Empty House Weeks/Weekends

Heritage Day Weekend

The past two weeks have been a little quieter than most with Talia and Julie spending Heritage Day weekend in Soweto, Graham working in Port Elizabeth for a week, and Jamison house sitting for our co-worker Matt, but rest assured Cape Town has continued to impress. 

September 24th marked Heritage Day for South Africans and for me, my first three day weekend in Cape Town. With Jules, T and Graham absent for the weekend, the mood in the intern house was a little different but we certainly kept ourselves busy. First off, the office got rowdy and we had a dance off prior to departing for the weekend.

 Thursday evening was spent at one of Cape Town's first ever beer festivals situated in the Old Biscuit Mill (of course the event was full of posh, really good looking people) and on Friday, Margs Sara and I walked around the cute, old fisherman's town, Kalk's Bay. Knowing we had two more days of weekend ahead of us, we took our time and weaved in and out of secondhand book shops, antique stores jam-packed with washed up glass bottles, and dainty little designer boutiques. Taking a break to indulge at 'Pardon My French', an adorable, open air restaurant that sits right on the seawall, I found myself having flashbacks to summers spent exploring islands off the Maine coastline. After daydreaming for a bit and stuffing ourselves with yummy Nutella and banana and ham and mushroom crepes, we hopped in the car and continued down the shoreline to explore Boulder's Beach, the land of the penguins. (See pictures below!) 

 

The rest of the weekend consisted of getting dominated by some huge waves when trying to surf at Glenn's Beach, falling asleep on the beach and somehow managing to avoid a burn, running along the beach promenade in the rain, and baking cookies with two really awesome girls (a Midd alum, Hannah, who is Princeton in Africa fellow and knows Nina Sheth and a Brown alum, Melanie, who is doing public health research at UCT and going to Harvard Law next fall) who we met through my roommate, Margaret.

The Work Week

Coming back rested and refreshed after the long weekend, I hit the ground running and spent Monday helping out at our first ever Generation Skillz Skillz Holiday. Skillz Holidays are jam-packed, five-day programs that occur during school holidays. They are an intervention designed to deliver our program quickly and to also provide a safe space for kids while they aren't in school. While they are awesome they also require a lot of planning and since we only took four days to get this round of Skillz Holidays off the ground, the first few days were a bit crazy.


Think... 9-week intervention in five days. Now add to that the first ever delivery of our new curriculum Generation Skillz. NOT AN EASY THING TO COORDINATE. Jamison and I were assigned to help Ayanda (one of Grassroot's incredible Community Project Coordinators) and boyyyy was it a hectic day or what?! While Ayanda handled an overwhelming number of kids, newly trained coaches, and a difficult setting (we were working out of a library), Jamo and I spent most of the day in the car making sure that everyone got lunch, transporting coaches between the three sites where Skillz Holiday was taking place, and getting lost out on the unmarked roads of Khayelitsha and its surrounding townships. 


After Monday, I spent the rest of the week in the office getting to work on some grant research and curriculum development, but from speaking with the coaches and Jamo, T and Sara who stayed out at the sites, it sounds like everything came together and we were able to graduate almost 350 kids in one week! A big plus for the week: Generation Skillz was a huge hit!!

Saturday instead of being a day of rest and relaxation was instead spent out at Khaye helping to run a LIVESTRONG tournament that Margaret coordinated. Older men and women were attracted to the center by a soccer tournament (all players were 30+ years old), booths were set up next to the turf field to provide players and fans with educational information about cancer, and after every game, teams went through a Generation Skillz lesson. The day started off a bit slow, but by lunchtime there were people lining the sidelines and little kids were running around everywhere. At lunch time two cancer survivors gave speeches about the difficulties of living with cancer in South Africa and a young boys dance group performed for the crowd. At the end of the day there was a big awards ceremony, lots of dancing, and a car full of exhausted, dirty interns. It had been a veryyyy long week.

Llandudno and Garden Dinners

Tired after a long week, but in need of a good workout I woke up early on Sunday and made my way to Llandudno to surf with Tay Downs. Arriving at 9am, we beat the Sunday rush, had zero issues parking, and quickly made our way down to the secluded cove that is vacation home to David Beckham and Elton John, among many others. We threw on our ankle straps while standing in the worlds softest, white sand, paddled out through crystal clear water, and spent the rest of the morning riding (or at least trying to) fast, powerful, and perfectly breaking waves. While my attempts at standing up were pretty futile, Tay gave me some great tips and I enjoyed my most beautiful morning workout to date. I loved the spot so much that I dragged the whole crew back there three hours later to enjoy some sunbathing on one of the world's most beautiful beaches. 

That night we threw together a pasta dish and made our way to Taylor and Corey's apartment, which is tucked right at the end of Long Street and filled with beautiful African art and surfing magazines, for a family potluck dinner. Our crowd consisted of Tay, Corey, Elise, Amy, Ryan, Jeff, Tay's fabulous friend Daniel, and all of the interns (minus T who was visiting a friend). When all of the dishes were ready to go we made our way down to the little secret garden space that sits behind their apartment and enjoyed yummy food, great conversation, and best of all, Cadbury chocolate for dessert! 

On tap for this week... Corporate Soccer League in Sea Point tomorrow, Soweto interns Clint, AJ and Tizzy (from Hanover!!!) arrive tomorrow also, and ROCKIN' THE DAISIES THIS WEEKEND!!! Prepare for some wild stories...