Week One

Justin raises and sells birds, and on Friday he bought 2 babies and their parents.  I got to help him feed them porridge with a spoon.  He has 4 pairs of birds now and he sells the babies.  Justin has 6 Ringneck parakeets, 3 cocktail, some Gold and Cichlid fish, and a turtle.  Some family from East London (South Africa) were at the house from Thursday till Monday.  Uncle Mark left for Capetown Monday shortly after they left so the house was very very full then almost completely empty!  They bought us a new flat screen TV when they first came.  Everyone was very excited as we mounted it on the wall and turned it on.

 Here's a picture of the parents.

  This is a picture from the house looking at the informal settlement (across the road behind the house) which I attempted to describe in my last post.

This is a picture from the driveway looking over the neighborhood.

So I have been going to work at CLP for two days now.  A few people are out of the office so it has been quiet; which has been nice since I have been doing lots of reading!  I have been enjoying reading some short papers/articles that CLP wrote.  Here's a link to them on their website:  http://www.churchland.org.za/?page_id=95

So, if you are wondering what CLP does and a little bit about what I will be doing, read the 'Occasional Papers.'  For the first bit, it looks like I will be learning some isiZulu by taking a class or two, and I will be reading to learn more about CLP.  After a few months or so of learning isiZulu, it looks like I will be participating a little bit with the program activists.  Something along those lines, but TIA (this is Africa), so we will see what happens!

Sorry my blog posts are slightly rushed, so they aren't exactly organized and there isn't much proofreading! (Editor's note: EXCUSE ME?!)