Scooter Fail

     I am not going to start with the scooter incident because I didn't blog yesterday, so I have to catch up.  Yesterday was Stake Conference, but we kind of over slept.  Oops.  We read this awesome talk and had a mini-FHE instead.  This is the link to the talk: http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2008/10/come-what-may-and-love-it?lang=eng&query=come+may+love.
It's a really wonderful talk and it's something I feel everyone can relate to.  I made an almost American-ish dinner.  Stake and potatos.  I know you wouldn't normally put pasta salad with it, but anyone who knows me knows how I feel about carbs. =]

     The only other thing that happened Sunday was me beating Tyler at Scrabble again.  We got to work with the kids again today!  My class was AWESOME.  For the first hour we only had the girls so we talked about nutrition and made a fruit salad and such.  The fruit here is AMAZING.  The only fruit that isn't as good if not better than the states is apples.  Our second class with the boys and the girls was so much fun.  The first thing we did was show them a slide show of our homes and family.  They were so funny.  They saw the pictures of the mountains and the trees in the fall and the snow and were so amazed by them.  The funniest was when they saw Andrew.  I had to pause the slide show because they got so loud when they saw him.  They were like, "he is huge!"  I told them he played American football and they just gawked at how big he was.  It was really cute.  After we did the slide show, we danced.  We did the Cha Cha Slide, the Cupid Shuffle and just normal dancing.  I taught them the Cupid Shuffle because the other American girl, Maureen, didn't know how to do it well.  She said it didn't get big in California like it did here.  As everyone knows, I am not a very good dancer at all.  That being said, these kids FREAKED out when I walked out it.  They all started yellin, "ohhhhh".  It was so much fun.  Tyler's class walked in and tried to join us, but they couldn't.  They were so jealous. =] Tyler is gonna write about his class now.  The kids were crazy today. Here at this school it is not so uncommon that the teacher doesn't show up and there is no real substitute teacher for the kids and that is what happened today. With no real teacher in the classroom with us while we were teaching, they were a little bit too out of control. We talked to them about being physically fit and eating healthy and then we had Olympic games outside. All in all it was good.
     So weird stuff happened to me after class today.  There is a boy named Jeffrey in our class and the whole time I have been there I have not heard his voice.  I had to go ask the Principal for something and when I got in there Jeffrey was in the room with a new boy named Quintin and another kid.  Apparently they got in a fight.  I was so shocked because this boy literally doesn't speak to anybody.  He even had a busted lip.  Principal Jansen gave me directions to get what I needed and then I returned to see what was going on with the two boys because I needed to know if I need to start separating them when we start doing group things.  Jansen told me that Quintin pretty much bullied Jeffrey and that's what started the fight.  He told me that this kid really really struggles.  He is mentally grade 4, but he is in grade 8.  Jansen then looked at me and said, "You are the one who studies education in the states right?"  I said yes and then stuff started getting weird.  He asked if I had done my articles (internships) yet and I told him I had done about 4 and then he asked me what my advice would be for the situation.  I didn't know what to say at first because I don't know these kids like he does.  I told him in the past the teacher and I just focused on sending some more nurture the kids way.  Jansen then told me about all Jeffrey's issues.  I don't want to go on about his personal life, but it's not good.
     Things got even weirder.  He mentioned that his step brother in a grade below who was above average and who stands up for himself and such.  My obvious question was whether the brother normally looked out for him.  He then brought both boys into the class and asked me to talk to them a little bit.  What that actually meant is that he was going to talk and then turn it over to me for a while.  Jeffrey had been crying the whole time which made me feel really bad.  Things get even weirder from there.  After the boys left he asked if I thought I should talked to the parents.  I told him that I certainly wasn't comfortable doing that because in the states student teachers don't address parents.  He then told me that he may talk to them Friday and that he may call me in as well.  He said he wants the parents to know that the international kids working with the students are invested in the children's happiness or something.  I guess I will see how Friday goes on Friday.
     When we got home I passed out.  I slept for like an hour and a half and then Tyler went to teach me how to ride the scooter.  This was bad.  He brought me to a parking lot and then just said ease into it and go.  That's all the direction I got, so I assumed I could just hope on and go.  This worked for about 2 seconds before I tried to turn which is where things went wrong.  I obviously fell, but one of my shoes came off and pretty much pushed all my toes back to my foot.  I think I sprained the big one.  It was really funny after I realised nothing was really wrong.  I will no longer be driving the scooter though.  If I can't even handle a parking lot, then there is no way I could handle the streets of Stellenbosch. 


This is right after it happened.  The reason it looks so different from the other picture is because it's natural light instead of our fluorescent lighting.



This is about 4 hours after.  It looks greenish in the picture due to our terrible lights, but it's more blueish.  The last time I sprained something to the point of it changing colors was when I got a game keepers thumb playing volleyball.  I am not going to lie, this hurts much worse.

     We went to the rugby game after this incident (Tyler drove because there was no way I was walking 20 minutes after I sprained my toe.  Rugby games are so crazy.  I am just going to post a bunch of pictures and try to explain what's going on in them.

This is rugby.  They all just jump on top of each other the whole time.

This guy is kinda like a crowd pumper upper person.  He is like Spaz McGee for the Greensboro Grasshoppers.

I know I was there to watch the game, but the view was so beautiful it distracted me.

I have no idea what this guy is for but he ran around he whole time.

This picture may look normal, but if you look to the far left then you will see a man on the ground.  He is injured and a trainer is with him.  The weird thing is that everyone around him are still playing.  When players get injured they don't stop the music or the game.  It's super different from the states.

This is the butterfly dance thing Napoleon Dynamite did and they do it everytime someone kicks a ball between the goal posts.  It made me giggle.

We won!

     That's about it.  We drove home and are now just hanging out.  Hamba Kukuhle.