The first week down here

Finally I have some time to write the first post from South Africa! It's currently winter here and that means it's around 26°C during the day and 13°C at night. Sounds similar to the German summer, right? The only difference is that it hasn't rained here for 5 months and the next rain is expected in November. And there are never any clouds in the sky at any time! It's no wonder I got a nice sunburn yesterday...

But let's start from the beginning:

The goodbye was, of course, very tough, even though you know you can always stay in touch with your loved ones. FaceTiming is always a big part of that.

All the volunteers flew together from Frankfurt to Johannesburg. The flight went by really quickly :D I could see the sunrise from my window, it was beautiful.

For the first four days, we had a seminar with our mentors on a fantastic lodge in the middle of nowhere. The landscape was breathtaking. Animals were walking by our huts, and we even got to feed them a bit. The cutest surprise was two baby lions that we were allowed to pet. And then a little safari and a visit to the enclosures of the big lions. You can see all of that in the photos!

And then we went to Zeerust to our new home - I'll share pictures from here next time. We have already settled in really well here, and the people in our township are all super friendly and open-minded. There's constantly someone at our door, for example, because the children want to play soccer or people want to introduce themselves. We spent our first day off yesterday cleaning haha. What has to be done!

Our work here:

So far, the four of us have been in the same creche every day. On the first day, I thought I would never be able to tell the little rascals apart. But after 5 days there, I can already memorize some names! I ended up in a kind of preschool class. It's super exhausting because the children have to be calm and sit in their spots. It's not that easy to handle. And the teacher of my class is not at the creche every Thursday, which means I will be taking care of the kids on my own in the future. But I'll get used to it with time!

There's also a kind of private school where we are supposed to provide homework help in the afternoons. But we haven't gotten very far there yet because everything is seen as very relaxed and the children play more than anything else.

Well, that's it for now, even though I have a lot more to tell! If you have any questions, feel free to message me anytime :)