I spent my first weekend in Cato Manor this weekend. Weekends are pretty low key here, because there isn't a whole lot to do, but its kind of nice. My mama took me to the Pavilion Mall on Saturday morning, which was truly an adventure. You ride a "taxi" which is a 12 seat van they cram like 30 people into, and then drive way too fast down windy roads. The mall itself is bigger and fancier than any mall I've ever seen in America, which is somewhat bizarre when you've just come from a township where you consider yourself lucky to have a toilet that flushes. Otherwise, we basically hung out on the street and played with kids, which is my new favorite activity. Kids basically spend all of their free time outdoors, because they don't really have anything else to do and their parents pretty much ignore them. They are way better at entertaining themselves than American kids, so you might spend an entire afternoon throwing around a deflated soccer ball. Its fun, and they get super excited if you want to play with them. I brought bubbles and tennis balls with me, which have been a hit.

Sunday we went to church, which was 2 1/2 hours of very traditional roman catholic mass entirely in Zulu in a very overcrowded stone building with limited ventilation. The music was good however, and the pastor stopped in the middle of his homily to thank those of us from America (eMelika in zulu) for Obama. Typical. And then I played outside some more. Tomorrow we're shadowing at public schools for the day, which should be interesting. I picked a school for kids with physical disabilities, so I'm excited to see what that's like.

That's about all that's new on my half the world :-)

love,
Kara