The Sunnyside of Maritzburg

Often, it’s hard to look on the bright side here in Pietermaritzburg – literally. Whenever the weather is rainy, (which is basically every other day right now. But I guess it makes sense because it is spring time here). (oh, also that crazy song from the Life of Brian "Look on the Bright side of Life" keeps popping in my head as I write this, which may or may not be a good thing). Good news though folks, today was bright and clear – that sky-blue type of sunny- and I got to do one of my favorite activities today as well. And what is that oh, so wonderful thing?

Walking to the grocery store.

Yep. That sounds ridiculously lame, but it’s true.

So far, we haven’t been able to get out very much. We live on the church property, so we really have no need to go anywhere (Plus, we don’t know how to drive the car and we don’t know how to use the public transportation here – which are taxis vans called kombis (that is probably misspelled) that generally sketch-out the females in our group). Needless to say, getting beyond our fenced and gated world of BCI is rather exciting, even if it’s just walking a few blocks up the store. (Although, for some reason, Connie and I got more weird looks today than usual). My favorite part of the walk is the purple trees that line Boom Street. I tried to take a picture of them, but it didn’t really do them justice.

I wish I could capture that feeling you get when Spring comes – or whenever the weather has been really depressing and then suddenly warms up. It’s delightful. And makes the day worth living.

Speaking of the day, I should report what I did since I haven’t really been talking about what I’ve been doing here yet (besides being weirded out by mice and their feces). I taught my very first ESL class today (with Connie’s help). It actually went fairly well – at least I think so. I hope my students felt the same. It wasn’t too challenging since all we did was go over the homework. Still, I really enjoyed it, which is really odd since I never thought of myself as a teacher, especially an English teacher. I hope that as time goes on, I will gain more confidence with my students and ability and be more helpful.

But speaking of lack of confidence, today I also had to call a bunch of people for the Missions department here at the church. Awkward. Here’s why: I hate using the phone to begin with. I am not sure what it is about that stupid little device that makes me cringe, but it happens. Now take that irrational fear of calling people and mix it with a different culture with a ton of names I have no idea how to say and a people who are more soft-spoken than not. There were several times today when I hung up the phone, not sure what had just happened. I hope people show up to this meal I was inviting them to. I guess see next Friday how effective (or ineffective) my calling ended up being…

Oh well. At least today was sunny and beautiful.