2 Week Mark

Hello Everyone!

       So it is kind of hard to believe, but Kaity and I have made it to the 2 week mark.  2 Weeks ago yesterday we arrived here in South Africa.  Since then we have done some exploring, with lots more planned, and had the chance to meet some amazing people.  Unfortunately some of our new friends are leaving on Sunday since they were only here for 2 weeks.  However, that means that new folks can come in.  We have heard that there are actually two groups of students from America who are coming to visit for several weeks.  We are not sure where they are staying but hopefully at least some stay in Theology in the open spaces so that Kaity and I can continue to meet new people.

        It was a very early morning today.  I was up at 4:15am to start setting up for the Fast and Flat Marathon here at campus.  As I was shuffling around my room the strange thought hit me that while I was getting up, back home it was only 10:15pm.  In other words, I was just starting my day as the majority of folks back home were not even getting ready for bed. However, I shook the sleep from my bones and continued to get ready despite that tiring realization.  I was helping out since Residence Life was one of the sponsors of the race.  Candice and Njabulo were also helping out with a number of other students.  Our job was to hand water out at the first water station 3k into the race.  However, I don't think any of us were prepared for what was to come.  Those racers in the front of the pack were too busy trying to win to try to accurately grab the water packets we were handing out since at that point none of us really knew the best strategy to hand out water without having it ripped out of our hands just to land on the blacktop and explode.  By the time the front runners passed I think we all had begun to perfect a method of effective water distribution, but then found ourselves overwhelmed by the masses of runners and walkers that followed.  At a few points even though we were on the sidewalk we had runners and walkers on both sides of us.  We truly were an oasis in a sea of blacktop.  At least until we ran out of water, than we became the bearers of bad news as we had to tell tired and thirsty folks that we had nothing for them.  It was tough to see them run by us and not be able to offer any relief, especially when our unpreparedness caused so many water packets to be wasted.  Luckily there were more water stations up ahead.  Hopefully next year more water can be provided.  I do also want to point out that we were in fact handing out water packets.  It was a weird concept having little plastics pockets filled with water that runners could tear a corner and suck out the water as they ran.  A neat idea, but they tended to be very slippery which had led to so many people dropping them.

Anyway, I also wanted to recap this week briefly.  On Thursday and Friday I was in the res halls surveying students to learn how Res Life can better serve students.  I was very impressed by the number of students who were more than happy to take the time to fill in the 10 question survey.  A lot of them generally wanted to provide feedback and were curious to learn more about res life.  What also impressed me was the feedback the provided.  A lot of students wanted Res Life to put on some very important programs including academics, HIV/AIDS awareness, family planning, and motivation.  Back in the states I always tended to find that students only wanted social programs.  While some students did put down social programs as something they wanted, it was often because they wanted to continue to meet new students, including those from other countries.  It was very refreshing interacting with students who wanted more out of college than to simply party.  In fact, the majority of students I have spoken to are all in very challenging majors like law, accounting, bio chemistry, and countless others.  There seems to be very few students pursing a liberal arts degree.  I wonder if it has something to do with what programs UWC offers or by the fact that students are focused on fields with good paying jobs that can help many of them improve their lives in the townships.  

Yesterday I also had the chance to sit in on a departmental meeting for Residential and Catering Services or RCS.  This meeting was help in the TV community room in one of the Res Halls.  It was very interesting because there was one small table at the front of the room where Mr. Seale sat.  The rest of us sat on large couches facing forward.  It was certainly a very odd feeling sitting on a couch for a staff meeting that could be compared to RE meetings back home.  I also had to chuckle to myself since the hot button issue that was discussed at the meeting was staff placement.  Mr. Seale tried to make the decisions on placement and met with some resistance.  It was just funny that both here and back home there is a lot of tension around placement.

Good news everyone! (written in the words of Prof. Farnsworth) Hopefully my tablet will have app access again starting on Monday or Tuesday of next week, thanks to my awesome parents for sending me the part I need! Love you both and thanks again!

I will also end this overly long blog post with some words of wisdom.  I have recently watched some episodes of Wacky Races online in my free time since I finished my 5th book.   For those of you who are unaware with the show, it was on when I was growing up and involved several characters racing across various landscapes in ridiculous cards such as the Arkansas Chuggabugg and the Creepy Coup.  This show also had a dastardly villain named non other than, Dick Dastardly.  He drove the number 00 car and always would try to cheat his way to a 1st place victory.  However, I failed to notice something very odd when I watched the show growing up.  In order to set all of traps he failed at getting to work he had to be far enough ahead of the others to set them up.  It then dawned on me that if he had just focused on racing, 9 out of 10 times he could have won gold by just continuing to race and continuing to stay in 1st place.  Why then did he insist on giving it all up to try to slow the other racers down so that he could win.  Was he not confident enough in himself to solely rely on his own abilities to win a race and therefore felt the need to have to cheat in order to achieve victory.  Were the writers of the show simply trying to teach children that cheating was no way to win, or were they in fact trying to teach children that in order to be successful in life, it requires us to have faith in our own abilities.

Well that's it for now. Sorry again for the long post and congrats if you made it this far!

Until next time, you stay class planet earth,

-Tim