Our Christmas Adventure!

For the past three weeks we have been in full adventure mode – taking advantage of everything that South Africa has to offer.  Honestly, the only thing we didn’t do was Kruger Park, and that trip is planned for April.  We will leave this area feeling like we thoroughly explored it and know it well.  We couldn’t have asked for a better vacation.  Plus, we got to visit with Sarah’s mom, step-dad and step-sister.  It was awesome!

To begin the trip, we drove 4 hours to Royal Natal National Park in the Drakensberg Mountains.  We actually stopped there last year when coming back from our Christmas trip, but we didn’t have enough time to explore, so we decided to go back.  This time, we had a chance to do two different hikes and to stay at a backpackers with a gorgeous view of the park.  The most amazing part of the park is a natural mountain amphitheatre, which we hiked toward on our canyon hike.  Here are some of our favorite pictures.

After Royal Natal, we made our way a bit south to journey up the Sani Pass into the Eastern side of Lesotho.  We hired a driver to take us up, since the roads can be intense, and we were glad of the decision when we got to the hairpin turns at the top of the pass.  At the top we enjoyed a drink at the highest pub in Africa.  It was a gorgeous trip.  

From Sani Pass, we drove to the coast to enjoy Tsitsikamma National Park, whose best feature it it’s amazing ocean views.  The park is best known for one of its multi-day hikes called the Otter Trail.  We didn’t have multiple days to offer, but we did manage to do a day hike on the first part of the trail.  While the walk was a bit intense because it involved crawling over rocks right on the ocean, we saw otters and the hike ended at a beautiful waterfall that fell directly to the ocean.  Here is a picture: 

As if that wasn’t adventure enough, on Christmas Eve we arrived at Kalk Bay and met up with Sarah’s family.  The flat we stayed at was gorgeous, with a wonderful view of the harbor, and we hardly wanted to leave, but we did manage to take in the Cape Town sights.  Here are some Cape Town pics:

 

Beyond Cape Town, we took a trip to Shamwari Game Reserve outside of Port Elizabeth and spent time on Safari.  It was an extraordinarily fabulous place, where the helpers attend to guests’ every need and the drivers take their time so that guests have time with the animals and time to learn about them as well.  It was a wholly enriching experience.  We even stopped on our evening drive for cocktails! We saw a lot of animals, but the most spectacular were (in order) the elephant who was very excited, the black rhino, and the male lion.  Here are some pictures:

We also managed to take a tour of the winelands and did some wine tastings.  None of us had ever really done that before, but we learned a lot and had a great time!  The winelands are beautiful, and the wineries were all so unique from one another, which none of us expected.

 

Finally, Jay went shark diving with Jerry and Jayann in Gansbaii (about 1.5 hours from Cape Town).  They saw three sharks, and one was enormous – about ten feet long!  Unfortunately, Summer is not the time to view sharks at their best, so there was limited visibility underwater, but the experience was amazing.

So there it is, folks – our Christmas vacation 2011-2012.  We don’t regret one moment of it and would love to do it all again!

We hope you are well and wish you a very happy new year.

S&J

Happy Holidays, everyone!

It was a very busy end of year for us! As you can tell by the lack of updates on the blog, we had little free time, but we did have fabulous adventures!

At the end of November, we took the 6^th, 7^th, 8^th, and 9^th graders to Cape Town on a Classroom Without Walls trip. The drive from Maseru takes 15 hours, so it was quite a commitment, but we tried to break it up with a stop in Plettenberg Bay to see Monkeyland on our way, and on the way back we left at night and slept on the bus. Here is the map to give you a sense:

All-in-all the trip went fabulously thanks to a lot of teamwork with our awesome Upper School colleagues and a lot of great spirit on the part of the students and the wonderfully invaluable parent chaperones. The trip included a Cape Point tour, a visit to Simon’s Town Penguins, beach time, time at the Company’s Gardens, a tour of the Slavery Museum, a visit to the Castle of Good Hope, a ride to Robben Island, shopping at the Victoria and Albert Wharf’s HUGE mall, a tour of Parliament, a view of the National Geo-Spacial Center (where they make all of South Africa’s maps), and even some time at the University of Cape Town. The students were very, very busy!

Of course, things didn’t all go to plan: we had to cancel our trip up Table Mountain because of weather and then a back-up plan that fell through. Also, when we got to opening night for Phantom of the Opera, the stage was not dry and the cast had to do the whole thing choir style while sitting in chairs on stage. You can imagine how that went over with a large group of pre-teens and teenagers who had only read the story once…we had to wake a few students up during the ovation!

Just a week after the Cape Town CWOW, Sarah took a trip to Antananarivo as part of an accreditation visiting team. Madagascar is beautiful, but suffers from political unrest that disrupts everyday life on a regular basis. Antananarivo is in the center of the island (not a great spot to see the beaches, which are undoubtedly the best part of the whole island!), but we still got a glimpse of some beautiful rice paddies and we got to experience the real Madagascar-grown vanilla ice cream with genuine Madagascar chocolate sauce. It was awesome! Here are some pictures:

The accreditation visit itself was a great experience as well. It is a lot of work – each team member researches and writes a large section of a report during the course of the visit – but it was a wonderful opportunity to see how they do things at another small African international school and to get a look in other teachers’ classrooms. As a professional development opportunity it was unparalleled, and I highly recommend the experience to anyone who is offered the chance!

Finally, after putting in grades and comments, helping with the lower school play, and wrapping things up with students, several of whom are starting at new schools in January, we made our way back to Cape Town to meet Sarah’s mom, step-dad and step-sister for vacation. This entry is being written from what has to be one of the best picture windows in the whole world while Sarah is watching the boats bobbing around in Kalk Bay Harbor.

Tune in next time for a report on our amazing adventures in Cape Town and at Shamwari Game Reserve in the Eastern Cape. Oh yeah, and I'll put up that safari poem, too!

Hope your new year is off to a great start!

S&J

Seaduma: House cat or African Wildcat?

It has come to our attention that our cat, Seaduma (that's the word for the sound of thunder in Sesotho) may be part African Wildcat. Take a look:






























We discovered this striking similarity while looking at a poster of "Mammals of Sani Pass" during our recent visit there. Not only is Seaduma the right size, he has the right striping, light eyes, and translucent ears. It is said that African Wildcats are the descendants of domestic cats in the Middle East, but in this case the similarity is so striking that the link must be closer. He was found in our friends' back yard during a thunderstorm last year, so who knows where he might have come from!

This may explain why the vet got freaked and thought he might have rabies the last time we took him in. Here's a picture of an unhappy African Wildcat (photograph by Trudy Waltman :
Seaduma has always been good to us, though, so we're confident that he has enough domestic cat in him to tame his wild side (most of the time!). It's either that or African Wildcats are really good snugglers!

Next time: A safari poem by Sarah (written in Kenya in October).

Kenya was awesome!

Hello Everyone,
We are back from our incredible trip to Kenya. All went well, and we made our goal of seeing the big five (elephant, rhino, cape buffalo, lion, and leopard)! We also learned a lot about Massai culture, which is fascinating. The Massai who came to dance at the lodge got a rise out of the crowd by roaming around asking guys how many wives and cattle they had and whether they had ever killed a lion (the Massai are nomadic herders who are polygamists. Killing a lion is part of a boy's transition into manhood). Here is a Massai herder who we saw on the way to Massai Mara:

The pictures really do say it all, so without further ado...

The BIG FIVE!! (In order: elephant, rhino, cape buffalo, lion, and a leopard hiding in a tree!)

Can you spot it?? There's a leopard in there! We swear! Look for the tail!

Besides the big five, we also saw several cheetahs, giraffes, zebras, wildebeests (no migrating ones, unfortunately), hippos (they spend a lot of time under water, but they're fun when they yawn and grunt!), and lots of crazy birding including flamingos!

Above is us with our driver, Moses, from Eastern and Southern Cross Safari Company. He was great company, very knowledgeable, and an expert at spotting animals on the go.

Okay, that's all for now. Sarah is working on some inspired creative writing pieces about the safari part, so stay tuned!

Where in the world are Sarah and Jay?!

Hello Everyone!

This is a note from Nairobi, Kenya, where Jay and I are attending the Association of International Schools in Africa conference this week. I am presenting a workshop about writing on Wednesday afternoon, so wish me luck!

After the conference, we are heading off on safari to Lake Nakuru (where there are mostly birds including flamingos!) and then to Massai Mara (where there are the big 5 and a very famous wildebeest migration). We are super excited.

The weather in Nairobi currently is a little cool (in the 70s Fahrenheit) and drizzly. We are told that in a week or so the “real rains” will come and the farmers will rejoice. All this from Cosmos, the taxi driver who took us from the airport. He chatted us up because we were stuck in awful traffic and we think he was trying to distract us from the fact that we were inches from being crushed by big rigs at several points.

Here is a picture of Jay on the beautiful campus of the American International School of Kenya, where our conference is being hosted.

For those of you education geeks out there, we are fortunate to get to work with the great Jay McTighe of Wiggins and McTighe who wrote Understanding by Design. He is quite engaging and the ideas are solid. It’s a fabulous time!

Not only are we fortunate to be in Kenya, we also had the chance to visit Cape Town a week or so ago to get ready for our Classroom Without Walls trip, which is under works for November. Cape Town is AWESOME! Here are some incredible pictures, but we won’t put up all the best because we’re going with students in November and then meeting my mom, Jerry, and Jayann there in December, so we’ll have lots to post.

The most important thing you need to know about Cape Town is that to get there from Maseru requires driving 15 hours through the Great Karoo, which is a big desert. The good news is that there are several places to stop, and we ended up finding the “Valley of Desloation” near Graff-Reinet (don’t ask me how to pronounce that). It had amazing scenery. Here are some pictures.

Once in Cape Town, we were awe-inspired by the beautiful coastline. The convergence of the Indian and Atlantic oceans happens at the tip of the Cape of Good Hope, and the Indian side has warm, wavy water that is perfect for surfing. Here is a picture:

Unfortunately, the Indian side of the cape, a piece of water called False Bay is also one of the world’s shark capitals. They have shark-watchers sitting on the hillsides and they are in charge of helping determine what types of flags should be shown on the beaches. Here is the key to the shark flags.

When we were there, there had just been a shark attack, and this was the flag being flown on all Indian Ocean beaches in the area:

Cape Town also has fabulous museums, a wonderful shopping area, and a walkable city with great public transportation options. We are so excited for the next two trips there.

Oh Yeah! And we ate crocodile! Crocodile tastes like chicken, but has the consistency of fish. It also has crooked, cartilage-like bones. It was an interesting meal. We are going to the restaurant called Carnivore here in Kenya, so we will eat many more exotic foods, and we'll give you the update after we go.

Okay, that’s all for now. We’re off to our sessions for the day. Write and tell us how you are! We miss you! We’ll post pictures from the safari when we return (let’s hope for some big cats!!)

~Sarah

September Update

Hi Everyone!

Sorry it’s been a while since our last post. We’ve been busy getting re-acclimated to life in Maseru. We ended up moving to a new house that is much larger than our old one in a neighborhood called New Europa. We have several beautiful balconies and an even better view of the Parliament building (the one that is sitting empty because the Chinese government, which helped fund the building, is unwilling to hand over the keys until the Lesotho government upholds their end of the financial obligation). Here is a picture from our bedroom window.

The house is actually a guest house on the property of a large estate which is owned by an Indian doctor who works at the Queen Elizabeth 2 Hospital in town (locally known as Queen 2 or QE2). The owners have four dogs, and the youngest one has taken to coming over to visit in the morning and get his belly rubbed by Jay. The cat is curious, but also has a healthy reticence to go outside. We’re pretty sure the dogs would eat him alive…

Besides moving, school has started up. We just made it through our third full week and we had a half week to start out the year, so we’re starting to get our stride. The students are changing classrooms for the first time in the history of AISL, and they also have lockers. It’s a big transition for them, but most of them are excited for the challenge. They’re especially delighted to have lockers – a little space to call their own with a lock and personalized decorations to boot!

This year we are planning to do a Classroom Without Walls (CWOW) trip to Cape Town, and the faculty decided to move the date of CWOW up from last year, so instead of March it is happening in November. That means a lot of planning has to happen pretty quickly on our part! Luckily the new upper school science teacher spent time studying in Cape Town, and knows the area well. He’s been great, and we are excited about the trip, which is set to include a visit to the Cape Nature Preserve, Table Mountain, the Holocaust Memorial Museum, several area places of worship, the beach, the waterfront, Parliament, the National Geo-Spacial Information Center (where they make maps!), the aquarium, the planetarium, and the Kirstenboch Botanical Gardens. We’ll be busy for sure.

October is going to bring some interesting things our way. The first week is a week off for us because of Lesotho’s Independence Day (October 4), and Columbus Day (October 10). Our plan is to head to Cape Town by car to do some more in-depth planning for the CWOW trip during that time. Then we head back to school for a short week, and then we both head to Nairobi, Kenya for the annual conference of the Association of International Schools in Africa (AISA) conference. I (Sarah) am presenting a workshop on the last day of the conference, which is especially exciting and nerve-wracking. We were fortunate to be offered some extra days in Kenya after the conference ends, and we have planned a four-day safari to Lake Nakuru (famous for its flamingos!) and Masai Mara National Game Reserve, which is supposed to be an awesome experience.

Because of the needed trip to Cape Town and the opportunity to go on safari in Kenya, we decided to put off our planned trip to Kruger National Park until next year. As you can imagine, funding all this travel is a challenge on teachers’ salaries, but we are trying to find the line between taking the once-in-a-lifetime opportunities and remaining cognizant of our finances. It’s hard work!

Also hard work is the continued care for the bearded dragon. His eye tumor was pretty much the same when we came back from holiday as it was before we left, so we were encouraged, but then two weeks ago it sprouted to an enormous size. The vet was optimistic about his overall health, so we decided to try another operation. Unfortunately there was no way to close the wound without taking his eye, so now he is a one-eyed wonder lizard. The vet said to give it some time and see whether he gains back some of the weight he’s lost, which will give some indication whether the cancer has spread to his internal organs. We have him staying at school right now, but we’re checking on him all the time. When we left him this evening he was doing circles in the tank trying to figure out what was going on. Hopefully he’ll calm down some and rest so he’ll be hungry in the morning for his spinach breakfast (a vet recommendation).

Tomorrow we are set to attend the funeral for the mother of one of our new 7^th graders. She unfortunately died due to complications after what was meant to be a minor surgery. We met with her as a team before she left for the surgery, and we were all impressed by her energy and optimism. It is a huge loss for our school community and especially for her son. This will be the first full funeral we have attended in Lesotho, and we are told that it is an all-day affair and that we should bring water and wear hats (sun protection for a very long outdoor ceremony). We’ll give you an update on what the event was like next time.

We hope you all are well. Thanks for reading! Keep in touch!

Sarah and Jay

To Summer!

Here's to friends

Big and small,

New and old,

Even furry.

To ice cream cones, water, and coffee.

Here’s to the internet and the power that runs it.

To lobster.

To family in all its forms.

To sunshine and beautiful places in which to enjoy it.

Here’s to check-ups and check-ins,

Time made and given.

What a summer!

Thanks to everyone who helped make ours great!

Sincerely,

Sarah and Jay