It's All Part of the Experience

So I got all Doogie Houser on this entry and just typed my little heart out for a long time! Feel free to skim!

I have reached my four week mark and I have yet to get homesick! I am looking forward to going home (I once heard someone say in a sermon that it’s not a vacation if you don’t get to go home at the end), but I am very happy here. I miss people, and some animals (big shout out to Satine and Jake!), but not the place. I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything. I do wish, often, that the people who I miss could be here with me, but have not once felt the desire to be at home rather than here.
This weekend we had a lovely trip to Jeffrey’s Bay…in the rain. Despite the weather, we hit the waves for a two hour surf lesson. Jeffrey’s Bay is one of the top surf destinations in the world, so it’s kind of awesome that we got to surf there. The waves were HUGE and I never actually got into a standing position, but it was still really worth it. We also hit the only Mexican restaurant in existence anywhere near us. It was pretty terrible! I guess we should leave fake Mexican to the experts in the U.S. (Chipotle date anyone?). We also stopped by the Billabong Factory store for some outlet surf gear before coming back to PE. On Sunday we saw He’s Just Not That Into You which was very cute! Movies here are seriously bargain priced! We see a movie almost every week.

Today was back to school. I am teaching almost constantly now! I’m so busy planning for all my lessons but I’m learning a lot and I’m getting to teach a lot and I’m loving it! Friday and Monday I taught an impromptu lesson on the ecosystems of the US… YIKES! It was pretty rough, but I think it went alright. I learned that I can sort of draw a free-hand map of the US, with the exception of Hawaii and Alaska which were both circles. I have been teaching Math pretty much full time! This week I am also teaching an oral listening lesson for English in which I will tell about “things in the US” and then give them a quiz to see how well they listened. JOY! I am also teaching a Social Studies lesson on how to read an atlas index. All very exciting—I assure you.

Today after school I joined the Community Service Club on their trip to Alpha Primary School which is a township school. Before the end of apartheid, it was labeled a “colored” school (again, “colored” is the term for what we would call “mixed”). Through questions I have been asking, I’ve come to find out that the colored population has felt the least changes since the end of apartheid. Interracial marriage and relationships are just not very accepted here. Taking into account that history, not much has changed at Alpha Primary either. The students are still primarily colored and the staff are all “colored people.” Township schools are something to be experienced. I don’t know that I can put into words the poverty that is so evident in the school. The building is literally falling apart. Collegiate (my school) took Alpha Primary under its wing a few years back and have been helping it make some improvements. The biggest change has been that a lot of painting has been done, especially on the exterior walls. There have also been some broken windows mended and several doorknobs purchased and installed. Doors without knobs have to be jimmied open with a pair of scissors. There were also rooms that were completely falling apart: holes in the floors and ceilings, holes in the walls, broken windows. All of the rooms were sparse and it was obvious that supplies were not easy to come by. The most despicable situation was in the bathrooms. Besides being very unclean, they doubled as storage rooms and many of the toilets were clogged. There was water leaking all over the floor! It was disgusting.

In that situation, I kept thinking, “This would never happen in the US.” But it does happen in the US. Just as much as there are the haves and have nots in third world countries like South Africa, there are people just as bad off at home. There are schools falling apart at the seams; arguably the whole system is falling apart at the seams. When I think about what some students go through just to spend a day in school: no food at home, no heat, no electricity, no clean clothes; then to come to a school where there are no books and you can’t afford pencils or paper and you have to wade through puddles of toilet water to use the bathroom and you have to stay away from certain parts of the classrooms where the ceiling is falling in. There are two things I think about here: First, what kind of message are we sending these kids? We tell them they should value an education and yet don’t do anything to show them that they are valued. Second, what untapped resources are in these children? Isn’t it just possible that the child who might grow up to find the cure for cancer or solve global warming or figure out how to negotiate world peace is in one of these schools scattered across the globe? Isn’t it frightening to think that such children are more likely to be in one of these schools than in a situation where they will get a good education? Let’s face it: there are a hell of a lot more have-nots than haves in this world.

Now that I’ve completely depressed all of you with my upbeat theories on the state of education in this world, I have also been thinking a lot about how grateful I am for my own opportunities and experiences. One of my biggest challenges in my experience with service is battling against feeling sorry for others. There is a fine line between sympathy and empathy and I find myself teetering on it all the time. When I visited Alpha Primary, the first instinct was to feel sorry for the “poor children” who had to attend school here every day and then go home to their township shanty to sleep. I have to consciously ask myself, “Who the hell are you to judge their existence?” The kids I saw seemed happy. Of course things could be better and it is important that I feel for them and understand what I can do for them and others to improve their lives, but it’s not up to me to decide whether or not they have a good life. It’s also an opportunity to reflect on my own privilege in a real way. Another challenge I often come upon in dealing with those less fortunate is feeling a little guilt for my privilege. Especially here, I think that people who find out I’m from America must just think I have it all…and I kind of do… and then I start to feel bad about it. I challenge myself to be thankful for what I have rather than guilt over my privilege. Anyway… all this to conclude that I have been feeling very grateful lately. Grateful for this opportunity, grateful to my parents who raised me in such a way that I can fly halfway around the world by myself, grateful for all of my experiences that have taught me to be flexible and to roll with the punches (you can’t travel without that!), grateful that I’ve given myself permission to be just a little selfish right now in my life and not feel bad about it, really grateful that I’m coming to terms with what I want to be and how I want to get there and recognizing in myself new strengths and abilities, grateful to have a chance to jump off the highest bungy jump in the world, pet lions, go on a safari, walk on the beach after school, learn to surf, skydive, and so many other things! I feel myself changing. I feel myself being more positive all the time. I came into this trip with the mantra , “It’s all part of the experience;” as in, “Six hour layover in Capetown? It’s all part of the experience,” “Hanging out at a crazy hippie backpackers lodge? It’s all part of the experience.” I feel like this simple mantra has made me lose a whole lot of my pessimism and I’m feeling myself carry it over into things that don’t necessarily have to do with this trip in particular. Trying to avoid the cliché, I’m feeling like life is the experience that everything is a part of and I am turning into a big cheesy ball of optimism who keeps telling herself that “it’s all part of the experience.”

Didn’t mean for that to get so long, but it is about my halfway point here so I thought you would all be wondering how philosophical and introspective my world travels have made me. I do hope this entry has answered that question for you. I will be taking orders for signed copies of my first self-help book. The title will be, It’s All Part of the Experience.