Best place on earth!

I’m in Robertson! Ok so I’ve been here for over a week now, and just have not had any time to start this blog until now (plus we haven't had any internet). I love it here! We are surrounding by endless mountains and just so much greenery; it’s absolutely gorgeous. It’s so serene and majestic. I feel so lucky to be a volunteer here. The Home-Base is amazing. We’re on a nature reserve, so we’re just surrounded by all this land, and even some small animals. The coolest one that I’ve seen on the Home-Base is the springbok (small antelope type animals).

My placement is really great. I'm at the farm school, so i work with all the children of the farmworkers in the Robertson area. The children mostly speak Afrikaans and speak very little English, but they're so excited to have me there b/c i'm their first volunteer. It's really interesting to be one of the first volunteers, but the people in the communty love us! They're even going to put us on the front page of their newspaper! I'll have to write more detail in my next post.

We have done so much in our first week, I feel like I’ve been here for a month already. So I’m going to summarize by giving you just some of the highlights and photos!

Here goes:

First off, here's a view of Robertson from the Breede River.

So last week we went on a township tour and a bunch of kids just followed us around the entire time. It was hilarious, they did cartwheels and everything to show off. Here is a group of them:

We also had a day off from placement last week b/c the schools are closed, so some of the volunteers and I went on this great hike! We hiked through streams and huge rocks to get to this little waterfall. It was a really nice hike:

For the weekend we went to Cape Town. We fit so much in one weekend. We went to Robben Island where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for many years. We also got to climb Table Mountain, which is not easy! The next day, we woke up early and spent all of our money at the market and then did a tour of the Cape Peninsula. I didn't even feel like I was in Africa when we were driving through that area. It felt like I was in Southern California. At Cape Point, we saw a bunch of baboons and ostritches.

Me and Josee on the boat to Robben Island

A warning to us before we went on the climb.

Even though it was a struggle, we made it to the top:

And the view was very well worth it.

This week, i got to ride iin the back of a pickup truck to go horsebackriding! It was fun. A true local experience.

Here are some of the volunteers during our ride.

Tonight, we were invited for dinner at a house in one of the townships here. It was really interesting, we had a traditional Xhosa meal, and learned more about their history.

So that is it for now. I'll have to get into more detail another time. Tomorrow we're leaving for a trip on the Garden Route. Maybe i'll go ostritch riding!