The last week has been rather challenging in some ways. I wouldn't say I'm exactly homesick but I'm not all that happy here, either. Just two more months to go, though, so I'm sure I'll manage!
Our internet connection has been giving us some trouble yet again. I phoned both Mweb and Telkom (service provider as well as the telephone company that handles the actual line-related things) but got nowhere in doing so. My uncle phoned them once and... yes, they managed to fix it. (I still think they don't take females inquiring about IT related business serious. Oh well.)
As usual I worked at Japari on Monday and Wednesday. Monday wasn't very interesting, but I did go shopping in Parkview after school. I met the lady from the second-hand book store there and she asked me about the books I bought there. It seems she likes to read fantasy, too, so we chatted for a bit. Last week I discussed the prices of books in Europe/Holland/South Africa with her. She seems like a lovely person, and it was good to just have a chat with someone random for a change.
Wednesday was funny, I sat in on some classes of a different teacher (Ingrid - teaching English and Afrikaans) and because she had to go to a meeting I took the last period. We just read from a book (the class had to follow along while I was reading) but a certain learner was being quite impossible (noisy and he kept making faces)... So when I came to this part in the story where it said "Be quiet!" said Zak. I used the opportunity to make myself very clear to this particular learner. The whole class was laughing after that, and it was very funny :D
After that I watched the Japari team play cricket (they won from Glenhazel primary school! Yay!) and sat at the Zoo Lake Sports Club restaurant for the whole afternoon (because cricket matches take ages, quite literally). I had some good coffee and a toasted sandwich, though, so it wasn't too bad. I've also been reading quite a lot (because of the internet being offline) so I found quite a few new words this week.
Finally... I have been working on my SLB portfolio. This lead to a (mildly) sarcastic post over at my other blog Random Breakfast Coffee. Not to be taken too seriously, but it does reflect (pun semi-intended) my view on SLB quite accurately, I'm afraid. (Just want to add this doesn't mean I'm not trying to make an effort for SLB, quite to opposite in fact. I just needed to vent my frustration concerning the challenge that SLB poses to students...)
Words of the week:
Remittance
Crag
Taltry
Pail
Petering out
Parlance
Skeins
Sidereal
Mycelium
Gangling
Scufflings
Wencher
Cochineal
Kenned
Rife
Sidled
Girders
Frondescence
Assuager
Loquaciously
Fashed
Twanging
Coppice
simulacrum
flanges
gurruping
tangential
Posts tonen met het label words. Alle posts tonen
Posts tonen met het label words. Alle posts tonen
donderdag 14 oktober 2010
maandag 30 augustus 2010
August 28th, Saturday
Another week gone and I'm really starting to feel like I belong here. Even saw our queen! (Would insert a picture but Ariella is using my camera at her grade six trip this week... For now it will have to suffice that there was this huge poster of some random football player with queen Beatrix's head photoshopped onto it.)
Shabbos this week was kind of special. On a Friday night it's usually only the guys who go to Shul (the synagogue) but this week we all went (including a friend of Doron from school – which is a separate story). There was a wonderful service with a lot of singing (they even did the world cup song – Hebrew prayer set to the melody that is) and after that there was a street meal. It's a meal after a service, and we always have one on Saturdays (which is amazing – there's so much food, anything and everything from fried fish, sweet and sour vegetables to the best cakes and soft drinks. Everything cold – because you can't prepare food on Shabbos – but wonderful nonetheless. This Friday though, as I said, we had it in the street, for everyone. The theme was 'Single Malt & Salmon' – Whiskey for the adults and salmon for everyone. Drinks and popcorn and chips for the kids. Lovely experience.
Doron had a friend sleep over, as I said, a boy from his school. This was a rather strange experience, because he's one of the boys I teach. A blend of two worlds; teacher-Cha and at-home-Cha. I felt like a teacher all the time, even when the guy kept me awake by complaining about Doron's hamster and nagging us about the mattrass – one was too soft and the other too hard. To be honest, I'm glad he went home at ten in the morning! What a night.
Today we're having guests over to watch rugby and play 'the Buzz game' (for playstation). I also started to learn Hebrew. Learning to read Hebrew is fun but it also makes me feel like a four or five year old all over again. Stumbling over – to my untrained eye – way too similar letters and taking ages to sound out a word is actually very exciting! Reading the first short sentences I actually understand is even better. And yes, I'll watch that this doesn't interfere with my progress in English. I just need to have my own little project while I'm here, too.
More special events are coming up over the next few weeks, Ariella's Bat Mitzvah function, Tali's battie, a wedding and I'm sure many more. Oh, and I managed to get myself invited to the movies with some girls (and maybe guys?) my age. I'm already a bit nervous about that, but I'm sure it'll be a good experience.
Until the next update!
Random things:
Vase -> /va:s/ not /veis/ (insert pro phonetics stuff I can't do on this computer)
Joshua: (talking about a map) Why did Hashem (G-d) make the countries so small but the inside so big? (Why are the countries so small but when you're IN them so big?) :D
Shabbos this week was kind of special. On a Friday night it's usually only the guys who go to Shul (the synagogue) but this week we all went (including a friend of Doron from school – which is a separate story). There was a wonderful service with a lot of singing (they even did the world cup song – Hebrew prayer set to the melody that is) and after that there was a street meal. It's a meal after a service, and we always have one on Saturdays (which is amazing – there's so much food, anything and everything from fried fish, sweet and sour vegetables to the best cakes and soft drinks. Everything cold – because you can't prepare food on Shabbos – but wonderful nonetheless. This Friday though, as I said, we had it in the street, for everyone. The theme was 'Single Malt & Salmon' – Whiskey for the adults and salmon for everyone. Drinks and popcorn and chips for the kids. Lovely experience.
Doron had a friend sleep over, as I said, a boy from his school. This was a rather strange experience, because he's one of the boys I teach. A blend of two worlds; teacher-Cha and at-home-Cha. I felt like a teacher all the time, even when the guy kept me awake by complaining about Doron's hamster and nagging us about the mattrass – one was too soft and the other too hard. To be honest, I'm glad he went home at ten in the morning! What a night.
Today we're having guests over to watch rugby and play 'the Buzz game' (for playstation). I also started to learn Hebrew. Learning to read Hebrew is fun but it also makes me feel like a four or five year old all over again. Stumbling over – to my untrained eye – way too similar letters and taking ages to sound out a word is actually very exciting! Reading the first short sentences I actually understand is even better. And yes, I'll watch that this doesn't interfere with my progress in English. I just need to have my own little project while I'm here, too.
More special events are coming up over the next few weeks, Ariella's Bat Mitzvah function, Tali's battie, a wedding and I'm sure many more. Oh, and I managed to get myself invited to the movies with some girls (and maybe guys?) my age. I'm already a bit nervous about that, but I'm sure it'll be a good experience.
Until the next update!
Random things:
Vase -> /va:s/ not /veis/ (insert pro phonetics stuff I can't do on this computer)
Joshua: (talking about a map) Why did Hashem (G-d) make the countries so small but the inside so big? (Why are the countries so small but when you're IN them so big?) :D
donderdag 12 augustus 2010
August 2 2010
My second full day in Johannesburg, South Africa. The internet is not working on my laptop at the moment, so I'm writing this offline for the time being.
My flight was alright, I love flying but I hate the change of air pressure. A funny thing was when we were getting ready to land... I was waiting for the altitude metre to hit '0', and I was worried the plane wasn't flying fast enough. Then we landed, at 1600-something metres. I felt very, very Dutch at that moment – of course Jozi is up just a bit higher than our own below-sea-level country!
So far I've taken a walk in the Johannesburg Botanical gardens and went to a birthday party for two of my cousin's cousins (twins). It's funny how many people are surprised I speak English at all, but I did have some good experiences already. A friend of my cousin (about 14 years old) asked me where my accent was from (probably thinking "Well it's not South African, or American or..." he just wasn't sure.) but overall it's easy enough to understand the South Africans.
Some things that are different: Traffic lights are called 'robots' here (which sounds incredibly silly to my ears.) and they pronounce 'years' kind of funny (more like yurs/yus).
This morning I went to Yeshiva college with my cousin, unfortunately the headmaster wasn't in so we couldn't ask about being a teaching assistant there, but we'll go back and try again tomorrow. It's a wonderful school – not too big, very nice. It's Jewish, but that only adds to the atmosphere – it's so different from what I'm used to so I'm sure it'll be a wonderful experience.
===========
We tried again the next day, and he told us to try at the high school part of the school. There the people were quite rude to us, we phoned them and they told us "No we don't have the resources" and they hung up on us! Luckily Japari (Doron's school) was much nicer and I'll be working there on Mondays and Wednesdays!
============
Words:
Robot -> Traffic light
Milie -> corn (Mielie pap)
Bami/Ba(r?)ti -> Bar mitzvah/bat mitzvah
Howzit -> Hey there/how is it?
My flight was alright, I love flying but I hate the change of air pressure. A funny thing was when we were getting ready to land... I was waiting for the altitude metre to hit '0', and I was worried the plane wasn't flying fast enough. Then we landed, at 1600-something metres. I felt very, very Dutch at that moment – of course Jozi is up just a bit higher than our own below-sea-level country!
So far I've taken a walk in the Johannesburg Botanical gardens and went to a birthday party for two of my cousin's cousins (twins). It's funny how many people are surprised I speak English at all, but I did have some good experiences already. A friend of my cousin (about 14 years old) asked me where my accent was from (probably thinking "Well it's not South African, or American or..." he just wasn't sure.) but overall it's easy enough to understand the South Africans.
Some things that are different: Traffic lights are called 'robots' here (which sounds incredibly silly to my ears.) and they pronounce 'years' kind of funny (more like yurs/yus).
This morning I went to Yeshiva college with my cousin, unfortunately the headmaster wasn't in so we couldn't ask about being a teaching assistant there, but we'll go back and try again tomorrow. It's a wonderful school – not too big, very nice. It's Jewish, but that only adds to the atmosphere – it's so different from what I'm used to so I'm sure it'll be a wonderful experience.
===========
We tried again the next day, and he told us to try at the high school part of the school. There the people were quite rude to us, we phoned them and they told us "No we don't have the resources" and they hung up on us! Luckily Japari (Doron's school) was much nicer and I'll be working there on Mondays and Wednesdays!
============
Words:
Robot -> Traffic light
Milie -> corn (Mielie pap)
Bami/Ba(r?)ti -> Bar mitzvah/bat mitzvah
Howzit -> Hey there/how is it?
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