One piece of news is that I will be switching my service site. It had nothing to do with the site I was at, but I really wanted to be working with children and unfortunately that site was not the place for that to happen. I will more than likely end up in a school, but I will have more news next week.
This weekend a few of us went for a hike at the Silvermine Nature Reserve. It was very very beautiful. It was rocky and then forest-y and just wow! At the top there was a cave where we just sat and relaxed for a while and looked out at the amazing view. Then back at the bottom there was a nice relaxing reservoir where we took a swim! Here are some pictures!
Yesterday we went to the Cape Town Holocaust Museum. At first I was a bit confused why there would even BE a Holocaust museum in Cape Town. However, once I was there it all made sense. It not only talked about the Holocaust, but it talked about how some survivors fled to Cape Town or even moved post-Holocaust. It also made some connections between the treatment of Jews during the Holocaust to the treatment of the South African people during Apartheid which I found very interesting! Any time I see or read about the Holocaust, I get extremely emotional. The museum was just very powerful. However, there was one paragraph on the wall that really stuck out to me and hit me hard. Here is a photo of it:
This really just hit me like a blow to the chest for so many reasons. First...that is me. It made me sick to think that if I was alive during the Holocaust, myself and my family could have been persecuted against and possibly even killed. Even though I identify as a Catholic and was baptized, confirmed, etc, I had Jewish blood and that was all that mattered to them. The second reason this really hit hard for me was because I connected it to South Africa. Just like people with Jewish blood, black and coloured South Africans did not CHOOSE their ancestry. However, they were persecuted because of it. It was beyond their control who they were born to and what blood they had flowing through their veins. This one paragraph...something I probably already knew but did not really THINK about...really struck me.
I had some video that I took these last two weeks, but I decided I am going to hold off showing that until later on in the trip. I'd like to record some more stuff and put it all together!
Anyway, I'm not really sure what is planned for this upcoming week and weekend. Tomorrow I am going to visit my friend Carra at her school that she is teaching at to observe and see how she runs her classroom to get some ideas. Other than that, I have no idea where this week will take me!
I do have ONE piece of VERY exciting news though! Over Easter break while I am here, I will be going with our landlord and a group of students on the trip for a 5-day white water rafting and camping trip in Namibia! And this is no longer a Cub Scout camping trip...this is the real deal! (If you flash back to last week's blog, you can see where Namibia is on the map).
Anyway, if you have questions please keep asking them! To see the rest of the pictures from the hiking trip as well as a bunch of other things, click HERE. It's the same album as always of photos, but I am constantly adding new photos at the bottom. TALK TO YOU ALL SOON!
PS- I am always happy to accept mail while I'm here! Ask me for the address!
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