Prep.

And so it begins...
School has started again and I am actually feeling pretty rejuvenated after break...Though as I am getting up at 6:30am for my 8am class, it may not seem so. I have such energy and excitement in me right now. I feel like I am really thinking like a teacher; every movie I see, book/article/poem/comic strip/(insert text here) I am always thinking about how I might use that with my students, or how it might shape my teaching. South Africa is going to be a major life experience, and teaching experience for me and I can't wait to see what I can pull from that for the future, and what I can bring to that now.

Unfortunately, I've come to the realization that I don't have a whole lot of time for preparations for South Africa anymore. Lynds and I really need to figure out our plans for the week after we're done volunteering because the flight needs to be booked by the end of January/beginning of February.

Here's the travel situation: We really wanted to do a safari after we are done volunteering. I know for me, I'd love to see Kruger National Park in northern South Africa (near Johannesburg). Safaris there are very very expensive-out of my price range. There are several weekend safaris on the cape that we could do while we are in the Cape Town area on the weekends we are free and I am sure we could take advantage of that. We've also been told that it is cheaper to make arrangements IN South Africa since you can get a better deal in country. This makes it difficult to plan our after volunteer travel. Maybe we could just go to Johannesburg and to Kruger for a few days staying a hostel/hotel situation and do day tours of the reserve. To me, this seems most economical and most flexible so that we can book a flight to come home on 'x' day from the Johannesburg airport and have the time before to do what we want. Those day to day details can come much later, perhaps even while we are in South Africa. The other thing is that we need additional immunizations for Kruger. Yellow fever and malaria are present there so I'll need the yellow fever vaccine and the malaria meds (if that is what I choose to do.)

The malaria medication is another decision I have to make. It is NOT a vaccine, there fore it cannot prevent me from getting malaria. What it does do, is to lessen the severity of the symptoms IF I do get the disease. This is a good thing in theory. The problem however, is that if you do get malaria while on the malaria medication, it is much more difficult to treat than it would be if you did not take the medication. It's a tough choice..either way I don't want to get malaria during this experience bu t I just don't know which direction to take.

I will try and continue this update later, class is about to begin.