly touted TacoZulu. TacoZulu is a tex-mex restaurant located in the middle of a hipper affluent neighborhood. The fare is reasonable for those who have been deprived of a US staple food for 18 months and we were immediately happy.

The next day we walked past the new World Cup stadium to the ocean and walked along the beach for much of the length of beach the city has to offer. Our guidebook was clearly written before the city had made improvements for World Cup as the beach was a lovely place to be. There were some tourist curio sellers along the nearest road but we enjoyed a stroll on the new walkway right next to the sand. Instead of busque-ing, people build large and elaborate sand sculptures, often employing two different colors of sand. Our favorite was 'Gorilla Honeymoon' for the laugh it gave us, we tossed its creator a 5R coin. At the southern end of the beach is Ushaka Marine World which combines the concepts of shopping mall, boardwalk, aquarium and waterpark. We didn't have a swimsuits or cozzies (from the British English swimming costume )as they are locally called so we enjoyed the surf shops and had a cocktail on the pier watching the big container ships enter and exit the harbour. Later that day we enjoyed Bunny Chow which is a local adaptation of Indian Cuisine that involves hollowing out a loaf of bread and filling it with a curry dish and met us with 3 Peace Corps volunteers we'd be spending the next leg of our trip with.

Along with another volunteer we met up with headed our way, the 6 of us quickly caught a public taxi to Umthata located in the Eastern Cape Provence which is the area that gave us Nelson Mandela. The drive was scenic, the taxi was again not overcrowded, and despite a sick child in the back, the ride was not too unbearable. Umthata is an African city with street vendors, broken stop-lights, loud stereos blasting out of shops, and a bad reputation for crime. We ended up getting dropped off north of town at a small shopping center in a calmer neighborhood while we waited for a shuttle to Port St. Johns. I imagine the drive was also very scenic, but I have to imagine it because much of the drive was completely socked in with fog. By the time we arrived at Port St. Johns we were a bit tired of being on the road.

Port St. Johns is a small beach town with a handful of backpacker hostels and hotels and not too much else. For us, Port St. Johns was to be the starting point of a 61km hike we would undertake over the next five days. After a brief visit to the ocean, we stayed within sight and sound of it's "Second Beach" at a hippie haven called Amapondo Backpackers. The accommodation was nice and the beer was cheap so we couldn't complain except that about the same time that the backpacker's bar quieted down, a much louder party started somewhere in the vicinity and made it hard for me to sleep.

The next day we met our guide and started our hike. The area we were hiking in is known as the Wild Coast for it's lack of developed infrastructure. It is known for it's scenic rolling hills, lush forests and untouched beaches. We chose to hire a guide and accommodations through a community-based tourism group. Each night we would stay in a village not unlike the one we live in as part of our Peace Corps service, and be fed traditional tea, dinner, and breakfast. Each of the village accommodations is equipped with a primitive toilet and shower and at each one we stayed in a traditional rondavel which is a thatch roofed round hut with mud walls and flooring made with a mixture or mud, grass, and dry cowshit. They say this mixture keeps snakes away.

The first day of the hike got off to a rough start for me. One of the first hills was covered in trees and the ground was muddy from recent rain and I lost my footing and put a gnarly gash in my knee. We had antiseptic, triple antibiotic and plently of bandaids so we cleaned it and carried on. The first day was maybe the hardest. Since we were meeting our guide that morning, we didn't get started til 9 in the morning or so which in Africa means it's already hot! The hills were steeper and higher than we imagined from the description of "rolling hills" and we began to doubt whether this hike was a good idea. Luckily, the scenery never failed to be completely wonderful so our spirits were easily held high. It was about 7 hours from when we started to when we arrived but we had rested at a few beaches along the way for a swim or two.

Day two was much shorter and easier and I rested up while others went hunting for oysters down on the beach. This day we only walked about 3 hours. Days 3 and 4 were longer with 4 being the longest. On day 3 we had a short spout of rain which seemed to get us down. On day 4, which we knew would be the longest and hardest day, sunburns, heat-rashes and overequipped packs seemed to add to the challenge. However, the weather remained outstanding, the scenery was unending with its beauty and we trudged on rather pleasantly. On the fifth day we walked about 3.5 hours to arrive in Coffee Bay.

We were quite proud of ourselves as we arrived. Liz and I had never done anything like this before and our bodies seemed to show improvement for the task at hand. Two of our group left quite shortly after arriving to prepare for a 120km hike they would do the next week and the last one stayed just the night with us. We were also greeted by another Peace Corps Volunteer with whom we had traveled to Port St. Johns.

Liz and I had booked 4 nights in Coffee Bay and it was a great place to recover from our hike. We were welcomed with a free beer, hot showers and a private room with flower pedals sprinkled over our bed. Coffee Bay is another small town that's really hard to get to, has a few backpackers and hotels and not much else. It's beach has good surf and not a lot of people. From where we stayed, the beach was a short walk so long as the river between us and the beach wasn't too high. We enjoyed our time there quite a bit. The backpackers we stayed at is called the Coffee Shack and is a bit of a raucous party. We had stayed there for the price tag and the holiday availability. We struggle to burn the midnight oil these days and sometimes it seemed the party would never stop but we managed ok. We enjoyed early morning jogs on the beach, a cozy pizza joint with an unbeatable view, cheap and convenient food and drinks at the backpackers and the company of the travelers who were passing through there for awhile. We went on one day trip organized by Coffee Shack to some caves and to a cliff jump. The hike to the caves was a bit more than advertised so we stayed at the trailhead while the others got rained on :). After they returned we found the cliff dive and I had the opportunity to jump into a river from a 7 meter cliff. It was totally scary! For a moment I thought of turning back and then to make my legs move to jump off was another struggle. While I was in the air, I thought about what a stupid thing I'd just done. But it was quite a rush when I was safe in the end. I thought about even doing it again. The Coffee Shack through a great Christmas Party on Christmas night and we enjoyed some holiday spirit.

On Christmas day, with the help of some friends, we traveled back to Mthata to pick up a rental car that would carry us for the remainder of our trip. We drove on to the next portion of our trip where we would explore an area known as the Drakensberg Mountains or The Berg. They are misnamed really. Once you summit them, you find flatland on top. They are really more of an escarpment. They form the eastern border of Lesotho with South Africa. So we combined our explorations of this area with explorations of Lesotho. First we stayed at the Sani Lodge outside of Underberg in South Africa, in the shadow of the southern part of The Berg. There, they loaded up Land Rover Defenders and drove us up the only road that goes up the escarpment. The last stretch of road is steep, short, sharply cornered switchbacks and it's far from comfortable. The scenery is outstanding but the vehicle we were in was less than optimal for enjoying it and the photographic opportunities were also quite limited. The guide was quite knowledgeable and it was an exciting trip. Once on top of the Sani pass, we are in Lesotho. We traveled into Lesotho to summit Black Mountain and stopped for lunch at a place where we could see highest peak south of Kilimanjaro. The peak itself is a little pimple that rises above a flat ridge so it's not really so impressive but we can say that we've seen it. On the return trip we stopped in a tiny Basotho village and learned a bit about Basotho culture. Near the border crossing, in Sani Top, is the Sani Top Chalet which boasts "The Highest Pub in Africa" where we stopped for refreshments.

The next stop took us further North to a hostel outside of the small town of Bergville which I think could easily be called Bergburg. We stayed at Amphitheatre Backpackers which itself is in the middle of flat grassy plains but from which the view is really stunning. We joined a tour from there for a day hike to see Tugela Falls, the tallest waterfall in Africa and the second tallest in the world. The tour starts out with a 2.5 hour drive to the trailhead which isn't very far away as the crow flies but the terrain requires a highly indirect route. This hike included some really amazing views from 2500m up. One portion of the hike includes a really steep climb up a gap between two peaks. The view at the end is quite rewarding but personally this pushed my limits. For the time being though, I felt quite proud of myself. From there, it's a leisurely stroll to the top of the falls. The river above the falls is a narrow stream only about 3m across and not too deep either. Just before the edge, there are a few pools that will no doubt one day be the top of the falls as erosion does its work. We swam in them for a bit and then wandered off by ourselves to get a better view of the falls. There are several tiers and from the top, you can only see the first one. If you walk about 5 minutes away you can see much more of the falls and of the 20 or so hikers on that trip, we were the only ones to do so. The hike back included some rather long chain ladders going down which pushed Liz's limits but she faced her fear admirably. It slowed us down for the whole group to go down these ladders as well as some other hikers there that day which for some may've been a nice rest but for me was just long enough for my muscles to get really tight. The walk from there back to the trailhead was far less pleasant was we were tired, hungry and sore. If that wasn't enough, we had to make a detour on the ride home to pick up some other people staying at the hostel. When we finally got back, I was completely beat and felt awful.

Luckily, the next day didn't have much on our agenda. We took just a few hours drive northwest to Clarens, a small town known for its celebrity visitors and it's yuppy art galleries. The drive there, took us through the Golden Gate Park which is a series of stunning rock formations heavily eroded by wind and rain. We checked into Clarens Inn Backpackers where were we accommodated in a teepee and I took a nap. We enjoyed some swimming in the creek below the mountain and just relaxed before enjoying a wonderful Italian dinner in town.

The next day we had booked a private tour of some parts of Lesotho. The plan was to enter Lesotho, visit some dinosaur footprints, a community art project, and then summit a peak to get to a nature reserve where we would take a short hike, have lunch and then return. Unfortunately the pass we summited was quite misty and though it was clear on the other side, it did not stay that way. After about 5 minutes of walking we turned back due to the rain. Our guide was quite adaptable and we drove on to clearer weather at lower altitude and enjoyed our lunch next to a part of Katse Dam.

Lesotho is called The Mountain Kingdom and is properly associated as such. Along the northwestern part, it does not differ much from South Africa which is its only neighbor. Much of the rest of the country is high in the mountains and the further in you get, the more the culture becomes unique and distinct. In these parts of Lesotho, few people are wearing western clothes. Most people are wearing a balaclava, a heavy mohair handwoven blanket wrapped around their body, maybe some short paints or underwear, and then rubber gumboots. The men who've gone through the iniation ritual all carry a stick about a meter in length and an inch or so in diameter. The blanket is traditional and practical against the cold conditions at altitude. The cap is versatile and warm and the gumboots are durable and also quite practical. Lesotho suffers from having very little top soil. What is there is usually just a foot or so deep and highly subject to erosion. This gives much of the land a marshy feel and sometimes puddles may be very large, thus the gumboots make much sense.

Perhaps the most amazing part of Lesotho for me was the way it manages its primary exports of wool and mohair. When you are in the highlands, sheep and angora goats are seen just about everywhere you look. You will also find small stone structures with thatch roofs with stone walls built nearby. These structures house shepherds and corral their sheep or goats. They are always on a north facing face of the mountain to collect sunlight and always built on stones to absorb heat in the day. The structures are built of stone as most of them are above the treeline and wood becomes a scarce commodity. Perhaps the most amazing part of this is that most of the shepherds are young teenage boys, maybe 13 -16 years old. Many boys are unable to gain an education because of their shepherding responsibilities. As a consequence, most shepherds are illiterate and are unable to market their product. The government takes full responsibility for the shearing, marketing and sales of the wool and mohair. To keep the young shepherd from spending all of their money of beer and cigarettes, they receive half of the payment in terms of a trust account at the grocers that can only be spent on food. All of the shepherds we saw appeared well nourished and fit. The system seems to be working but it also seems to trap the shepherding families to that lifestyle. Basotho shearers are World Champions in terms of speed and efficiency.

Another export it has is water. A fair amount of the rain in Lesotho runs into South Africa. Much of what does not is collected in Katse Dam which was a joint venture between the South African and Lesotho governments. This dam provides water for the highly developed Gauteng Provence of South Africa which is far from being able to provide its own water. The final export is labor to the South African mining industry.

After our exploration of Lesotho was finished, we returned to Amphitheatre Backpackers for their big New Year's Eve celebration where we ran into quite a few other Peace Corps Volunteers and had an enjoyable evening. Early on the 1st we returned to Durban and said farewell to our rental car. The next day we explored the overcrowded waterpark and aquarium at Ushaka Marine World and enjoyed a relaxing afternoon and a last Durban style Bunny Chow.

That night I had anxiety dreams about waiting hours in a tiny taxi in order to get back to Jozini. Those dreams came true sadly! When we arrived at 7am, the taxi rank was a calm and quiet place. A loud and crowded taxi rank can be pretty intimidating for sure, but a calm and quiet one frightens me for sure. Most taxis are either Toyota Quantums which comfortably seat 13 people with a small allowance for baggage or Toyota Siyayas which seat 15 uncomfortably and rather crampedly without any concession for baggage whatsoever. On short rides, it's not too bad to tolerate the Siyaya and it's underperformance on the incline but on long rides, such as the one from Durban to Jozini, one really hopes for a Quantum. And on a slow day you have to wait for two more passengers. After waiting 3 hours for it to fill, we took the 4 hour journey home in a Siyaya, unable to move our legs more than an inch or so. We arrived back to a Jozini we could hardly recognize. We stumbled out of the taxi and into the Spar to buy groceries for a day or two since we couldn't carry much but knew there was no food at home. There were more people there than we'd ever seen before! The streets of town were easily twice as crowded as they are on a busy day. To go to our village, there were more people than taxis (almost always there are more taxis than people) and we decided it was best to walk the 6-7km home. So one last hike for us to top the trip off. The Jozini Dam has seen a lot of rain and they were letting some water out which is often pretty to see.

Our host family was pleased to see us and we were pleased to have our own bed, our own long-drop toilet, and some privacy. Overall it was a stunning trip full of exercise and of course the pictures are available here. We are happy to be back in the village and look forward to a productive year at our school as well as a future visit from Liz's Dad and Step-Mom, a June or July holiday we are planning in Namibia and the Transfrontier Kalaghadi Park, and an end of service trip north through Eastern Africa!!! Join us!

So much has been happening lately that it will be hard to catch you up without writing a novel. Recently one of our laptops became infested with viruses, while the other simultaneously lost its ability to type the letters K and H, leaving us writing cryptic emails to folks at home whenever the internet/cell signal was strong enough to connect (which is not a lot, on this side). As I type our macbook has an external keyboard tied around it with rope, which we find delightfully absurd. Anyway...

"Ngifuna imali" means "I need money," in Zulu. I feel bad asking for money, because at this time I am owing some family back home some thank-yous for birthday gifts. (My birthday is Sunday, and we are celebrating tomorrow by staying overnight at the fancy lodge in town, which boasts running water (no longer to be taken for granted!), a pool overlooking the lake, and beautiful buffets and sunset cruises.) I also feel bad asking for money, because this is not the last request you will receive from me! Indeed, I will want even more of your money this festive season if our grant goes through.

All the same...Ngifuna imali.

Longtom Marathon and the KLM Foundation

This March Tim and I will participate in a race for a cause: Longtom Marathon. Though I had originally hoped to run the brutal ultra marathon at 56k, what I can say with certainty today is that Tim and I are running most mornings at 5 am, and are planning to both do the downhill half-marathon portion of the race.

We are trying to raise $100 each for the race, which goes toward the KLM Foundation. KLM gives scholarships to poor, rural youth to attend a leading high school here. They recruit young people who want to change their world, and involve them in mentorships and community projects to empower them to do so. If you helped us out by donating some $5 or $20, you can know that you helped us with a worthy cause.

The website for KLM (click here!) gives more information, and makes it easy for you to donate. Simply click on the "Donate" tab on the left, and a secure window will open. Please enter my name or Tim's full name, so that your donation can be counted toward our totals.

Thanks so much!

Life Lately

So much has been happening lately that I'm not sure where to begin. Last month we celebrated Thanksgiving with our host family in front of our house: our parents, our father's sister, a temporary lodger here, and 7 children. It was a special occasion. Since we are disadvantaged for cooking, with only a bar fridge, a microwave, and 2-plate stove top, we bought buckets of KFC and sides, made some rice, and bought some cake and some fruits for desert. We also explained to our host family what Thanksgiving was about, and how we were doing it wrong! (Of course, KFC is pretty well-loved here, so they probably preferred KFC to more traditional fixings!) As we nibbled on deserts we exchanged wedding photos from our wedding and from our host parents' renewal of their vows last year. Though I am not a great Zulu wife, I was aided by the eldest daughter in serving the men, women, and children in turn, and the girls also helped me clean up afterward. It was a great impromptu event!

Last week we got to do something different, which was also very cool for us. Our local health volunteer in the area discovered that an international service organization called OneSight was coming to the area to give out recycled eye ware to folks in rural villages, and could use some helping hands. In the week they were here they saw thousands of men, women, and children. We helped with eye screenings while they did eye exams and gave out recycled designer glasses and shades. It was very different for us to do this kind of work, but it was enjoyable working along South African clinic volunteers in order to do eye screenings for people who had never had an eye screening before, old and young. It was also wonderful to see people emerge with their new glasses and shades. Most of them had never seen an eye chart before, and now they are seriously styling in the deep rural villages around here! We also enjoyed visiting with other participating Peace Corps volunteers and with our international guests from OneSight, who stay in the country for 2 weeks only to give out as many eyeglasses as possible. We even got some free meals at the aforementioned fancy lodge in town out of the deal. It was wonderful.

We met the parents at our school at the annual parents meeting last week, and we have also made our plans for next year. Tim will be helping 11th grade educators in math, math literacy, and physics, while I will be helping in 6, 7, and 9th grade English, in addition to other extracurricular and workshop activities. We remain very happy to be in a friendly staff room each day, and to work alongside motivated, open-minded educators. We are here to build capacity, not simply replace educators, so things are working out for us. Today was the last day of school, and we exchanged mobile numbers with about half the staff in case we can get together over the holidays.

What else? My dad and step-mom are coming next April! We are so excited! More to look forward to! And, as usual, we are off on another adventure next week. This Christmas we will be doing a guided hike along the Wild Coast, which is supposed to stunning and serene, with some other volunteers, and then we will be entering the mountain kingdom of Lesotho for the first time via some guided tours, climbing up into the clouds.

As I mentioned before, we're planning to ask you for money again in the near future. If you were thinking of doing something special for us for Christmas or my birthday, we are hopeful you will save your dough and plan to contribute instead to a grant we are in the final stages of preparing at this time. We have been working with an exceptional local radio station in the area (exceptional=the manager has met Obama, and they were just in America last month to win an award for best international children's programming from UNICEF) to try and help them build capacity, in particular by getting new station equipment. They are working with very old equipment, but have the ability to get trained on new equipment, which will help with their broadcasting quality and also help them in turn to get donations in the future, which is crucial as they are totally independent and serving an extremely rural, mostly illiterate, community. As our grant is a Peace Corps Partnership Program grant, we will be raising funds primarily in the states, so please put aside a few dollars this Christmas to help us help this incredible community organization.

As I type the rooster are calling, baby goats are crying, and small children are running around outside my open door, skipping by and waving. And it's time for dinner. Stay well until we meet again.

In nearly every way our life is drastically different than it was at our old site. Some of the changes are very obvious. We are now cleaning ourselves, our clothes, and our dishes in buckets and hauling water from a tap (well, Tim is doing that part), and now we work in a school, rather than a regional office. Whereas before we lived in a large flat at the area office, here we are staying on a family plot, sharing space and water with a large family. And while before we lived in a small town with some basic facilities (namely, two small grocery stores) that was half an hour away from a major city (and yet so much longer, using taxis that never filled up...), now we are in a rural village, off the main tar road, yet minutes from a fair-sized town, via taxis that seem to be constantly coming/going. It is a 5-minute ride to visit other volunteers, whereas in Swartruggens it could take hours. Zulu versus Afrikaans/Setswana, tropical versus arid, etc., etc.

Yet after 2 weeks in, I think our new site is, to my surprise, completely ideal for a volunteer or two, even Tim and me. It's funny because when we arrived in South Africa I had the viewpoint that to use our freshly earned PhDs we would have to be in a place like our old site, where we weren't laboring just to clean ourselves, and where we had access to educational authorities in the area. And we were nervous to move here based on this kind of perspective, that a rural school may have less to do with two academics than would an education office.

I am of a completely different mind now, however. Either I didn't realize how much we were struggling there (I do tend to put on a happy face...), or I am seeing our new life now from rose-colored glasses. But this change is good.

All the things that made me nervous about village life have dissolved after the first few trials bucket bathing and pit toileting. While I was nervous about having a host family who may have different values or lifestyles than we are used to, or are so poor as to make us feel ashamed and uncomfortable about our things and our roots in the wildly wealthy (or at least consumerist) west, our family is warmly welcoming and generous, and with 22 cows (and calving) they are actually far wealthier than we are. (I think the laptop we bought here costs about as much as 1 bull.) Tim and I also have a strong appreciation now for a public transportation system that works, and this one undoubtedly does, giving us more freedom of movement than we had in Swartruggens, though we lived mere blocks from the national highway there.

School is very interesting, despite the fact that it is time for examinations and there is very little for us to do in terms of immediate work. As at the area office, the school originally had requested (and had) a volunteer for helping with maths and physics (who left shortly after swearing in, which is when they thought to move us here). However to Tim's relief and/or dismay, the main physics educator is quite strong, at least compared to what we are accustomed to in the North-West, as are his results (relatively speaking), and so Tim is not certain of his purpose, though others seem confident that his very American presence will somehow magically rub off on the learners. For me, as in Swartruggens, there is no obvious place or demand for assistance with English education or management tasks, as the administration of the school is quite strong--again, much better than I was familiar with coming from the particular area we were in, in North-West. Yet here the educators are largely youthful and highly motivated, and I have already become immersed in potential projects. Whereas I was "free" to do what I liked in Swartruggens but without much assistance or participation from any counterparts, here it is the opposite, and English educators are approaching me for assistance with projects they have tried before but struggled to complete, which they would like to pursue collaboratively in the coming year.

Next year we will both be team-teaching, then, which I feel is ideal from a sustainability viewpoint, and also likely assisting with building educator capacity behind the scenes, as well. I am planning to do a series of informal workshops for the English educators and other interested educators, based on their current challenges and maybe even on individual strengths. My goal is to increase the educators' comfort and experience with English while simultaneously encouraging them to reflect on their practices, possible best methods, and their challenges. Today I was approached by an educator with an idea for using these workshops also as a stepping stone for increasing educator involvement in after-school learner activities, which could actually work here as many educators stay in the area during the school week. This particular educator had tried to start a newspaper club and a drama club, and other educators have mentioned to me reading groups, both for educators and learners, that they are interested in. Workshopping for education methods and for potential extracurricular activities are thus two activities I am planning on for next year which many educators at the school seem enthusiastic about. We'll see if I can keep them smiling!

Tim may want to help with my program or else run some similar workshops on English in the content areas, as many of the challenges during examination time come not from problems with the content knowledge but from problems understanding questions written in English! And he already has a educator chess club going (as well as an informal cross-cultural men's group, since some young male educators happened to see us with a single female volunteer living in the area, who they all now seem to be in love with!). In any case, I think we will manage to stay much busier here than we were in Swartruggens with daily work to do, next year.

We were also approached by one of the deputy principals here who is involved with a wonderful independent radio station run from town, and we will likely be helping them raise funds in the near future if not also collaborating on some radio shows. While we had thought in the first place that we should be helping people with significant challenges, it turns out that people who are already highly motivated and able to achieve on their own are ideal counterparts for us as we strive to build existing capacity, rather than use our supposed midas touch around town.

Finally, I think we are really faring much better socially in this rural village, where they speak a language we have not even been trained in! Already we have slaughtered a cow with our family, gone on a small day trip with an educator to meet his parents, had dinner at the house of this same educator with his wife and newborn daughter, met up with some educators around town on the weekend, and are planning some game park weekend trip with one of the principals for sometime soon.

AND life is less expensive here! While we struggled to stay within our budget in the North-West, wondering how other volunteers were saving money with their living allowance, here I can see us also spending far less than our allowance, month to month.

With many of these things, I think part of the reason for optimism and a positive impression is that we are already accustomed to South Africa, and we can appreciate open-minded coworkers, taxis that fill up in less than 2 hours, and regularly running water and electricity more than we could when we arrived in the country for the first time. In many ways we have changed.* Bad or quiet English is not an obstacle now like it was at first, and an ice cream at KFC is a treat that one does not have to have a political or social or anti-imperialistic attitude toward. We also don't need to be glamorous, particularly well-dressed, or well-groomed, and in fact sometimes a little bad grooming can help a white person in the village to not stand out quite so much (which is not to say that people are poorly groomed here, but rather that there is no reason for us to be extremely middle-class in appearance in the rural village...which is, again, very different from the area office, where we were probably the only members of the staff who did not buy a new, expensive outfit at the mall for the local teacher awards ceremony).

*How have I changed? Let me count (some of) the ways...

KFC is an acceptable option for a snack, not a horror plaguing the developing worldFrozen/cold yogurt on a hot day, in a sweaty taxi standing out in the hot sun? Yes, please!I am Mrs. Tim. Mrs. Tim Wotherspoon. Also, Mrs. Wotherspoon. Yeah...Think high school girls should never, ever have sex? Cool!I know that my vegetarian (actually, pescatarian) ways are a major problem for others.Are we going to pray before eating, or before this meeting? Cool! (Not to say I follow a religion here.)

Tim and I are using the present-progressive tense here. We are using it when we are speaking. The people here are loving the present-progressive tense.

I like anyone who smiles. Hey, you don't even have to smile. Just don't glare. Too much.Skirts. I am wearing them. I am wearing them almost always. Although I only have 2.

Finally starting to cringe less and understand more when people are excited to see me just because I am white or American in an unusual context. No reason to burst anyone's bubble.AND I've always wanted to live with cows and chickens (seriously...), though all of the roosters in the village simultaneously shrieking bloody murder in the middle of the night every night is probably not something I will ever miss when this is all over! Anyway I think I have made my point. Who would have thought we'd be so at home in rural Africa? Maybe you did. I'm just glad it's the truth.

In my time as a Peace Corps Volunteer I've developed a bit of a love/hate relationship with Facebook. On one side, it is that intangible thread that convinces me of the smallness of our world and provides a link between me, my fellow volunteers, friends at home and abroad, and my family. On the other hand, it often serves just as well to remind me how isolated I am from the lifestyles of my friends and family.

Before I continue, I want to make it very clear that I don't mean to cast judgment on society or encourage anyone to reflect on the way they feel or reevaluate their moral code. The points I am about to make don't really have anything to do with that at all.

Peace Corps Volunteers make the absolute greatest facebook friends that you could ever have. If you aren't a Peace Corps Volunteer yourself, you probably only have one or two PCV facebook buddies and if you're reading this blog, it's probably the author and his lovely wife. I don't know if we are the absolute greatest facebook friends you could ever have, I just know that I am facebook friends with a significant fraction of the PCVs currently serving in South Africa and most things that encourage me to comment or hit that like button come from other PCVs and most comments on my posts come from other PCVs. In general I see a lot of support offered to and from each other on facebook. Not surprising really as we are comrades and all I suppose but I think there's actually more to it than that.

Some common themes of PCV Status Updates:

I did something today that before I came to Africa I only dreamed of doing.My work really sucks!I did something today that before I came to Africa I never dreamed I'd ever do.Cultural awkwardness cracks me up!I achieved a victory today at making people's lives better.

I don't know what your news feeds are like but some common themes from those who are not PCVs:

Go Sports!Go Television!My work really sucks!YouTube!My political and/or religious views are the best!It seems we can all get behind work sucking. The age old wisdom is after all that they don't call it "play" for no reason. However, when it comes to the intersection of the others, I find clashes often occur.

One of my fellow volunteers recently posted that she had inadvertently hitchhiked. I know what you're thinking, "inadvertently hitchhiked"?! Yes, that happens here. In many places, the accepted form of transportation is standing on the side of the road that goes in the direction you want to go and waving down a minibus they call a taxi. Maybe the minibus you wave down is not a licensed taxi. We are certainly in no position to demand to see the credentials. In this volunteer's case, the taxi driver recruited support in his effort to provide the volunteer with service and boarded her into a private vehicle. Many of her facebook friends commented with astonishment that she had done something so wreckless as get into a stranger's car. I don't want to speak on her behalf but really this one fits into the "I did something today that before I came to Africa I never dreamed I'd ever do" category and I'm glad she made it there safe.

On my behalf, I want to be perfectly frank that college football, major league baseball, tea party politics, and Conan's disappearance and reappearance on the late night talk show scene are frivolities of which I care little. I don't have anything against these things. I find sports an adequate excuse for imbibing alcohol in the sunshine. These tea party folks sound dangerously ignorant and popular to me and I think Conan O'Brian is a comic genius. If I made these things important to me in a way only facebook could pressure me to feel they could be important I would be completely unable to connect and relate to the situation in which I am physically living. It's as fair as that. For a while I felt that my living beyond the programming whims of media conglomerates and outside the sound bite ridden nature of politics made me a more enlightened person of some kind. When I seriously think about it, I find no compelling evidence to this claim.

A) Knock Knock!

B) Who's there?

A) Interrupting Cow!

B) Interrupting C...

A) MOOO!!!!

This post's title claims to be an essay about the killing of cows. Today, Liz and I witnessed the slaughter of a bull. Yes, it was gruesome, but not so much as we expected. Is it something we would ever dreamed of doing before we came to Africa? No. Has Liz started eating meat? No. Has it put me off meat? No. I am tempted to give a play by play description of the whole ordeal but I don't really want to horrify my readers. I feel like I should give more details than zero because if I don't, I worry I will horrify my readers even more.

Four families each put away R100 (~$14) each week into a common fund. When the fund reaches a sufficient amount, they purchase a cow and split the meat amongst the four families. I'm guessing that there is a pretty serious economic benefit when it comes to buying meat this way. A whole cow for one family would be more meat than most freezers could hold and a huge expense. In addition you get the tail, the liver and tongue and other parts not widely available in American grocers that I am still too scared to think about eating. The part that requires the most skill is roping the darn thing. After the kill, the men immediately went to work dressing. The meat was quartered and hung from the tree in the shade of which the men worked. The women worked to clean various other parts which are not let to go to waste in this part of the world. We took our camera and Liz took a photo of me with my hands covered in blood standing next to a big hunk of beef. It's pretty gruesome, but I have a big smile on my face. While this is going on, some meat and liver is grilled on the spot and shared along with bread, soda and amasi (sour milk...which I'm still too scared to try). The only part we saw get thrown away was the hide (because their tanner is no longer in the business) and the skull. There was some heated debate about the usefulness of the feet but in the end they were saved. It seems a good time between friends and for our part, we got about a pound of liver which I am going to try and cook with chopped onions.

Maybe you're reading this and wondering why we would ever go be a part of such a thing. Maybe you're thinking about how this is nothing you would ever do. Maybe you're wondering what all that pedantic crap about facebook had to do with any of this. We took part in this because it seemed kinda like a big deal to our family and they were surprised and amused that we were willing to participate in it. Sometimes spreading goodwill and sharing a part of someone's culture is better in the long run than maintaining your own aesthetics within your own comfort zone and that's enough to make you a lot of things you might never do otherwise.

As for all of that crap above about facebook, I'm not really sure. Part of me just wants to be critical of a social network that only effectively connects people living in the same community and serves to isolate others. Mostly I feel like so many of our experiences here are so worth sharing with people across the world but facebook and even this blog fail to give an effective context for this. I don't know if it is perhaps that these experiences can be too fantastic, too depressing, too foreign or in this case, too gruesome or is it as simple as the 7-10 hours difference in time of the day.

So our move is complete and we are starting to settle into our new digs in the area surrounding Jozini. Many things have changed for us and in many ways it feels like starting our Peace Corps experience fresh and new again. Almost every aspect of our life in South Africa has changed. The most constant thing is that Liz and I still really like each other a lot. Living in Peace Corps has always been an exercise in adaptability so we are taking each thing in stride and really it feels good. In fact, our new situation is much more like what we expected things to be like when we signed up for Peace Corps in the first place. So in the following paragraphs I will try to highlight some of the major changes and how we are coping with them.

Perhaps the biggest difference is that we have gone from an area where there were two prominent tribes, the Afrikaaners and the Tswanas to an area where the Zulu tribe is prominent. Different african cultural groups differ slightly one to the next but many things overlap. The biggest difference for us is that the language is very different. Our shopping town, Jozini, is on a tourist route in the area and besides a few Peace Corps volunteers living around this gives the only presence of white skinned folks. This seems refreshing at first. No one is too amazed to see us and people greet us in English or isiZulu as to opposed to Afrikaans. Always there was a big question as to why we didn't speak Afrikaans. We have learned to greet in isiZulu and inquire about people's well-being and we may try and identify someone who can tutor us so that we can learn more as many of the educators are encouraging us to learn.

Another major difference is the conditions that we are living in. Before our move, we were living in town with enormously spacious accomodations and we enjoyed many of the trappings of civilized life such as indoor plumbing and garbage pick-up. We had his and hers bathrooms and the biggest bathtub that I've ever had. In South Africa, the word 'town' connotes a place with western style shops and infrastructural advantages that cannot be found in a village. In the village, we have no indoor plumbing and no running water. Our house is quite small but we have manage to get organized this week and now it seems cozy. We use two large plastic tubs for doing our dishes and we have a separate one devoted solely to bathing ourselves which is more or less a spongebath-type situation. I was quite nervous about this but have found it rather easy to adapt to actually. We only have to walk 30m or so the tap and we keep a 5 gallon bucket (like the ones that kids use to drum on on city corners and subways), in the house that we have to fill about once a day. The water is sanitary and suitable for drinking. Toilet facilities are provided by a cinderblock structure set above a 50ft hole in the ground. In our time here, we have used a variety of pit toilets and I would say that this one is one of the cleanest and well constructed ones we've encountered. At night, instead of getting dressed, unlocking the house and walking 50m in the dark, I choose to use a bucket that we previously used as a trashbin. The speed of our mobile internet connection is confined to GPRS which is a snail's pace compared to the 3G signal we could sometimes cajole out of the cell tower in Swartruggens. We are hosted by a well-respected family that owns the surrounding plots. There are a few houses on the plot we stay on but the others are all vacant with our host family living in the adjacent plot. We do enjoy our privacy but we also enjoy having some neighbors that know us as well so we are pleased with this aspect of our set up. The only ones we share our plot with are the chickens and the cattle and the cattle are gone most of the day with the cattleherd our host family employs. We can see the school we are working in from our house so our commute is mercifully short as summer is in full swing and the sun is merciless.

The climate is significantly more tropical on this side. The heat has seemed oppressive and they say the worst is yet to come. Luckily, the staff room at the school we are working at is air conditioned. We are now taking malaria tablets and sleeping beneath the mosquito net which keeps out much more than mosquitos and we are grateful for that. It is the rainy season and the first rain we saw brought a small crab to our porch which was suprising as we are still 100km from the sea. Jozini, sits atop a small mountain/big hill and is next to a very large lake. You can walk to the dam wall from town and it's really quite scenic. Pictures are probably forthcoming but the slow internet has put this lower on the list. We share Jozini as a shopping town with 3 other Peace Corps volunteers which is great. They are staying in the next village which is only about 4km away from us. Two of the volunteers are also married and a part of the education project so we have been able to see their place and show them ours which is totally different from Swartruggens where we were rather distant from other volunteers. There is also a volunteer from the community health project staying around but we have yet to meet her.

We have move from office-based work to school-based work. We have only spent a day and a half at the school so we cannot really comment on what it's like working there but it is certainly a new and different atmosphere. The school offers all grades from Kindergarden to Grade 12 and has around 60 educators. We are struggling to remember people's names. Many of the educators teaching secondary grades are young men and this is refreshing. Very few of the educators in the Northwest Province were close to our own age while here most of the educators are actually younger than we are. Having lived in South Africa for more than a year already, we are much more comfortable with our surroundings than we first arrived. People often say, "You must be free." I am no closer to knowing what this really means than when I first arrived, but we do a much better job of acting it out. So far I think we have impressed our new colleagues with our jovial spirit. The first day there we saw a notice in the staff room that announced a race to take place that very day and despite the great heat and the midafternoon timing of the race, Liz and I decided to participate. Liz finished first amongst the female educators which was very impressive to everyone. The men were frightenly fast. Physical fitness is typically not a priority amongst african women so Liz downplays her accomplishment but I think she should be proud of the example she sets for the learners. The best part of the race, by far, was the finish line. Many of the learners were waiting at the finish line and screamed and cheered to greet each runner as they finished. It was actually extremely exhilarating.

Despite all of these changes, these changes are less than joining the Peace Corps in the first place. We didn't suffer a lot of fear or nervousness wondering what things would be like as even though we were not living in the village we were exposed to the conditions of the village frequently and although we were not working in a school, we were familiar with the ways that schools operate and are run. I think in the time we've been in South Africa we've really developed some of the skills that we need to live happy and healthy lives while integrating into the community. When we first arrived in country we were leaning towards having a site with more ammenities because we didn't want to be so tired from dealing with village life to work effectively but in fact, we have learned that those ammenities do little to make Peace Corps service easier if the work at a site is not fulfilling.

The area we are now staying is surrounded by tourist destinations and top-notch game reserves. It's less than a year that we will be staying here. So by all means, stop hem-hawwing about whether or not you're going to come to South Africa and start making plans. We'd love to share this experience with you.

No Peace Corps Volunteer wants to change sites in the course of service, but sometimes it seems that there is no other option. In our case Swartruggens was, to begin with, a second site, which we tried hard to make work (when our housing did not come together in Madikwe). Though progress there was sometimes slow and halting, we have done a lot of interesting things this year, looking back, and I know that we did what we could to make it work, fresh off the plane from America, so to speak. However recent events, such as the death of Tim's counterpart, and then our supervisor, and the month-long educators' strike, have presented challenges for our office, generally speaking. Looking into the future, we felt it was unlikely that our progress would continue in our last year here, as the office is facing challenges that go beyond what we can offer. That is, we're not here to staff the place, holding educators accountable--we're here to work with educators and school leaders in a collaborative setting, and in an office-based climate with the walls caving in, we couldn't see anyway for us to continue that kind of work even part-time, in the future.

Peace Corps-South Africa has been working hard since we made this decision, nearly a month ago, to find a site where our skills can be used. As with Peace Corps placement back in the states, it can be challenging to find the right match, and in South Africa local issues and changes are also something that must be considered.

However, today we made a decision, jointly with Peace Corps, on a new site. Next week we will be moving across South Africa (8-9 hours away, driving), to the Jozini area, to live in a village with a host family there and work at a huge local combined (primary-secondary) school which seeks assistance with Physical Science, Maths, and English.

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What we know is that we will be living in a 2-room flat outside a family home, in a village outside of town--we'll have to take a short taxi ride (maybe 10 kilometers) to get groceries, eat at Kentucky Fried Chicken (just kidding) and the like. We will have electricity but no running water, and the rooms will be smaller than our rooms at the Area Office. 2 completely empty rooms await us, where we'll want to make space to live, eat, take bucket baths (yep, that's bathing in a bucket), and sleep.

We will be surrounded by the volunteers who arrived this last July to work in education, within an hour or so of nearly a dozen of them, and we will be 1 hour from some reportedly beautiful beaches, which is where some volunteers from the new group live, and 1 and one-half hours from St. Lucia, which we loved when we visited the area last April. Swaziland and Mozambique will be immediately north of us, Durban is 3 hours south, and the area is nearly covered with highly-regarded game parks. The area is also a malaria-area, which means we'll have to take malaria medication all the time, and finally make use of the mosquito nets we were given in training.

Zululand is not an Afrikaner area, like Swartruggens (so few white people), and the people speak Zulu, not Setswana. However, I hear English is also acceptable, although we will obviously want to learn how to greet and make some small talk, and possibly more. We know little about the family whose property we will be living on.

Although I've been looking forward to this day for weeks now, and I have no complaints about this situation, I am filled with mixed emotions, overall. On the plus side, I feel fortunate to have a chance to start over, and to experience life in a completely different part of the country, where the culture is different, the climate is different, the language is different, and life is different. I get to learn a new language, get to know life on the other side, and maybe go to the beach on a semi-regular basis! The site provides opportunities for us to work with learners as well as with educators and school leaders, and do some of the neat projects we have wanted to do but have been unable to, without a local school to work with. Additionally, it was kind of anti-climactic to move to South Africa and live in a flat with 2 bathrooms! I am looking forward to the village experience, including bucket bathing (and out-housing...cleaning two toilets stinks!). And if things get rough, at least we will have less than one year until our service is complete (and even if we extend our service, we will probably move as part of the extension program).

On the other hand, we are going to have to adapt, develop a new lifestyle from the one we live now, and meet and work with tons of new people. Though I am definitely more confident the second time around about the best way to meet and interact with others here, new jobs and new lives are never completely fun and games. Challenges are growth opportunities, but sometimes you don't feel like growing as much as you have to!

Tuesday is moving day. We have got a lot to do between now and then, including getting rid of household items, returning household items, and even buying household items. Then we head to Zululand. See you on the other side.

It was been a dramatic time for us in South Africa the last several months. The recent posts have mentioned National Science Week, the Public Service workers strike, participating in training new volunteers, and the passing of our supervisor and friend, Palma.

Palma is sorely missed around the office and the office just can't seem to run properly without her. Several months ago, our Peace Corps supervisor met with Palma and the Area Manager to discuss the fact that I shouldn't be involved in activities that put me in authority over educators. Without Palma here, there is no memory of this meeting and it seems the attitude at the office is that I should continue to be Physical Sciences subject specialist indefinitely despite my lack of qualification for this work or the inappropriateness of a voluntary worker being in a place of authority over paid educators. Liz's presence at the office now seems completely without consequence.

Our Peace Corps supervisors aren't any more pleased with this situation than we are, and are working on trying to find us a new placement. It seems that there are places where we could be used, but there is a challenge of finding us accommodation on the meager Peace Corps housing budget. That housing budget typically puts a volunteer in a "granny flat" or 1-2 room flat behind a main house in a rural village. There, Liz and I could work with local schools, most likely teaching. This is sounding more and more favorable to me.

My observation of the education system here in South Africa is that many problems are structural. However, I find few in the heirarchy above the level of Principal are willing to admit this or see things this way. It is true that many principals and educators are not self-empowered, go-getters. It is also true that despite the conditions of rural schools, that an empowered principal or educator can be a success at delivering quality education. Our initial impression was that the Area Office would be a good place to help in that regard. Our experience has been the opposite. Some of our colleagues here seem to have little personal commitment or passion for improving education. The Area Office does not have a supportive role in the eyes of the schools it governs. It has the role of baas or chief. Some of our colleagues here seem to have little personal commitment or passion for improving education. It seems impossible for principals and educators to look at Liz and I as people who want to support them when we come from the Area Office.

We don't know what the future holds, but we have shared with Peace Corps what has gone wrong with our work here and what we could hope to avoid in the future and they seem on our side. In fact, over and over again Peace Corps has proven to be on our side. Once we were on our way to Pretoria when our mini-bus taxi broke down about 40km away from the Peace Corps Office. Within an hour we were in a Peace Corps vehicle getting a ride directly to our accommodation. When Peace Corps staff saw us waiting for Avis to pick us up to start our holiday, they pitied us and gave us a ride to Avis instead.

Liz and I just returned from a much needed holiday in which we toured the west coast of South Africa and caught the tail end of the spring flower season. The trip was amazing and very romantic as it also marked our two-year wedding anniversary. There are pictures here. Usually when we go on holiday I feel some need to be participating in those goals of Peace Corps' that talk of sharing culture between the US and Peace Corps' host countries. However, this trip was much more focused on having a great time relaxing with each other. A lot of trips we have been on involve packing a lot of activities together to see and do as much as we can. This trip was full of afternoons soaking in pools, drives on gravel roads to see pristine wilderness in full bloom, putting our feet up, and enjoying the beautiful serenity that South Africa can offer in its empty spaces.

When we returned to Pretoria to drop off our rental car, we were lucky to catch one of our colleagues during his last few days in country. The reasons for his leaving are controversial to say the least. It turns out he was caught being away from his site without approved leave. This much I can say with certainty. Other speculations as to why Justin was asked to leave which is essentially the harshest disciplinary action that Peace Corps can dole out would be just speculation. I like to think that it was done with reluctance. I do not think his unauthorized leave showed a lack of commitment to his work as it was taken during the public service strike. The Peace Corps had asked all education volunteers to down their tools not so much in solidarity but because of security issues with crossing picket lines. That left many of us with nothing to do and even now that the strike has ended, many of our programs are disrupted beyond recovery for the year and it seems that this was true in Justin's case. I believe that Justin was an excellent volunteer with a commitment to improving IT in rural areas that is unrivaled in our volunteer community. He represented America to South Africa with honesty and sincerity and you all reading this can be proud that such a person stood to represent you in the most rural places of South Africa. I greatly admire the dignity that Justin displayed throughout this whole process and confidently hope that he will meet up with continued personal success in the US.

The last month has been a trying one. The good news is that we are safe, healthy, and strong, and still dedicated as Peace Corps Volunteers in South Africa.

About a month ago, we ended up leaving our site due to the educators' strike. Our office where our flat is is where educators are likely to protest, and they did protest there off and on, during the three weeks the strike was on. Though strikes here are relatively commonplace and generally strictly peaceful, you just never know when something is going to happen (when someone who's had too much to drink might get overexcited), and Peace Corps does not take chances.

We did a good job trying to keep busy though, moving at first to our buddy Anne's site, not far from our's. There are some really neat aspects of Anne's work, which continued during the strike since it is a private educational camp-type experience, and we made some great contacts there, should we be in the position to be able to collaborate with her counterparts in the time ahead (developing new curriculum). It was great to see Anne, and some other volunteers who visited Anne's site up in the mountains during the weekend. However it was also still a very hectic time, as Tim and I were moving back and forth across the country helping with preservice training for the new education volunteers, and due also to the fact that we told our supervisor Palma we would try and stay with her and offer her support while she began recovering from neck surgery.

Palma passed away from an emergency heart surgery two weeks ago. We will miss her in very many ways. In the first place she was like a grandmother or mother to us, and the only person around who thought about whether or not we were managing to get our grocery shopping done or stay warm during the winter. She was also our friend, and the three of us enjoyed taking excursions to Pilanesberg together as well as spending time with her family and friends as well as members of our own Peace Corps Volunteer "family."

We also miss her as our supervisor. Last year when we had some problems with our housing (and thus our site) immediately after swearing in, Palma was familiar with the Peace Corps mission and essentially talked us into working at the Area Office, under her charge. She managed not only subject advisory but also transportation logistics here, as well as our own work, and in fact as soon as she was away from work to recover from her neck surgery we realized that no one else at our office could easily do all that she did.

We were able to return home one weekend to attend her funeral, and this was a good opportunity to meet more of Palma's family as well as reflect on our special connection with Palma that flourished over the past year.

After Palma's funeral we stayed for the final week of the strike in Pretoria, handling our mid-service medical and dental check-ups, and trying to relax and refresh together after a rough month, half of which we spent away from each other. We went to the Pretoria Zoo, and we also got to meet and help prepare new Peace Corps Response Volunteers who were headed for the Eastern Cape for short-term projects with the Department of Education. We also had some productive conversations with our Peace Corps supervisors regarding our work in the future, and got to hang out with some education volunteers completing their service and some other volunteers from Rwanda who were there for medical reasons. And we got to eat twice at our favorite Chinese restaurant.

We are now back home for the time being. Though the past month of dramatic happenings, work interruptions, and constant traveling make me feel more like a proper Peace Corps Volunteer than I ever did before (that's right, we do live in a developing country...), the strike has made being productive a challenge for us now, as no one wants to take educators out of the classroom after so much class time has been lost...despite all our plans for workshops with educators and administrators. However we are making a plan with our Peace Corps supervisors to ensure that we are still able to do good work in the next year. (That's right! Only one year left!) We are also looking forward to a day or two of mid-service training at the end of next week, followed by the school spring-break holiday during which we will be doing some traveling around the Northern Cape and celebrating the amazing adventure of our two years of marriage. Hope all is well on your side of the world.

It has been an extra-busy time for us.

Now halfway through our service contract, there have been lots of interesting changes lately. Recently I have moved into subject advisory, helping our English specialist here with intermediate phase, grades 4-6, where a brand new curriculum must be rapidly integrated and implemented. So there's a lot for me to learn, which I don't mind, and the transition also involves some "perks": This month we are holding public speaking competitions throughout our area, asking 3 tenth graders from each school to speak on whether the government is doing enough to stop crime and 3 eleventh graders about whether reconciliation has worked to make South Africa properly multi-cultured today. I get to judge these competitions for each of our three school clusters and the final area competition as an esteemed guest from America.

My move to subject advisory has not taken me completely out of education management and governance, however. This month, on the days I am not learning my new work or adjudicating public speaking contests, I am co-facilitating 2-day workshops for the school governing body leaders in each cluster, explaining to them the importance of sound school policy development and implementation and related stuff. Though ultimately the education management department has not given me enough to do, after one year in, I do still feel like I am making a positive imprint with my help with workshops, so workshops will sustain my connection with my original counterparts here.

Our supervisor at the office Palma had neck surgery recently, and we have felt the repercussions of this at work and at home. While she was at the hospital, we dog- and cat-sat for her, going back and forth between her house and ours each day (luckily she only lives a few blocks away), and now that she is back at home she is quite immobile and so we are staying with her this week to help her get back on her feet. It's not a bad deal for us to be good people, as we get some assistance with laundry and free food. But it does feel like we are in non-stop motion.

Tim is across the country this week to help with the new trainees once again (which I must also do in a few weeks' time), sort of compounding a growing sense of chaos at the moment which is also stemming from the upcoming/impending/ongoing teacher strike! For weeks talk of the strike has been enough to keep many volunteers from going near schools, and if picketing were to begin Tim and I would have to avoid the office and our home by implication. On the one hand I cringe to imagine rescheduling my remaining workshops and public speaking contests, and it sounds like Tim also has his hands full with developing additional training activities for the new trainees this week barring their originally planned school visits. On the other hand, I could use a few days to unwind before I could even conceive of ever becoming bored here, as it feels like I've been working for about a month nonstop now!

Keep us posted on what is going on, on your side! It's hard to stay in touch when you are busy and across the world, but until the South African winter is officially over (any day now...) we can sure use some of your sunshine.

Hello!

It's been too long since I've posted here. From most of the 2nd term this year, (March-June), things were pretty slow going and I didn't have much to report. However, since being back from break, things have been a whirlwind. Liz has already mentioned how we spend a week at the Pre-Service Training for the next group of education volunteers in South Africa and that was really a lot of fun to do that. I return later this week to participate even further. She has also mentioned that the very next day after that we participated in the Rustenberg Mountain Race which was also enjoyable. As enjoyable as these things were however, they were also tiring. Participating in training involves long hours and the race is tiring for all more obvious reasons.

Upon returning, my storm had still not ended. At the beginning of the term, I was invited to attend a meeting regarding National Science Week. Although the celebration is nationwide, this meeting was to plan our the celebration would take place in our region. Two venues were identified, the University of Northwest in Mafikeng, (some 2.5 hours drive from here), and Madikwe Resource Center where Liz and I were originally going to be placed for our service. The celebration was to involve busing learners to Madikwe where they could take part in practical experiments and demonstrations regarding Physics, Chemistry and Life Sciences. I quickly volunteered to by the person facilitating the Physics experiments and that was that.

From Monday to Friday this week, I attended National Science Week and was able to reach an estimated 800 students. Most of these were Grade 10, 11, and 12 but some ranged in other levels, even as low as Grade 4. Again, this involved some long hours and a 45 minute commute each way which as a Peace Corps Volunteer I was completely dependent on others for and sometimes the lack of organization and the late arrival of buses were extremely frustrating. Overall, the experience was great fun. I was originally only supposed to accommodate the older learners but the cheering and laughter coming from my room enticed the younger learners to participate as well.

The two biggest hits were my demonstration of inertia and the Van de Graff Generator which are great for audience participation. I also discussed waves using a spring and a ripple tank with some of the learners.

There is a University of Northwest extension program called the Science Foundation who are working at making the Madikwe Resource Center a campus for a program that helps people to gain the qualification they need to study science or engineering at the university level. These folks were responsible for running the event in Madikwe and it was very enjoyable to develop some relationships with them which I think will be fruitful in the future.

I will try and post some pictures on facebook in just a moment so stay tuned.

It has been a busy few weeks for us. We traveled east last week to help with training the newest group of incoming education volunteers in South Africa. In general I think it was a good, productive time. Preservice training is challenging no matter how you look at it, and it was very interesting to work with the training team in order to try and make things easier for and prepare the new trainees.

On last Friday we headed back to Pretoria and back out west, thanks to the kindness of many others who helped supply us with transport, and stayed the night in Rustenburg (our shopping town). The next day I participated in the Rustenburg Mountain Race, which is 25.5 K (or 15.8 miles) up some of the steepest mountains in this region and through the Kgaswane Nature Reserve. This was very exciting for me, as it was my first race ever! Tim also ran the 5K Fun Run with fellow volunteers and friends Anne and Gabi, who met up with us in town and who we got to spend some time with after the races back at Anne's site up in the Magalies mountains.

Overall I feel very proud to have ran the 25K. During grad school, I was always finding something more "important" to do (typically, presenting at conferences) than developing or exploring my running interests, so in the first place it just felt good to make a commitment to something I like and that is special to me. Second, I prepared very well for the race and finished respectably, at just over 3 hours on a course ranked 4/5 in difficulty! I faithfully followed a training program for the last 3 months and tried my best to follow all the advice I could get (mostly from the Runners World website) on how to go about successfully racing.

Running a race is really an incredible experience. I think the best advice I received was to take it slow at first! I found myself pretty must in last place (among some-1,000 runners) for the first few kilometers, which felt weird since I'm pretty fit and there are many walkers among the race participants (actually, the top speed walker beat me by a few minutes--which isn't so bad, considering how arduous speed walking is!). However I was passing people continuously throughout the race after I had warmed up. If 3 hours is a median race time (they say it is), then I passed probably half the other runners since I started out slow!

The other good advice I received was to break the race up into 3 separate races of about 5 miles each. The first 5 (which included the very steep mountain climb where most normal people had to eventually walk at least the last 300 or so meters) I focused on not tiring myself. Again, this was very hard since I had to walk up the final climb of the mountain, but I had to still pat myself on the back for not panting like many of those around me. So, no panting or straining for the first third of the race. The next 5, which began with an incredibly steep downward mountain pass, would be a race of strength and good form. Still sort of testing the waters, I focused on making sure nothing was hurting in a bad way and that my pace was steady, changing to maintain my workload as I meandered through the park. Then the last 5 miles were dedicated to just making it, doing it strong, and coping with the sorts of funny exhaustion feelings one starts to feel when they are pushing themselves beyond their comfort zone. Throughout all of this I was passing people, and after the uphill climb I only stopped once briefly to toilet. They say that at your first race you should aim only at completion as injuries on race day are not uncommon even when you're prepared well in advance, and considering the difficulty of the course my average pace (11 or so minutes per mile) was not at all bad, so I am considering the race a great success!

I was also elated at the finish line to find Tim with a bouquet of flowers in his hands and our friends who completed the 5K with him. Perhaps an even greater achievement than mine is that Tim has now gone 2 weeks without a cigarette! Even with all the stress of the past few weeks he has remained committed to not smoking, and I was also excited to hear that he noticed his greater strength since not smoking during his race. A full marathon and a 10K are definitely now in our futures!

Back at work this week we are now very busy with things to do! I can hardly walk, but I will be involved with SGB workshops the rest of the week, while Tim is working with 600 learners total this week for National Science Week. Our supervisor had surgery last week and is still in Pretoria, so we must also dog- and cat-sit for her starting tonight, which at least means we can watch satellite television and get our laundry done this week.

So things continue to get better and better for us here in South Africa, overall, and it is amazing to reflect that our service is nearly half completed! We are still talking about extending though, as we are so enjoying our long-term southern African adventure.

Our blogging has really come to a grinding halt as our lives have established a rhythm better matched to our temperaments and expectations. We are forgetting how to share with those across the world from us what the air we breath is like, just as it can be so difficult for the folks at home to relate their lives to us in an insightful, worthwhile way. (This is not meant as a critique. We just find that often people back home seem hesitant to share with us what is happening in their lives, as if there's no way their lives are as novel for us as ours are for them; there may be some truth in this, but it doesn't mean that as time goes by we don't want to know how your life has changed, and changes day to day.)

As we feel ourselves blending in, assimilating in some ways, with our surroundings, I find myself thinking differently about that thing, Africa. Of course, I feel like I am part of it now. And I'm glad.

Africa (and Asia) (and the Middle East) has always been fascinating to me. In college I became aware that I knew next to nothing about these places. I knew there were poor, dirty, starving children in these places, criminals, dysfunctional systems. But aren't those in every country? Is that all they have?

Of course, my knowledge of Africa came from the news media, which I've come to hold as a very poor shaper of opinions, or informer, or educator, especially about the details of things. The fact that the news is what teaches people about Africa came to slap us in the face, really, as we told people while bursting with excitement that we had been invited to serve in South Africa. Some people had been there, or knew people who went there, or knew someone from there, and those people were universally ecstatic with us. About half of the others could barely contain their shudders, however.

Here in Africa, Tim and I live half an hour from a mall on par in classiness, newness, and the repulsive I-am-my-things consumerism that America is known for, as any mall in America. We can easily obtain any sort of cuisine (okay, not easily, but if we go to a city, sure...), we can see old boring European stuff, which Americans seem to love, we can buy computers, and everyone has a cell phone...not to mention some of the greatest landscapes of the world...and elephants and giraffes sometimes wandering down the street! So why the shudder? Because we also live in a place where people litter, because people are (for no good reason) dying of various diseases, because a lot of kids don't really stand a chance...

Sometimes we scratch our heads about why we are here, when it seems so much like home, or like living on a Native American reservation or similar place. More often we scratch our heads when people ask us about race relations here, about crime and safety (yeah, yeah, they can be issues...just like in America...)...about when we got back to America, since we're on Facebook (we may not have electricity or running water all of the time, but at least we can blog about it!).

I have come to love this place, for what appear to be paradoxes to me based on where I come from (i.e., internet but no water...), as well as for what Africa represents conceptually to Americans, versus what it is. Does that make any sense? I guess my point is that I think it's healthy for people to have their assumptions challenged by facts, and I see that as part of my everyday life here, as well as my sworn duty as an honest human being when I talk to people from America. (Sometimes I feel like I'm in 1984 when I talk to people about Africa: "Wow it must be hot!"--"No, it's freezing."..."I heard race relations are really bad there"--"Um, you mean since Apartheid ended in 1994? What are you talking about?") No, Africa is not cheap! (At least not South Africa: I only use the term "Africa" to emphasize this notion of a homogeneous horrible poor black place). Nor is Africa black! Whites from all over came to inhabit much of southern Africa at around the same time that black people did. People are not doomed here, by HIV/AIDS, by a colonial or Apartheid legacy or by imperialism, or by destiny. Many people thrive here. Race relations are in many respects no worse (or better) than they are back home.

I'm pointing out mostly good things, and challenging mostly bad things, right? It's a hard life to share, but it is not a hard life to live. In fact, it's kind of the opposite of life in America, or at least what people think about America...that everyone in America is rich, etc.

So, that's all. Africa is awesome. Some day we dream of bringing you all here to see us, here or wherever else on the continent we may end up, or heck, Asia, or Latin America, whatever! I'm not sure I'm really even talking about Africa here, but rather using it is as an example. I don't know, because I haven't been everywhere (though I have been to some awesome places). But I love living in Africa.

Things here have been hectic for Liz and I. Thus I have been horribly remiss in updating the readers of this blog as to how things have been going. This school term, since our last vacation, I have been busy fulfilling the bureaucratic duties of a subject specialist. Also despite the fact that this area only receives an average rainfall in April of 0-1", it rained all month as if it were April in Illinois and they say more may still yet come. The roads are deteriorating and the days are getting shorter and enthusiasm has been in shorter supply.

Assessment in the South African education system is very different than assessment in the US. The policy is known as the Continuous Assessment Standard or CASS. This is a very poor name for the policy as it is misleading. In reality it means that a very small number or tests and assignments, called CASS pieces, have any bearing on the formal measure of a learner's success. It has this name in relation to the policy that proceeded it which those who've spent time in other educational structures outside the US may be familiar with. Previously, a learner's performance for the whole year was recorded by taking the results of a single year-end exam. After each term of the year, South African educators must have their CASS pieces moderated for quality assurance at various levels of the educational hierarchy. This policy has been a source of great challenge in my work. Because only one or two assessments must be recorded and completed in each term, there is very little to keep an educator from limiting themselves to only these assessments and not assigning homework or classwork which, in my experience, is the only way to learn subjects like mathematics or physical sciences. Performance on the exams is poor and the practical investigations are really abysmal. I continue to recommend an amount of homework which the learner's workbooks continue to not reflect.

The moderation itself is tedious and when I was asked to assist with moderating for natural sciences in grades 4-6 I was grieved by the lack of quality work that's going on at that level. I'm pretty far away from my own education at that level and seem to recall science being minimized and ignored in favor of mathematics and literacy during those times. I'm not sure it's the end of the world but would be more assured if I thought the quality of the literacy and mathematics lessons were better. Also, I wish they exposed the learner's to the scientific method at this stage as it is clear they are completely lost about it in high school. Maybe I'll try and organize a 6th grade science fair with those stencils and three sectioned cardboards.

Liz and I stayed in Pretoria this last week to attend yet another Peace Corps event with an acronym ending in the letter 'T'. Have have attended PST, (pre-service training); IST, (in-service training); LST, (life skills training); and this last week, GTOT or general training of trainers. That is, we sat in the board room at the Peace Corps office in Pretoria all week long and planned, discussed, and strategized for the success of the PST of the next intake of Peace Corps volunteers in South Africa, SA22. In attendance at this event were about a dozen Peace Corps volunteers mostly from our cohort and the LCFs, or language and cross-cultural facilitators, who will be the first South Africans the trainees will get to know and who will spend more time with the trainees than anyone else. I was pleased with the team spirit that developed and am optimistic for the PST ahead. In case anyone is wondering, still to come is our Peace Corps service is MST or mid-service training and COST, or close of service training.

I found myself reflecting, throughout the week, about my own PST and what that time was like. It's fair to say that at times I was frustrated. It's a strange thing to come to a foreign place and spend 8 weeks hanging out with a bunch of Americans without much personal freedom. Where I feel like training was challenging, I can see now that my expectations for how it should have been were inappropriate. Peace Corps volunteers are not all alike one to another. The strengths and liabilities they bring to the project are widely varied. Coming up with a training schedule that will give each one the entire skill set needed to produce sustainable change in the community they will eventually be placed in is an impossible task. However, Peace Corps, as an organization, not only in this post, realizes that training is a continual process that takes place every day in a volunteer's life. Maybe someone tried to communicate this message at our training, but if so, I didn't catch on. I realize this better after attending GTOT. Some topics which are blocked for a one hour session could be the subject of an entire semester's work. Not having an entire semester and having some trainees who have probably already taken that semester's work at a top-notch education college, our goal is to increase awareness of things that are likely to be useful in a volunteer's service and as each volunteer's service shapes and evolves, the mastery of those things can take place on the job. They don't say that Peace Corps is the hardest job you'll ever love for no reason.

I understand that invitation letters for this group are currently in the process of being sent and it seems possible even that some folks who are wondering what it will be like when they move to South Africa this July might be reading this. To any of those, I just want to say that we are excited to meet you and that we really want to do everything we can to help make your Peace Corps service successful.

The next topic for this blog is really quite sad. While I was away last week, I learned that Mogorosi Katane had passed away. Mr. Katane was the subject specialist for physical sciences at the office where Liz and I work. I had intended on working very closely with him throughout my service. Last November, he fell ill and when he had not recovered after the Christmas break, I was asked to fill his shoes until he recovered. I wish I had had more time to know him better because I very much enjoyed his company in the time before he left and found his understanding of this time and place to be wise and engaging. He was quick with a smile and generous with his laughter. I have missed him much over the last several months and am sad that I will not laugh with him more. He leaves behind a fourteen year old daughter who has now lost both parents to illness. I have not ever met her but I hear she is fiercely independent and very bright. She will rely heavily on her friends and family as well as friends of her father who all care for her and wish her better than she's had. Please keep her in your thoughts and prayers. They are much needed.

Life these days has been far too comical for me to not share. But where to begin?...

To put it nicely, I've been having mixed success in my primary work here. I haven't received much training and am not sure how to rely on my expertise or whatever resources I have at my disposal to get things done...or, I'm not sure how to get things done, or what is supposed to be gotten done, because no one has really told me. Things here aren't like they are back in the states, so I can't just do what I would do there, even if I knew what I would do there, because it's all different here.

I brought this up at our meeting with our Peace Corps supervisor last week. We made a great plan. The problem is, as those involved see it, that the three-person unit I'm a part of here is suffering from a lack of leadership, and so my taking the lead within it would be much appreciated. So that I can see how my unit might function more effectively, I will be sent (at my recommendation) to an equivalent regional office to see how the same unit functions in a place where it does in fact function. Then I will lead the unit, developing a calendar of training activities for school leaders and coordinating school visits during the off weeks. I thought this plan sounded perfect, except for the part where I learn to do and then do the work of 3 people, by myself. There are two other warm bodies, yes, but in the Peace Corps things can get really complicated really fast.

This leadership thing sounded good to me last week, because I was already making motions toward taking control of situations around me. According to my counterpart, our unit is responsible for putting on a workshop each year early in the year to train new School Management Teams: that's newly appointed principals, deputy principals, and heads of departments. Not only our unit must attend and lead the workshop, but the area manager and the circuit managers must also attend and participate. There was a lot of reluctance within my unit to get the ball rolling, and this sort of reluctance is something that causes me frustration with my not knowing how to get the ball rolling myself (who to call for arranging catering and accommodation, for instance).

But I know how to schedule a two-day workshop. I would simply ask everyone who must be involved which part they would like to present/facilitate, and when. My counterpart warned me that making a schedule was useless, and that only with patience could we prevail. I saw how we prevailed last term with patience (we did much less than we should have and could have done), so I proceeded nonetheless. It's the least of our job, and it isn't slave labor or anything.

First, I met with our area manager, who was enthusiastic to see me taking responsibility, and emphasized to me that all 3 circuit managers must be involved. This was the part my counterpart was worried about.

#1/3 said he would not participate. He said he was too busy, and I could tell Doc (our area manager) that he said so. Enough said.

#2/3, who comes from Quality Assurance, was eager, happy, and affirmative in his willingness to participate, but also outraged to hear that #1 would not participate. He told me that I must tell Doc, because it is not fair, and I promised him I would.

I ran into #3/3 on my way out, and joined him in his office...when #1 walked in behind us. As we discussed the situation of scheduling and what he would cover #1, who is a grown man, much older than my father, muttered hatefully in the background the name of my unit and other indecipherables bitterly. I sort of took this as a compliment in a way: #1 is not known for his professionalism and charm, so it wouldn't have been fair for him to not treat me the way he treats everyone else.

In the morning, I presented Doc (area manager) with a full program, also with time slots for myself and my counterparts and the Curriculum Coordinator, Palma. He was not pleased to hear that #1 claimed he could not participate. About an hour later, #1 enters my office: You know, yesterday, he was very stressed, and a lot was going on, he had x, y, and z problems...But he understands that he must be on the program, and he would like to be. I signed him up for 30 minutes of whatever he wanted to discuss that wasn't on my program list in the first place, and had a good chuckle about it with a few colleagues and Tim. I'm not integrated enough to take interpersonal issues personally at work here. And I was only doing my job and what the boss said.

This weekend was a long weekend, which I really needed, because the last two days of the workshop have been nothing short of comedy. I arrive bright and early yesterday at the office, around 7:30am (crazy, huh?), to do some last minute preparations. #3 rushes up to me: He cannot do his 3 hours of presentation as scheduled that afternoon. He had texted my counterpart over the weekend, but she did not know who the message was from (and did not choose to call or text back) so this was my first discovery. #1 is also suddenly too busy, and would prefer to present tomorrow. That's fine, I say...and smile. My counterpart and I were not planning to present the first day, but we were prepared enough to, so it would not be too disastrous.

We get the projector from the office, and head to the local school to have the meeting. It turns out we get the wrong projector, and it takes a bit of a hassle to set up, good thing I don't fear technology! As it was, my counterparts were back at the office for the other projector before I get it figured out.

Doc's slot is first. He presented on leadership generally, and it really made me think. In Peace Corps we talk about sustainable development, about guiding and facilitating, about being patient and flexible...but not about being a leader. Maybe we shouldn't be leaders, and in a way we have little to no authority unless someone gives it to us, but in another way, we must be leaders.

Doc said that being a leader is like being a good driver, in that you must drive the car in front of you and the car behind you to drive your own car properly. Of course, no one has the power to drive other people's cars, and in a country where the number #2 and #3 causes of death are driving in front of and driving behind taxis (guess what #1 is...), what we're talking about is really defensive driving. But it makes a lot of sense to me, here, now. I have people holding me back, and people trying to follow my lead, sometimes, who don't always follow it in a way I appreciate. Managing your position in relation to others is important to be successful.

It made me think of whether I saw myself as a leader or not. I didn't volunteer back in January to run my unit because my work here is supposed to empower others, not take power from them. We're supposed to help others flourish and facilitate their growth toward what they want. I guess now I can facilitate what Doc and our higher-ups want my unit to do, for the benefit of the children at our schools. It's clear on the other hand that I won't be stepping on anyone's toes here, either, because my counterparts have had the chance to lead and do not desire to take it. They will do what I ask them to.

I can think of times I have been a leader, but in America it seems that you either do your job well or you don't do it well. I can point to my taking positions within organizations, but I think in academia it isn't the case that promotion has to do with good management skills, in fact being a good researcher and doing whatever job you have well can lead to you becoming a manager. I don't know. Maybe you'd have to be here.

We proceeded with the day, mostly as planned. My part was about how school policies should be developed, and it was interrupted, which is a pet peeve of mine that it does not appear will go away during my Peace Corps service, however much more flexible and patience I become otherwise. I didn't think lunch was required, since we might end at 2 (and lunch here is normally at 1 or later). In any case my counterpart had decided last week to not have catered meals. But then she decided to have lunch, and because it was planned last minute, there were not take-away containers prepared, and the food would have gotten cold on open plates during my half-hour to forty-five minute presentation. I do not like for my presentations to be interrupted.

No big deal. But there would be no lunch for me. I was offered pilchards, which I had more than my share of during my homestay at Preservice Training, and declined, so lunch was rice and mince, and not even rice for me. I was offered forcibly a strawberry soda, but I would not accept. They were very puzzled I didn't want sugar in place of food. Then the secretary commented very enthusiastically that it looked like I had been gaining weight. (This is supposed to be complimentary--or maybe complimentary to Tim, I don't really know--but it didn't feel complimentary when I didn't get lunch, and didn't want lunch, and just wanted to finish my presentation.)

So that was yesterday. My husband went to town with Palma that day, and came home with sweets and made prawns for dinner.

This morning began in Palma's office, with my wondering where my counterpart was, who was to drive me to the school. Palma is very into virus protection, because it's a big thing here, so she was curious to check my flash drive to see if my counterpart's computer gives viruses, so she could plan in advance for her presentation. We had asked her to present at 10 since #3 had originally wanted to go last in the day, not sure how long he would take.

She discovered I had new viruses, and I got a short lecture about this while waiting for my counterpart. I wasn't very tolerant of the lecture. I love Palma a lot, and I plan to even blog about it, but I just wasn't joyed with learning about the intricacies of life and computer viruses this morning (I might have heard the lecture once before).

My counterpart arrives, and takes me to the school, where it is discovered physical education is going on in the auditorium we present in. At this point my counterpart confesses to me she had wanted to have this meeting in our Area Office hall, but our unit head had suggested the school...so that he could duck out early. He manages to do what he is explicitly told to, but he normally wanders around while the two of us underlings present. I made an agreement with my counterpart that we would no longer listen to what our manager says. (I told her about the new plans for me to lead, and she seems fine with it. In fact she always tries to tell me by way of personal excuse about her challenges in working in our unit. It was never a job she really wanted. When they closed down all the teachers colleges here in 2005 it was the only job she could get, and remains the only one since.)

We get our auditorium and technology going, but where is #2, who is first to present this morning? I had suggested a few times that someone might call him (I guess it should have been me, but are you seeing the issue with being 3 people here?), and finally we call him. He's sick! And he didn't think to call us. And #1 has a headache. So we've asked our new school management teams to come at 8:30 and aren't exactly a model of sound management, ourselves.

Palma had agreed to come at 10, but inexplicably #3, who had been unable to go on yesterday, is brought in by our quote-unquote unit manager. Fortunately for us, #3 is probably the best of the bunch. He had been the manager of my unit for years until last year, when he and my manager were exchanged (being a circuit manager is a more important job), and he had even co-wrote the manual we were planning our workshop out of.

My counterpart did an impromptu recap of yesterday, while #3 and I got him set up. He brought his computer with his presentation, but no flash drive. After we saw that his laptop did not work with the projector, I offered to use my flash drive, to transfer his files to my counterpart's laptop. As soon as I opened his files on the second computer, he mentioned that maybe the files had viruses. I told him that it was possible my counterpart's computer had viruses. He smiled, and said "No, my computer has viruses." Thanks for the heads up!

He did a great job nonetheless. And so did Palma. There was some missing information, but #3 suggested to me that the stuff that we missed (because #2 fell ill) was the stuff of a full 1- or 2-day workshop at this point in our unit's life cycle. Plans for the future.

There are a few more things I strive to find hysterical (like my unit manager stumbling in from the school parking lot at tea time today and demanding that some female authority figure attending our workshop serve him the tea and sandwiches right in front of him, while the majority of us just laughed at him...), but I think you get the picture. It's a day in the life. I have dreams of grandeur, and then the realization that if I don't kill anyone in my vehicle which is couched between two taxis (leadership metaphor) I will count myself lucky. Am I a leader? Was this a success? It is likely that the thing wouldn't have happened if it weren't for me, and 80% of it happened. New school leaders got to meet and discuss issues and ask questions with department officials. This should happen more. I would like to make it happen more.

I'll try not to give such drawn-out accounts in the future, but it's hard to talk about work without telling a very long contextualized story. Of course, I can tell Tim what happens each day. But this isn't a diary, and unless I give a lot of detail I'm not sure the real essence of the situation (confusion, frustration, mystery, incomprehensibility, etc.) can really come through. I'm glad these days happen, and I still think my life and my job are awesome. But what I got myself into and how I did it...I guess I just got the necessary bloodwork and urine tests last year, you know? I'm glad I'm becoming a leader and Tim is becoming one, it's a unique opportunity. But sometimes I wonder if I'm not actually on the moon.

We are still getting over the awesomeness of our vacation. It was so great to see Katie, as the last time I saw her was 4 years back when we drove across the country from Seattle to New York City in a minivan (I had one of those awesome drive-someone-else's-car gigs). It was also sweet to see Anne and Tim both not comprehend her strong Birminghamese while I caught 99% of it.

More could be said about the white water rafting, however. Firstly, we went out of our way the first day we arrived in the beautiful, hilly, laid-back Kingdom of Swaziland (that place rocks!) to go by the Swazi Trails office and inquire about stuff such as, is this rafting-without-experience deal legit? The lady there acted like I was so stupid I felt fairly confident when I left that it would not be, say, life threatening.

I guess it wasn't, but this was my first experience with adventure sports, and likely it will be my last. I'm not against a roller coaster, but I don't need to pay someone a bunch of money to scare the shit out of myself. I'm getting on in years enough that really bad traffic gets my heart racing, and yet I maintain enough youthful imagination to be terrified in the dark of monsters, etc.

Anyway, we show up, and drive south through the country, which was mystifying as part of the previous day's visit to Swazi Trails had also been about our eagerness to head north after the river rafting, but whatever. Like I said before, I got my heart going with following the rafting van through mountainous terrain in our wee Yaris, so I got a thrill before we got to the spot.

There was a brief presentation and then we all boarded rafts, with helmets and life vests, and played around in the water. Tim didn't seem particularly talented at steering, but it would be hard to tell in 5 minutes if he was, which was how long we had before the whole rafting experience began in earnest.

The fact that "white water rafting" is a kind of verb (okay, a noun referring to a verb, whatever), or maybe it's just those rose-tinted glasses I keep on wearing, inclined me to imagine us mostly on rafts doing things. This was not the case. Mostly we just sat on rocks while the instructors told us how to do something scary that we didn't know how to do, which was go down a rapid, and then all do it, raft by raft, waiting to see how many of us failed.

During the presentation I asked, "are we all going to fall out of our rafts?" because that seemed to be a theme of the instructor. He said it would be boring if we didn't, which was kind of a nice thing to say, when you think of it. However, after weeks of rain the water level was high and it seemed to be inevitable.

Tim and I were thrilled after the first couple capsized to make it down the first rapid. After that, it became apparent we hadn't mastered the basics, though, and after some leisurely rafting we split up with Anne and Katie. The other couple there mentioned that they do not call it a "divorce raft" for nothing, but it just seemed clear to us that Anne and Katie were getting on better with the experience, even if it was just psychological (I wanted to quit after seeing the very first raft capsize on the very first rapid).

However, the next rapid would get us all. They referred in the presentation to you being in a washing machine with 10-feet walls of water on each side of you, and how you want to remain in the fetal position but upright, with your feet downstream, once you capsize, should you not manage to hold on to the raft or oars. We all took that to heart, even though we had no idea at that time that the whole experience would revolve around capsizing. Anyway, I had to watch and know that Tim and Anne had capsized while Katie and I waited on and on for like half an hour. That was unnerving. Then it was our turn. According to Tim and Anne, who got to watch us capsize from close-up, we did the exact same thing: As we approached the rapid, the raft turned around so that we were backward. With no instructions provided on what to do in that situation, we just kinda sat there getting an adrenaline rush until we capsized, big time, and then were in the washing machine of 10-foot walls of waves, hoping to survive. Once we got out of the worst of it, choking down gallons of poopy brown river water, there were our instructors, yelling at us to swim, which none of us immediately thought to do, given the previous instructions.

Mere kilometers away from where our cars were, 6 out of 8 of us opted to walk the final, obviously horrific, rapid, which capsized the 2 clearly talented novices who had managed to safely navigate the first 2 novice-unfriendly rapids.

It was exciting, and slightly before and after you are afraid of drowning in the rapid you feel quite thrilled, but I didn't exactly anticipate that this was what white water rafting was about.

So it was a great trip, and I'm definitely glad we did it, although I can't imagine us doing it again! Now we are back at work, which is nice in many ways! Turns out we like where we live, our daily routines, our coworkers and counterparts and supervisors, and have lots of good ideas to keep on going. It's hard to complain...about more than Swazi Trails!

So Sunday afternoon we returned from a wonderful trip with our friends Anne and Katie. Overall the trip went very well. Katie's flight from England was canceled so instead of rushing to the airport last Saturday morning, we leisurely picked Anne up at her site and found ourselves with a day to kill. Also, we booked the cottage at Pretoria Backpackers because we would not be able to drive to our first destination after picking Katie up at the airport.

At first we thought we would use our day to go to the Sterkfontein Caves where some of the earliest hominid fossils were found. The road there according to the directions we found were treacherous however and we were eager to get to the duty-free shop in Pretoria before it closed so instead we went to Pretoria. We had a Lebanese food lunch and then checked into the cottage at Pretoria Backpackers.

I have only stayed in Pretoria one other time and so I had no idea what a treat this was going to be. 1322 Backpackers is cheaper but noisy and the accommodations are really barely adequate. We ran into a few other volunteers convalescing there at the Pretoria Backpackers and the dorm style accommodations there are greatly superior to those at 1322. However, we had booked 'the cottage'. If other Peace Corps volunteers are reading this, we must book this for future stays in Pretoria. The cottage is a two-story thatch-roof house with a double bed and 4 singles. The kitchen is self-contained, there's a living room area with TV and couches and beautiful African decor. For the price of R550/night, it was a pleasant surprise.

From there we went to the Museum of Anthropology and admired some lovely taxidermy. We picked up a graduate student named Jordan at the backpackers who came with us and after the museum took us out for coffee and conversation about work in development.

Then we went to the airport to pick up Katie. Her flight was on-time and she had no trouble with immigration or customs. For Anne, Liz and I, it was quite a nostalgic feeling to return to the very reception area where we first stepped foot into South Africa.

The next day we drove to St. Lucia and found a warm and bustling resort town. We checked into our hostel and found some food. Seafood was available and a delicious change of pace from our inland diet. Despite rumors, we saw no hippos roaming the streets but we did take a long walk down to the beach and dipped our toes into the Indian Ocean. On the way back we ran across some youthful fishermen who has spotted a puffadder snake. Anne shared that perhaps prodding it with a fishing rod was unwise as the puffadder can strike 3 times in a second.

The following morning we woke up early and headed to the Umfolozi Game Reserve to check out the animals. Umfolozi is a beautiful park that is credited with the survival of the hippopotamus. We didn't see any hippos there, but there were rhinos all over the place. At one junction, another game viewer told us that there was a lovely big bull elephant just down a gravel road. We turned down to see an elephant obscured by bushes and our path blocked by other guests in large pickup trucks. When they finally cleared we impatiently proceeded down the path. As soon as we turned a corner, the elephant was right there, staring down our tiny Toyota Yaris and flapping his ears. We quickly reversed. After calming we watched the bull who had now turned away from the road give himself a dirt bath. We also saw giraffes, zebras, impala, kudu and buffalo there before leaving around lunchtime. Three out of the big five seemed pretty good for our first outing.

The town of St. Lucia is situated between the Indian ocean and the estuary system that drains Lake St. Lucia to it. That evening we booked a boat tour on the outlet and were treated to lots and lots of hippos. We could hear them grunt, saw them open their mouths wide and even caught a glimpse of a newborn. Also, the bird viewing was quite nice with goliath heron and egyptian geese. We even saw a few nile crocodiles.

The Greater St. Lucia Wetlands Area, now known as the iSimangalo Wetlands Area, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site because it hosts 5 highly-developed ecosystems all within a few kilometers of the lake. Since our guidebook was published around the time of this change, we really didn't know what to expect but from asking around we knew that there was a nice beach at Cape Vidal. We had also heard stories about how the vegetated sand dunes there were rich with valuable minerals and metals but that mining had been blocked in order to conserve the space for a particular turtle that breeds there. As we headed there we were surprised to come up to a park gate and asked to pay admission but this was well worth it. We again saw very many animals. The kudu there are very stunning. We saw some hippos and a rare monkey species and enjoyed the breath-taking scenery. Anne was particularly delighted when we drove up to a sizable pile of elephant dung teeming with dung beetles. The beach was nice but our plan to get lunch there was short sighted as only a bag of potato chips was available at the camp store. We returned to town and were blessed with another buffalo sighting on our way out of the park. That evening we met up with Kristen, another Peace Corps volunteer, and her father and shared stories and drinks together.

From there we traveled north into the Kingdom of Swaziland. After checking in we went to a tourist, crafty, curio place for lunch and ogled at the wondrous cultural souveniers we would have if we were blessed with greater wealth and a more spacious rental car. The next day was to be the most adrenaline filled so we tried to head to bed early. If you're in Swaziland and you get the urge for adventure sport, I wouldn't recommend booking with the company Swazi Trails unless you are already somewhat experienced at what you're doing. Although Grade 2-4 white-water rafting seemed rather intimidating to us, the folks there assured us that we would be capable of doing it and that we would be entirely safe. I had pictured something in my head about 6 people in a raft after an hour-long movie or presentation just following the directions of some guy in the back of the boat who was really doing most of the work. The rafts we got were for just two people which meant that I had to learn to steer a boat and to take it down rapids all at once. I really stunk at this. The guides who rode alongside us weren't as patient or helpful as I could have used and I found their instructions often unhelpful. It was like they would say, "Do it correctly" as if I was sucking at it on purpose. In any case, we all survived with only a few minor bruises. We all got through a few rapids on our own, but skipped the last one in favor of a walk beside it. My other criticism of Swazi Trails besides inadequate guides was that they gave us poor advice at how to get to Kruger National Park.

The time was pressured. We were staying in the park but the park gate closes at a certain time as do the gates to the camps. They gave us directions that would get us into the park before closing but not to our camp. We didn't realize all of this. As we entered back into South Africa and began approaching the camp, we called the gate that told us that although we'd make it into the park in time, there'd be no way for us to reach our camp and that we must go around the park to another gate and arrange for a ranger to escort us to our camp. The thing is, is that Kruger National Park is larger than New Jersey and this was an additional 3 hours of driving after we had already driven a long ways. In any case, after getting lost for 20 minutes on our way around we made it to Kruger safe and sound and early enough to get dinner at the restaurant and a well-earned sleep.

I know I just said this but Kruger is HUGE!!! In our two day stay we did about 13 or 14 hours of driving around looking for animals and saw a tiny fraction of the place. The scenery was beautiful and we did catch a lot of animal sightings although they didn't occur as frequently as they often do when we visit Pilanesberg close to where we live. The last day, we ended up getting the camp gate just two minutes before it closed. In the late evening we saw all the best viewing of the whole day. We found a pack of hyena with two pups emerging from their burrow just beside the road. There were two elephants browsing on leaves and when I looked behind I saw several impala cross the road only to quickly run back. I suspect that there was a predator of some kind nearby. Continuing on we saw a whole herd of buffalo, one of which was grazing right next to the road. I took a photo and as the flash went off, the buffalo raised its head and started staring me down. The African Buffalo is a notoriously dangerous and ill-tempered animal. Now there was one just three feet from me looking none too happy. It was a great photo opportunity but my survival instinct prevailed as I told Katie, who was driving to "GO GO GO!!!" The second night we had booked a sunset drive with the park rangers. The pinnacle of this was coming across several lions in the road. They were really very majestic and amazing. We had seen lions early in the day but the traffic jam caused by the large guided tour vehicles that make a killing off of tourists make the sighting brief and obscured. Apparently we had missed out on seeing the lions mate. This evening we had time to see them walk around, to see the cubs play with each other and to hear them call to one another. A very nice finish to a great vacation.

I'm sure I've neglected other interesting stories and facts, but I am already back into the thick of it at work, and my Peace Corps report is due. Please check out or pictures and please book your flight to South Africa!

So on Saturday we leave on a whole new roadtrip and in June we are going to some of the highest density areas for wildlife, so many more photos are to come soon. In preparation, I have spent time in the last week with the chore of tagging and organizing many of our existing photographs. Thus I have some sorted by what animals are in them. I didn't get to cats and birds before it became cost prohibitive, but I did get Antelopes, Giraffes, Zebras, Elephants, and Warthogs done. These photos are shared on Picasa with the advantage that they are uploaded in full resolution. When you browse the albums, the resolution is reduced as on facebook, but you can click the download button above the photos to get them in full resolution. Another neat bonus is that the photos are tagged on a little google map in the lower right hand corner so you can see where we were when we took the photo! Many are at 1200x1600 pixels which should make a nice 5x7 but not an 8x10. So without any further ado, here it is, Timothy's Public Gallery.

Ciaociao

Tspoon

Via an airplane silly!

No. As the Easter holiday rolls around, I am reminded of how I spent Easter two years ago. A friend of mine from Brazil had invited me to share dinner at a gathering of Brazilians living in East Central Illinois. She had been encouraging me to travel abroad. I was growing weary of my life in Champaign. A recognized member of the youthful nightlife composed of mostly of service industry workers and graduate students, I found many of the friendships to be superficial, needlessly dramatic, and lacking in charm or variety. I remember her telling me, "Tim, people in other places are not like people here." The event was really quite nice. Being the only American present, I sat quietly smiling, eating the delicious food, and enjoying Caipirinhas and Gaurana soda while the others discussed the state of Brazil in Portuguese. After dinner, music was on the bill and we sat around singing songs. Many people had brought instruments including homemade percussion instruments. Everyone was lovely and I was delighted to learn they knew all the same Bob Marley songs I knew.

During dinner, a guest seated next to me realized how excluded I was from the conversation and tried to do a little translating on my behalf. The only part I remember is the comparison they made between Brazil and the US. They said, "Brazil is shit, but then again, Brazil is wonderful. The US is wonderful, but then again, the US is shit," or maybe it was the other way around. I thought there was wisdom in that.

I don't really know how life in Brazil compares to life in South Africa, but I have a feeling there are some commonalities. Both countries have very developed areas with educated, worldly populations and both countries have undeveloped areas with poor populations that might never make if further than the nearest shopping town. Certainly, I can say with confidence that South Africa is shit, but then again, South Africa is wonderful.

I'm so happy for the things that have taken place in my life in those two years. Not long after that dinner Liz and I bonded over our shared cynicism about the social benefits of being part of the communitie's youthful night life. Soon we were madly in love with each other and making plans to get out of Dodge. I remember casually mentioning the Peace Corps one evening over a mexican food dinner and wondering if it just wasn't some under handed branch of colonial aim. Before I knew it, Liz, who was having difficulty procuring the academic job everyone had been so sure she would get, was bringing up the Peace Corps as a way we could continue to cohabitate and have a delightful respite from the folly of the academic world. We met with a recruiter who insured us that we would not be a bunch of kids with Peace Corps t-shirts and floppy hats working in a white-washed building with an American flag painted on the side somewhere in the middle of some jungle teaching people how to use condoms. To do this together, we'd have to be married. We consulted the friends and family who all responded positively and in early October 2009 we flew off to Hawaii for a romantic wedding weekend.

A year ago we were finishing up our Ph.D.s and had been accepted into the Peace Corps but still didn't know where we were going. Sarah Palin was still a recent memory and when we would respond "Africa" to the question of where we were going people would respond, "You know that's not a country, right?" By May, our dissertations were defended and we knew we were going to South Africa. The last nitty-gritty details of the clearance were coming through. In July, we packed up the Ford Focus which wasn't sure it wanted to keep running, bid farewell to the cat, (who last I heard really enjoys living with other cats now), and went on a roadtrip to see the country and a family one last time before shipping out.

I don't know that we're making any progress at all in shaping or reforming the education system of South Africa or even with the teachers and principals that we interact with. However, we are learning about the troubles and learning about living on little means in a foreign land. The problems are many, stemming from poverty, internalized oppression and old habits of coping. The education system is burning, crime is high, women have little recourse if they've been raped or abused, and HIV/AIDS is beyond a crisis level. Like I said, South Africa is shit.

We saved up money so that we would be able to travel when we were here. The South African education system shuts down 4 times a year and many other organizations and companies also take a break at the same time. Gotta love a country with so much vacation time built in. It's now fall break and we are off to see more of this beautiful country and more of its varied cultures. I'm really enjoying getting to know my way around a camera and learning to name all the antelopes and birds. Wildlife viewing is so amazing here. I would never have dreamt that I'd have a dozen photos of giraffes and even more of elephants or that one African country could host such a variety of landscapes and ecosystems. Like I said, South Africa is wonderful!

Oh, and Liz's dad has sold the aforementioned Ford Focus on our behalf! Yay! It was my first car and I took it many places but I am happy that it's now somebody else's problem.

Just a quick word--

Check out the pics links Tim has reorganized on the right. We're posting less pictures as time goes on, but the ones we are posting are pretty neat! We got to go to Pilanesberg on Sunday with Anne and Palma, and we saw giraffe, zebra, kudu, and a rhino cross the road!

Also, I saw something written about Peace Corps yesterday that I actually liked! Check out The Doorknob by Peter Hessler. Do we know how to say "doorknob" in Setswana? No, but then again door "knobs," as opposed to "handles," are not too common here--or in much of the developing world, I assume (and check out the fourth comment down from a native Chinese speaker who doesn't know how to say "doorknob" in his language). So why Kristof wants us to know how to say "doorknob" in the developing world, I'm not quite sure. Probably he didn't think that one through.

But don't ask me about "handle," either. :P

Neither term would be on my list for tolerable/getting-by fluency, however. I remember being able to carry on quite in-depth conversations in Mexico in Spanish, and I can't say I ever knew either term in Spanish. So I think Kristof has really conflated language knowledge with cultural and "country" knowledge, here...Or else, imposed a monolinguistic view, as if many people in multilingual settings know the word in more than one language. But these are the least of my issues with Kristof's view here, I agree with Hessler on all the issues raised generally.

Our blog is becoming less and less active and I feel like this reflects some settling into routine for us. We now have day to day responsibilities and tasks which leave us wondering why we are here and whether or not the Kgetleng River APO will be any better for our having been here or if the actual work of the Peace Corps is just there to support our ambitions to see more and more of the world in the amble leave time Peace Corps gives us.

One month from today we leave for a one-week trip that will take us to the Greater St. Lucia Wetlands, some more world renowned game reserves, white-water rafting in Swaziland, and the very famous Kruger National Park. I would fill in more details but I'm sure the trip will produce nice anecdotes and photographs that will be more entertaining. We will be traveling with one of our fellow volunteers, Anne, and a friend of Liz's from her time at Cambridge who will be our first overseas visitor.

In mid-June, my Mom will come to visit. I am very proud of her for braving World Cup inflated fares, anti-fraud paranoid credit cards and fear-mongering travel nurses all months before she even steps foot on the continent. I am super excited for this trip. Anne will also be joining us for this trip. This should be a truly epic overland adventure.

The first destination is Nata, Botswana. Nearby, is the Makgadikgadi Pan which is the remnant of an inland sea.

We will travel to the Okavango Delta in northwestern Botswana which I first learned about watching Episode 1 of the "Planet Earth" television series. Of all the places that David Attenburough and his BBC produced nature documentaries has shown me on this planet, the Okavango Delta struck me as really an amazing place to go. For those of you unlucky enough to have not seen this great series, the Okavango Delta is an inland delta that floods on a yearly basis after the wet season in Angola creating a boon for wildlife which travels from hundreds of kilometers around to enjoy a season of plenty. We will take a motor boat to an island deep in the delta and from there we can tour on foot or in a traditional dugout canoe called a mokoro. Based in the city of Maun we will also hire a tour in the Chobe National Park, known for some of the highest concentrations of elephants anywhere in the world.

From there we will travel to Victoria Falls on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe. This was specially requested as something my Mom wanted to see. We had every intention of making this destination a part of our time here and are glad to share it with my Mom.

Our two-week tour will end as we travel south to the Great Zimbabwean Ruins. After that we will rest for at day at Bela-Bela near where we had our Pre-Service Training and from there we will say farewell to Mom at the Jo'burg airport.

Will all this to look forward to, it's hard to be excited about traveling to far flung deep rural villages to sit with a Physical Sciences teacher for 40 minutes on a regular basis, but things are now clearing up in my schedule that I should be able to start doing more support with educators and learners.

After June we won't get much a break at all until the following Christmas when we are thinking we will try and tackle getting to Namibia for the Etosha Game Reserve and the Skeleton Coast.

I've already decided that I need a new camera. The one I have is good and I hope the readers of this blog have enjoyed the pictures Liz and I have produced. I assure you though, that they represent a small fraction of the flora and fauna we've witnessed through binoculars. Even animals that are only 100 ft or so away are sometimes hard to photograph and I find myself lamenting the number of pictures I have where the auto-focus has found the grass by the side of the road and the rhino is a greyish-brownish blob in the background.

Some may think that we are treating our Peace Corps service as an extended vacation. I assure you all that this is not at all true. We do work everyday and struggle with trying to live off our living allowance which is meager. But we try to focus on the positive because we do feel really lucky to be in a place so rich with untamed wildnerness. Traveling is a major part of the Peace Corps and they do what they can to encourage it amongst the volunteers. They want us to return with stories of what Southern Africa is like in a way that Nat. Geo. can't really communicate.

So I looked at our Google Analytics report for this blog and realized that I haven't posted in nearly a month. Why? For one, Liz writes very nice blogs and I don't often have much to add to what she says. Mostly though, I have fallen into a bit of that fatigued anti-social lifestyle that comes from having a full-time job and not enough friends.

Subject Advisory

I have been acting as the Physical Sciences subject adviser for our Area Office. This job is infantry level of education administration. If the subject adviser hasn't written of it in a report or two, it hasn't happened.

So far I have reached 10 of my 14 schools. The very first school I visited had a brand new physical sciences teacher who promptly left. I have not been back. I would have reached more, but I had to attend a Peace Corps training. Transport to the schools is planned in advance, but the best-laid plans do not often come to fruition. Each morning we must see if transport is available to go to schools, how many people need to go to which ones and how many seats are available in the available vehicles.

When we arrive at a school, we first briefly report to the Principal. At least that's the idea. One thing that surprises me is how often we arrive and the principal isn't present. Often the admin or someone else on the school management team says something about how he just stepped out and will return shortly, but I've never witnessed this return. Then it is my turn to meet with the physical sciences teacher. I haven't really figured out how often I'm taking an educator out of the classroom. Sometimes it's clear we've arrived during the lunch break and sometimes I'm sure I'm catching the teacher in a free period, but other times I'm sure that when I'm supporting the educator, the learners aren't learning. What can I do?

I have each educator fill out a survey I've developed that gives me an idea of their training and experience and what kind of workload they are currently dealing with. Then I ask questions about how things are going for them this year. It took me a few visits to figure out what to ask and what to look for. We are supposed to monitor a teacher's file, but I found this to be largely uninformative. These files are required of teachers but the strength of the file seems entirely uncorrelated to the strength of the teacher. What I find much more informative is to see the learner's workbooks. From those I can tell what has been taught and at what pace and I can see what classwork/homework the learners have been doing. Typically learners are not doing enough homework for my tastes, maybe an hour a week. Many of the less-experienced teachers want to discuss strategies and methodologies and Physics Experiments that can be done with the dust-covered equipment piled up in some room they've only been in once or twice. This last thing was a big part of my mission before I took on the responsibilities to the still absent subject adviser and I hope to address it in the next month.

All of the schools are considered "trapped" or "underperforming" in physical sciences, that is last year fewer than 70% of their 12th grade learners passed the national exam on physical sciences. The typical intervention for this problem is to increase the contact time with the learners. The minimum national requirement for Physical Sciences is 4 hours a week. In reality, most schools are offering more than that by holding classes before and/or after regular school hours as well as on the weekends, particularly for Grade 12 learners. But if there's only evidence of 1 hour a week of homework than it seems clear to me why this intervention hasn't been succeeding. I am asking the educators to produce evidence of 4 hours a week of homework in each grade.

There is a tendency to focus on the Grade 12 learners at the expense of those in Grades 10 and 11. The curriculum is set up so that the topics in each year are more or less the same but the depth and complexity of the topics increases. I believe that this is a good design as it is how I learned physics. However, I fear that this gives license to ignoring the Grade 10 and 11s. But this strategy is doomed to failure. The reason the depth of the material is short in Grade 10 is so that the learner can become accustomed to the practice of problem solving with material that is easy to grasp. By focusing on the Grade 12s, we must teach them problem solving and a complexity of material that actually exceeds the curriculum in many US schools.

As many of the worst educators have not been fired, but instead transferred to middle or primary schools, I have many new educators to work with. Many of them come from Zimbabwe or Nigeria, two countries that export a lot of labor to South Africa. The xenophobic tendencies of this trend are the subject of another blog altogether, but in brief many labor sectors rely on paying wages below the standard of living that South Africans expect, (or can receive on social welfare), and Zimbabweans are ready and willing. In education however, it seems to be that Zimbabweans are getting jobs because of a lack of qualified South Africans. I was speaking with a Nigerian educator who was very surprised at the lack of inquisitiveness in his learners. Having had a temporary job at a private all-white school in the city, he sees a stark difference between the two. This difference speaks to the true reason why South Africa is failing the Physical Sciences exam nationwide.

In the apartheid era, the education of blacks was designed to extinguish inquisitiveness and was remarkably effective as such. When one population suppresses another, it does them no favors to encourage that population to ask tough questions. So while the curriculum has changed, the educators, the parents, and thus tragically, the learners have not. I'm happy for these imported educators who will encourage curiosity and observation amongst their learners. For many of them, it would be difficult for them to do damage to the legacy of the previous results. One such educator arrived at a school where last year 0 of 8 learners passed. He hopes to do well but lacks confidence. When I told him that there wasn't anyway for the results to go down, he smiled. Many of these educators are living in the village the school is in, which isn't too common among South African educators. They do not speak the language of the village and they do not have many distractions. Sounds rough to me, but hopefully it will produce results.

Me and my international team are all well-versed in the content and have some experience in the classroom. We may not be too familiar with Outcomes-Based Education or the National Curriculum Statement, but Liz tells me that these sorts or education strategies largely serve to distract from the fact that schools in affluent areas that are not wanting for resources perform better than ones in poor or rural areas. So the teacher files may not be appropriately organized and might even lack some of the essential elements, but we are going to do our level best to impart something to these learners that has been unavailable to them before our arrival in South Africa.

Other thoughts

This upcoming week, I am going to Pretoria to become a member of the Volunteer Support Network. This committee matches up somewhat experienced volunteers (like me :p), with a group of volunteers recently arrived to South Africa. This provides someway to support volunteers outside of official capacity. That is to provide someone to whom volunteers can consult without fear of disciplinary action. I think I only have to report if it sounds like someone is going to hurt themselves or others. I am excited to meet members of the newly arrived group of volunteers but sad to be away from Liz for a week.Liz is doing well and has been having regular work to do at the Area Office to support school governance. This includes work with School Management Teams, Representative Councils of Learners (Student Body), and School Governing Bodies (PTA). She has also been out to monitor the school management teams of a few schools. Earlier this week we even got to ride in the mini-bus together. She prefers this to teaching learners and has yielded her commitments at the local high school.We celebrated Valentine's Day by having dinner with a coworker of ours and her husband in the township located next to our small little town. It was nice to see the weekend goings on in this remnant of segregation. There is a much richer culture and more vibrant community there than in the town. Dinner was good and the tour was delightful.

...you want to hear about how hard living in South Africa is, how we do not earn any money, and slave away, against the odds, how we do not even have any friends where we are. These things are largely true, of course. We have been working mostly 8-5 in 2010, and as we get closer to our colleagues here we realize just how insignificant our monthly living allowances are compared to their salaries (just the other day, one man described an amount 3x our living allowance as his weekly pocket change). And we're hardly faring better than we were upon moving here, in terms of developing any sort of social life like that we had in America.

But as time goes on and we find our place here we're realizing just what a wonderful opportunity we have been given, as United States citizens or simply as people from the rich "first" world: how much it benefits us in a personal and emotional sort of way to live in South Africa in 2010, and do whatever we can do to make the world a brighter place.

Sounds weird, huh? I don't think I'm known stateside for being the most idealistic and hopeful person! But now I'm starting to see that frustration and indignation that was part of my moral life in the states as a possible side effect of living in America (not that I want to hate on America, but you know...). One of the first things that struck me about life in the developing "second" world the first time I got out (I was in east Turkey and Egypt) was that money has little to do with happiness. I was sad about a lack of funds in the United States pretty much throughout my life there. But I realized that there is, in a sense, wealth in family and cultural tradition, that goes beyond money. I don't want to be too romantic here about poverty, because I'm pretty sure that material inequalities are the largest source of the world's problems with violence, disease, etc. Poverty is not awesome. But what I want to say is that one doesn't need to define themselves by their money (which is definitely easier said than done in my case!), and certainly there's more miserable people in the modern, convenient life of the North who slave away unnecessarily than there are miserable carpet shopkeepers, drinking tea and chatting up tourists for English-language tips.

Maybe I'm overreaching here. This was supposed to be about me. One year ago in America I was so worried about money (which is not to say that I'm not here...), I was terrified of being fired. That seems like something a lot of people in America worry about these days. I was worried about bills and not bouncing my checking account when I got Chinese take out, which was a necessity since I didn't live near a grocery store and/or had no time to travel to one or cook my own meals. My worries about being fired led to me putting a lot of time into work, which then couldn't be used to sleep well, eat well, and, I think even more importantly, smile at people who aren't smiling at me first, ask someone how they are doing without waiting for my turn to speak, things like that.

This is not a metaphor, this smiling stuff. I am simply able to be a kind person here. Here I'm better at corresponding with people, and giving them the benefit of the doubt, because I'm not too busy fussing to have the time to relate to others. I think this is the psychosis of modern living. Time doesn't necessarily move more slowly here, but we have more time to be thoughtful. That's part of our job description with the Peace Corps, as we understand it. And it's a part of the job that makes me very happy over 6 months in (1/4 of our service! Can you believe it?), to engage in what they market as "the hardest job you'll ever love."

I don't know if any of that made any sense. It's hard to explain to someone who isn't in your position what your position is like.

I don't see us returning to first-world academia any time soon. In fact, I think we're going to continue on with the development journey after the Peace Corps, though of course in the future we will need to earn many more dollars in order to start paying off our loans. Every day is an intellectual challenge for us in a way that writing our dissertations was not. Development work is quite a puzzle; in fact it's the very puzzle that got me into academia in the first place (like, "get me out of the real world!"), although here I am now, back on the outside. Development work is more interesting, significant, and fascinating than is teaching college graduates abstract concepts and writing essays to my colleagues...at least that's how I feel about it, at this point.

I just like being able to smile at people when I see them, and ask them how they are doing, and not take it personally if they do not respond in kind. Everyday. It makes me think something was wrong with my life in the states, which might very well be the case. In any case, shouldn't it be in a person's own power to not be effected negatively by problems, and be happy and kind? I think so, but I think working 40 hours per week in the high-stakes environment of the professional and/or academic world makes it hard to do all the things you must do, like get good sleep and eat good food, to focus on being awesome. In fact, it can make you feel selfish or antisocial to sleep and eat well in the states (lest you're trying to be some uppity health nut, or something!), and feeling guilty or selfish or antisocial also makes it hard to crack smiles on a regular basis.

So, South Africa is the best, America is the worst? No....In truth, luck is just on our side here, it seems. We're doing work that is related to our past experiences, which is itself a luxury not all Peace Corp volunteers can expect, unfortunately. We're also lucky, lucky ducks to have been born in a country that allowed us the opportunities it does, including the opportunity to lend a hand overseas, however we see fit. It's truly a luxury to be born in America, I realize every day we visit schools, where the principals are praying their roofs will be blown off so that the state might fund some rebuilding project. (On the other hand, sometimes I wonder why we aren't in New Orleans, the South, or even Florence, Oregon, where some of the same problems plague communities and schools with little help from the government.)

Life has just been an exhale lately, which feels great after years of trying to suck it up, quickly gulp down the challenges, and keep on working to be a bigger and more impressive...worker? We went to South Africa to keep learning, and find something to do that actually helps someone else in some way. I was at first quite dubious about this possibility, and I still find myself wondering on a regular basis whether I'm helping anyone out as much as I am gaining from this experience. But in any case, the work feels great! Smiling at people makes their lives better, and not just momentarily. Our experience here has been overwhelmingly positive so far. Maybe I'll try and promote some other sort of lifestyle than that of the verbose, over-educated expat in another (shorter) blog post. But for now I'll just stay sickeningly overjoyed with our life.

So, we've been back from vacation for a week and a half and I have been trying to formulate this post ever since then. My mind has been racing with a quest to better understand this place I live in.

I am really trying to understand the clash of cultures that make up the rainbow nation. Particularly difficult to understand are the Afrikaaners, the descendants of the non-anglo european settlers to South Africa. We have all heard of the horrors of the Apartheid Era run by the Afrikaans speaking National Party Government. Fewer of us have heard of the horrors endured by these people during the Anglo-Boer Wars. Fewer still have understood the hardship and harsh living conditions endured by the Voortrekkers escaping British rule. After our vacation throughout South Africa, I cannot imagine traveling from the Cape to the areas that became known as the Orange Free State and the Transvaal in an Ox Wagon. I wish I knew more about the Great Trek. I know it started with the British behind them, the Zulus ahead, the Ocean to the right and inpenetrable mountain ranges to the left. Once they got over the mountains vast reaches of the Karoo Desert. You can see maps of the different parties' routes and a curved line with an arrow on the end of it, just doesn't do justice to the meaning of their journey. If you've ever played Oregon Trail in elementary school computer lab, you get closer to the idea, only in Africa there were Elephants and Leopards and such to contend with. Overall, the World has judged them as monsters, but I think the truth is more complex.

My own roots in the Americas are several generations shallower than the roots of many European Africans today. They can no more easily go back to Holland than I could go back to Scotland. The story here is similar to the story in the US. First, gain independence from the British. Then, fence the indigenous people off onto non-arable land and make sure you have bigger guns than they do. After you govern the place they used to call home, make being indigenous a criminal offense for all practical purposes, give them limited autonomy and throw them an infrastructural bone from time to time. Education and religion can help keep them quiet. Once achieved, the resources of the land are yours to pillage and the local savages need not be feared or even given a minimum standard of living. History will condone you because you get to write the history book.

Today, South Africa is about 15% white. The African National Congress has no viable opposition to its political authority and white citizens who have not fled the country are quick to bemoan the decline in the social services they enjoyed under the Apartheid Era. As far as the black population, it is sad to say that very many are still living in tin shacks without access to running water, quality healthcare or education. A black man today may be indeed free, under the law, to live where he chooses, but in reality most of them still live in squalor just outside of a town where white people are living in relative luxury. I am struggling to understand why. I am convinced with time and good faith things will improve. I am sad to say that too many white folks can easily be heard to say, "I'm not a racist, but...(insert racist diatribe about the inability of black people to govern themselves)." Even more tragically, too many black folks make the same diatribe. "Just look at Africa..."

Of course there are obvious reasons why Africa struggles to govern itself, mostly having to do with its history of colonization and the continued manipulation of the the developed world of its economies and resources. i.e. "Don't use that oil you're sitting on to develop cheaply, we stole those oil well fair and square. Besides, don't you know that fossil fuels cause global warming? We here at Shell will throw some money into your government and social infrastructure. Did we mention that we'd like to sell you some solar cells at 3-4 times the cost of using your own oil."

In the end, I feel like it's too easy to demonize the Afrikaaners, and in having grace for them it's too easy to demonize the British. It's too easy to point fingers in general. Mandela was criticized for appeasing the white population. Mugabe is criticized for chasing them out of Zimbabwe. Zuma is criticized because the ministers of his government ride around in luxury vehicles. South Africa will never securely host a World Cup in soccer because a Congolese rebel group accidentally attacked Togolese soccer players in an oil-rich Angolan annexation of the DRC. Are you confused? I am. The lesson is summed up in Haile Selassie I's 1963 speech to the UN, immortalized by Bob Marley in his song War.

That until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned; That until there are no longer first-class and second-class citizens of any nation; That until the color of a man's skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes; That until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race; That until that day, the dream of lasting peace and world citizenship and the rule of international morality will remain but a fleeting illusion, to be pursued but never attained;

I wanted to talk education though.

My original goal here was to work very closely with the Physical Sciences curriculum specialist at the area office where we are working. Sadly, he has suffered from a stroke and the time of his return to work is unknown. In the meantime, I am acting as the curriculum specialist. This job is to support and monitor educators teaching Physical Sciences in Grades 10-12 and together with the Life Sciences specialist to support educators teaching Natural Sciences in Grades 4-9. The priority is definitely to the high schools. The results for last years National Grade 12 matriculation exam show only 27% percent of physical science learners in the 14 schools I support, passing the physical science paper. The overwhelming majority of those who did pass, passed at the lowest levels. Not one of the 240 of these learners scored over 70% on the exam. This subject did the worst.

The needs analysis is the next step for me in the upcoming weeks. I suspect that many of the teachers are not really qualified to be teaching physical sciences. With the new democratic South Africa came a new curriculum, but NOT new teachers. The old curriculum was heavy in rote memorization and light in creative problem solving. I think this legacy lives on. Other symptoms I've observed that might contribute include the fact that Maths skills are not surpassing any expectation either, learners are not required to take Physical Sciences, but many are pressured to because of a cultural perception that Maths and Sciences are some magical ticket to prosperity, and lastly Physical Sciences is known as the "killer subject" and if you believe something is going to be insurmountable, you're probably right.

As for me, I'm stuggling with the fact that Physical Sciences is Physics and Chemistry. Chemistry is not a subject that I am highly trained in. I'm also struggling with the fact that 8-5 jobs are not what I'm used to. I don't have any experience with this kind of work, only with work related to it. However, for these self-doubts there are things to be pleased with. My curriculum specialists colleagues and supervisor are a great bunch of folks that are grateful for my presence here in their time of need and willing to support me. With the results being so poor, there is bound to be low-hanging fruit that I can address quickly. In some of the schools, the results were so poor that I cannot imagine them being worse with no teacher at all, (0 passes/8 learners, 6 passes/74 learners). In these situations, any improvement will be a relief to all involved and I can't imagine I could do any harm.

Oh, and I just got a text message from Liz saying she is successfully gone blond again. :)

Hands down, our second road trip of the Summer of 2009 (nearly 6 mos after the first one) was incredible, one of those "once in a lifetime" adventures.

As indicated previously (here), we started off over two weeks ago driving south through the Northwest and Free State provinces, which bore disturbing resemblances to the American Midwest (mostly farmlands), ending our first day in Bloemfontein. This was Tim's first time driving on the left, and my second (after a brief, exhilarating drive in the UK to pick up my parents from London to Cambridge). We got a brand new (only 1,000-some k) Toyota Corolla automatic, so it was a cozy, well a/c'd ride, but it did take some practice for us to stay in the center of the lane, get in on the right side of the vehicle, and indicate turns rather than unnecessarily turn on the windshield wipers. A small college town, Bloemfontein was chosen as a good midpoint in our journey, ensuring that we wouldn't be doing too much driving on the first day, and we were happy to arrive there ahead of schedule, with plenty of time to eat Cuban (lunch) and Chinese (dinner) food, and sleep after a restless night the night before.

The next day the landscape changed dramatically as we entered a part of the Karoo desert known for its beauty, in the Eastern Cape. Cacti replaced bush as we entered a windswept landscape of mountain plateaus that once again reminded us of home, but this time, of the journey to the American West. Early in the day we left the interstate highway for gravel road to see what Tim describes metaphorically as the "largest ball of twine," a small artsy town called Nieu Bethesda, which has a weird arty owl house, and a brewery with tasty beer and goat cheese. From there we were an hr from Graaff-Reinet, SA's fourth oldest town and home of the Valley of Desolation, which is kind of like the SA Grand Canyon.

There we went to two game parks. The first was en route to the Valley of Desolation, and we saw some antelope there, but not a ton. The next day we had better luck at the Mountain Zebra National Park, named after the rare mammal which differs from the more common zebra, in that it has no in-between shadow stripes on its coat and thus has a more distinct tummy and rear-end than its better camouflaged cousin. The zebras, as well as wildebeest, hartebeest, tons of springbok, and small mammals, live high on top of the mountains of the park, so when we weren't spotting game we were gazing breathlessly at the world all below us from high mountain peaks. The animals at the park were unafraid of us, so we got great views of their fur and faces as we drove right up to them.

On Christmas day we had our best game viewing of all, however, at Addo Elephant Park, further south near the coast. Where to begin? We saw hundreds of elephants, with Tim counting fifty at one dam (lake). Among such large groups of sunbathers, us humans in our cars were provided an insider's view of elephant relations. We got to see the diversity of elephants, how they relate to each other, fighting, playing, chasing, etc., and just see them be themselves with nothing to be afraid of (Elephants vs. Cars: Elephants win). We saw jackals, the usual suspect antelopes and small mammals, and just had a terrific time. For the first time since we arrived in SA (for the first time in our lives), we saw the African buffalo. Tim spotted him no more than 30 ft from the road, and we were able to back up and watch up him munch some grass. What a strange, elusive animal! We saw another with a herd of elephants at a dam, perhaps seeking their protection, as he looked pretty beaten up. And we saw a fully grown male lion for the first time in the bush, not too far from us, and we got to check each other out for a few minutes before he turned back to the always-important kitten business of sleeping. All in all, it was an incredible day and a very magical and amazing way to spend Christmas.

The next two days we stayed in Port Elizabeth at the beach. Though our first trip to the Indian Ocean, the beach was not too great. It was too windy! As Tim lovingly puts it, I looked like some sort of sand monster after a hr or so of attempting to sunbathe there, before we went back to the pool at our guesthouse, which was a far more relaxing way to enjoy some summer sun. We loved the beaches at Plettenberg Bay, however, which was more of my kind of place, with a small beachfront scene, warm ocean water, and a relaxed vibe.

On the coast we also did some touristic things. We went to a park called Monkeyland, which probably would have been more awesome if there weren't several exhausted children on our tour (though we did get to see rare Madagascar monkeys among others), and a beautiful bird sanctuary which was very fun to walk through, and where Tim got attacked by a bird (I think it was just trying to land on his shoulder though). We also passed by the world's largest bungee jump, which didn't really appeal to us with sunburnt legs, and we went to an Elephant sanctuary and a cat sanctuary. At the former, we got to walk hand-in-trunk with elephants (you don't want to see your hand after its been in an elephant's trunk though), feed the elephants squash, and touch the elephants, including their skin, feet, ears, and eyelashes. At the cat park we completed our Big 5 (rhino, elephant, lion, buffalo, leopard) viewing by petting a leopard; we pet purring adolescent cheetahs; and we got to see wild cats, caracals, and cervals snoozing in the (enclosed) bush.

We had not yet gotten up close and personal with ostriches yet, however, which is what we did at our next stop, Oudtshoorn. After planning to ride an ostrich, Tim was very disappointed to find out he weighed too much (about 165 lbs is the limit). This put the pressure on me to ride an ostrich, though this had not been one of my life's ambitions previously. In any case, Tim got to sit on an ostrich and I did ride one (Tim took a video of it) for a whole 7-8 seconds. Who needs bungee jumping when there's ostrich riding? Tim also "kissed" an ostrich, when he put a teeny pellet in his mouth for the ostrich to take out, and we got to see baby ostriches and stand on ostrich eggs. Tim also enjoyed Ostrich meat (very lean) and we sampled ostrich egg scrambled, and just learned all sorts of things about these strange gigantic birds.

At Oudtshoorn there are some beautiful scenic mountain passes we drove through which had stunning scenery like something out of Arizona or Utah, and we also went to the Cango Caves, massive underground caves which are a national monument here and immensely interesting, if also (like the mountains) difficult to capture on camera.

At this point in our trip we were positively overwhelmed with all the things we had done and places we had seen, and we were not yet half finished! From Oudtshoorn we continued west and saw Cape Algulhas, Africa's southernmost point, a beautiful place, and a scenic if sparsely populated Bontebok National Park, before finding our "Adventure Lodge" in Swellendam, which was actually basically a tool shed without electricity, definitely the most rustic accommodations of our trip.

Finally we arrived in Cape Town, a city surrounded by stunning coastal passes and beaches. We met up with our good friend Justin downtown and caught up with him before enjoying dinner and some clubs to ring the new year in with a few other volunteer friends. It was great at this point in the journey to catch up with friends and do some dancing and celebrating for 2010. As midnight struck many revelers danced in the streets, which were occasionally split up by cops on horses or in cars, and it was just a good time. We saw some of the city's historical places and Table Mountain, and even made it to the penguin colony south of the city on the Cape peninsula, in this busy time period when most South African tourists fill up the beaches, coastal roads, and tourist sites of Cape Town.

Our last major adventure of our trip was wine tasting in Franschhoek, an area surrounded by stunning mountain scenery and where some thirty wineries are within some 15 k (12 miles) of road. Our friends in Cape Town met up with us here again, and it was good fun to learn more about wine and sample wines with a group of friends. Now we know that I like Chardonnay while Tim likes Sauvignon blanc, about tannins, all that good stuff. Franschhoek is also the foodie capital of SA, and we thoroughly enjoyed eating there both nights at a french restaurant in town.

After such a thoroughly thrilling road trip, we were excited to return to our home in Swartruggens, and after 2 days of driving through the most boring sort of desert scenery, through the weirdest and most timeless desert towns (it was like west Texas 50 years ago)--not to mention a really creepy venture to Kimbereley's big hole, which we found less apologetic than advertising--we were so, so happy to get home last night, return our rental car in Rustenburg, and get some much needed rest and relaxation in before school starts.

We put 4700 k on our brand new car, and though the last bit of driving was a little boring, we mostly loved being on the road and didn't find driving all that challenging here. When compared with the costs of booking tours and the time taxis can take, we think it's not a bad way to go, especially if you travel with a few friends. You can take a bathroom break at any marked roadside tree/rest area, which are common, go into towns or places you didn't originally plan on stopping in, or turn around at your convenience, all great things about traveling independently as opposed to with a tour group.

Now we are confident that when people visit us, we will easily be able to get a car to pick them up at the airport and take a trip that meets all our needs, even economically, for a really fantastic vacation. Remember, we have beaches, history, nature, wildlife, adventure sports, and more here in Southern Africa, and as long as you come during winter, summer, Easter break (2 weeks), or fall break (2 weeks in Sept/Oct) we are sure we can plan a trip of a lifetime. Already Tim's mom has booked a flight for June, and possibly I'll have a mini-Cambridge reunion with a friend from England during Easter break. We are excited to plan these trips and many more, and welcome you yet again to book your flight to Johannesburg already so that you too can explore Southern Africa with us. The Toyota Corolla would not be costly split three or four ways (and we can probably find a hip fourth traveler if you come alone--alternately we could even consider getting a more serious vehicle for larger groups). So come! Book your flight! We can't wait to show you this place.

The first three months of our time at our site, the Peace Corps doesn't expect us to do much actual work. The assignment is in two parts. First, We are to get to know the movers and shakers around who would be able to help us when we do get down to more full-time work. We have made an effort at this but really this has been a very busy time for many of these folk and we haven't always made our way into meet with them as often as we might have liked. The second part is to not leave. PC calls this 'community integration' time, but the volunteers all call it 'lock-down'. Either way it's over and volunteers in our cohort are now regularly posting on facebook about how delightful the beach in the eastern cape is.

Liz has already posted about our travel plans and we leave tomorrow. First thing tomorrow, a colleague of ours will take us to Rustenberg where we have reserved a Honda Jazz for hire. I'm a bit nervous about driving on the left-hand side of the road, but we figure this will pass after a day or two.

Feeling a bit antsy still being at our home after the Peace Corps would permit us to leave and after most of the organizations we work with have shut down for the holiday, we decided to visit a friend of Liz's who lives in the Gauteng Province near Johannesburg. There are some places that we are specific forbidden to go to and they are the Johannesburg metro area and some of the surrounding townships. I'm not really sure we broke the rules, but if anyone from the Pretoria office is reading, please have mercy on us.

Saturday, Lynette took us to the Hector Pieterson Museum in Soweto. In 1976, there were many student strikes and school boycotts surrounding the issue of the Afrikaans language. When the British had claim over South Africa as a colony, they used English medium schools as a means to maintain power. In the 70s the Afrikaaner dominated National Party was trying to do the same with Afrikaans. All this culminated in a march the students held in Soweto on June 16, 1976. The march ended violently with police opening fire on protesting children. Hector Pieterson was the first victim of this violence and the photograph of another student carrying his body helped to awaken the entire world to the more horrific sides of apartheid. In the end, the Department of Bantu Education did not enforce the use of Afrikaans as the educational medium in native schools. The museum is located right next to the street where these things occured and was a very interesting and worthwhile time. Today June 16 is commemorated as a holiday celebrating young people and the contributions they made towards equality in South Africa.

In the evening, we went to a mall and saw 'Invictus'. The two most popular sports here are Rugby and Soccer. However, the demographics who enjoy these sports are not well distributed. Historically, the white folks have loved rugby and the black folks love soccer. The national rugby team, the Springboks, was known as a power house in the international rugby world but during the apartheid era, South Africa was banned from internatinal sport. Just a year after Nelson Mandela became president, South Africa hosted the World Cup for rugby and indeed the Springboks won. Many white people feared violent uprising against them if the black majority ever gained power. Historically black people would cheer for whoever was playing against the Sprinboks. There is a famous photograph of Nelson Mandela congratulating the captain of the team after their victory. This was seen as an enormous act of grace. Invictus tells this story better than I can. Despite the awkward feeling of being in South Africa watching Americans pretend to be South Africans, we thoroughly enjoyed this movie. South Africa as it appears in this movie is much like South Africa appears to us today, from the tin shacks to the Bottle Stores to the way white and black people behave around each other. We give it two thumbs up.

This will be the last post of 2009 so lastly and most importantly we here at timandliz.info wish you a Happy Holiday and Happy New Year. Be well to each other and as always, write to us!