The final post… Safari Pictures!!!

King of the Jungle!!!

Hi Everybody!

I just wanted to thank everyone who visited my blog. It was cool sharing my adventure with everyone, and I hope that you all enjoyed it as much as I did.

Sadly this will be my last post. But if you would like to hear more about my trip or see pictures, please don’t hesitate to ask See you all soon!

These are 2 lions (lioness & lion) that were in the beginning of a mating pattern. We were in the Kruger Park on our last day, on a morning safari, and came upon these 2 beautiful animals at the side of the road. Truly spectacular! This is the first animal of the “Big 5″

 

White Rhino

 

This is the legendary white rhino. We saw him in the Kruger Park and in Sabi Sands while we were there. This is number 2 of the legenday “Big 5″. They are absolutely incredible to watch. All males have their own territory that they mark by spreading out their feces to mark their territory. Other males will not wander into another males territory unless he is looking for a fight. Females can freely come and go between male territory.

 

 

 

This is the 3rd member of the big 5… the ELEPHANT! They are literally larger than life. This guy towered about 2 meters higher than our safari vehicle… and our safari vehicle was big! These guys are so peaceful and absolutely wonderful to watch, as they strip the bark off the trees with their massive trunks. This picture was taken in Sabi Sands, but we did see elephants in Kruger Park as well.

 

 

The buffalo!!! Look at the top of the horns, how there is the middle part running down the center of their head!!! This is the part that they use to ram objects with. I couldn’t imagine getting rammed with that… ouch?! Anyway, this is the fourth member of the Big 5. These animals are grouping grazers. They come in packs of hundreds… it’s cools to see these guys giving you the “eye”

 

 

 

 

Leopard!!!

Watching and tracking this lepard was incredible!!! There were times when we was a mere 3 feet from our vehicle. They are beautiful the way that they flow through the grass looking for their next meal or sleeping spot. These guys are hard to spot though… especially now since all the bush is dead looking. They have great camoflage, I’ll give Mother Nature that The leopard is the last and final member of the famed “Big 5″. This guy we found in Sabi Sands, and we followed him for the majority of the morning game drive.

The safari vehicle!!!

This is the last picture… this is the open air safari vehicle tat we rode in while in sabi sands!!! It’s pretty cool being in the open, rather than the closed vehicle… so much better game viewing!

Ciao for now!!!  Thanks for keeping up with me through my South African adventure!

xoxox

Jocelyn

Going On A “Lion Hunt”…

5 Day African Safari…Here I come!

Excited to be heading  to Kruger National Park on Monday July 27, where 1,982 species of plants, 517 species of birds, 120 species of reptiles, 52 species of fish, 147 species of mammals and 35 species of amphibians call Kruger home. 

Kruger National Park is the largest game reserve in South Africa, and one of the world’s biggest wildlife sanctuaries. It is approximately the same size and shape as Israel or Wales and covers approx. 20,720 square kilometers.

Sabi Sands Game Reserve shares an unfenced border with Kruger Park, and is the birthplace of sustainable wildlife tourism in Southern Africa, being the oldest of all the private reserves in South Africa. It has only ever been a wilderness area and is home to a vast wildlife population, including “The Big Five” (Lion, Elephant, Rhino Leopard &  Buffalo), as well as a number of endangered species too. The term “Big 5″, originated in the 1800’s as the five most dangerous animals in Africa to hunt.

The experience of seeing wildlife up close  in its wild and natural habitat, will be another memorable highlight of my South Afican experience.  Stay tuned for amazing photos…

Week 6

All the Maharishi Institute ladies at the all school assembly that takes place ever friday!!! Look at them go!!!

Some of the MI Lady Staff (From left to right): Jocelyn, Fikhile, Beauty, Annie, Leila. Annie, Beauty, Fikihile, & I all work at MI together. Leila (Annie's sister) came for a visit to SA.

Jesse (on the right) & Gift (on the left). Jesse is from Iowa & Gift is from Joburg!!! Both such great individuals!!!

These girls are amazing! They are from the MI 1 & 2 group. Didi (next to me on the right) is super funny! These girls were so excited to be in the picture!

Week 4 & 5 Wrap Up

Goeiendag!!! (Good Day) Hope that this post finds you all well! I am doing fabulously!!! I can’t believe that I am approaching the last 4 weeks of my internship!!! It’s gone so incredibly fast and I can’t believe that the end is actually in sight. Anyway, you are probably wondering what has been occupying my time since the last post. I’m excited and eager to say that I have been in the classroom for the passed 2 weeks!!! I am co-teaching a Leadership course with a colleague at MI. This group of students pictured above, are from the Soho culture, and in my class. The purpose of this course is to familiarize students with current leadership approaches and to develop leadership skills such as facilitation skills, effective communication and negotiation skills. The course integrates content from both local African approaches in leadership to global leadership approaches. I am co-teaching with a colleague from MI by the name Peter. Peter and I compliment each others teaching styles. He brings the African leadership perspective and I bring about the western leadership style. Peter is such a fabulous teacher! He really brings home the ideas that we are trying to emphasize to our class through very real and applicable examples. He’s a pleasure to teach with, and I am learning just as much from him as our students are. For the passed 2 weeks, we have covered the following topics: leadership development, leadership as a management task, the consciousness-based education leadership model, and strategic leadership in the learning society. I taught the consciousness based education leadership model, in addition to strategic leadership in the learning society. Both were excellent and very interesting topics to teach. They both had very valuable information that I am familiar with, but never really had the time to sit down and read/ learn about in depth about before this course. But anyway, we gave our first exam this passed Friday (July 10), and I must say that it was nice to be on the giving end rather than the usual exam receiving end that I usually am on (as a student). For a review for the exam, we played Leadership jeopardy. Most of the students had never heard of jeopardy before, so it was a new experience for them. Anyway, we had 7 teams, and the top 3 received prizes. They seemed to enjoy doing the review this way instead of having a lecture on the review. This was fun for Peter and I as well, since we got to be the judges of their answers. Believe me when I say, that a student can come up with a lot of creative jargon when they don’t know the right answer. We are at the half way mark for the leadership course. We have 8 lectures, 2 assignments, and 1 final exam left and that’s it folks! Hard to believe that time has flown by this fast. Anyway, outside of class I am trying to finalize the details for some excursions. I am trying to finalize the details for a safari to Kruger National Park & Sabi Sands in search of the Big 5 (elephant, lion, rhino, leopard & buffalo)! I am looking at spending 4-5 days out there looking for these incredible animals. It could very well be 4 of the most incredible days of my life. I am also looking at heading down to Cape Town for a couple of days prior to my departure from South Africa. One of my old water polo teammates from sophomore year lives in Cape Town, so I would really love to see her before I head back to North America. I’ll keep you all posted!

 

ps, there are pictures now, so please enjoy!

June is coming to a close…

Hi All,

Hope that this post finds you all well and enjoying summer!!! Sad to say that as I write this, winter is approaching faster than I can type this. It’s coming in like a lion, with strong cold winds and daytime temperatures dropping below 10 deg C (For all the American readers, about 50 F). Up until this point, the weather has been absolutely beautiful, usually around 20 deg C by the mid afternoon with stretches of cloudless blue sky across the Jo-burg downtown.

Since my last post, I’ve finally found my groove within the overall scheme of Maharishi Instititue (MI). I’ve been working with a colleague named Maxwell for the past couple of weeks. Max and I have been implementing a registration system for MI. We have been inputting student data in order to create a student database that administrators and teachers can use to run queries which contain information specific to their need(s).

MI has had 5 intakes of students since it opened in June 2007. Since its opening, there was no established organization system for the student applications and records. Therefore, in addition to the master database that Max and I have been constructing, we also had to brain storm a way that we could organize all of these documents into a simple and efficient organizational system. To tackle this problem, Max and I needed to first establish the organizational system and then create a space that could adequately house the system. In the organizational system, we have decided to utilize colored hanging folders to distinguish between each intake. For example, blue hanging folders could be used for the first intake, pink for the second intake, etc, etc. Next we had our construction guru, Pete, create shelves where the folders will be housed and hung from. The shelves have been built, and now we are awaiting construction of the hanging portion of our shelves, where the folders will suspend from. I will post some before and after picture once the records room is complete 

In addition to educating youth, MI also gives the students the opportunity to have experiential hands on training. Currently, the opportunity for hands on training comes during the Stepping Stones portion of the students’ curriculum. Stepping stones offers students the opportunity to exercise and reinforce skills that they have learned in classes. MI currently offers one established experiential learning opportunity, which is data capture. In data capture, students input information from hand written forms into the computer using a program called Uvuyo. There is a second Stepping Stones project currently in development. This second project is a call center, where customer calls to select businesses (that have partnered with MI) will be routed through to MI students. This portion of Stepping Stones is formally known as Invincible Outsourcing. Currently, the call center is finalizing clientele and acquiring/ setting up the technology that will sustain this venture.

During the course of this week, I have been supervising students in the Data Capture (Stepping Stones). They are a group of about 30 that have great work ethic and fantastic spirit. In the morning session, they practice their typing skills on a program called Typing Tutor, and then following that they do Data Capture till lunch. Following lunch, they return to data capture and continue what where they left off prior to lunch. The students do Data Capture for 1 block, which is the equivalent to four weeks.

At MI, students focus their energies on only course at a time. Usually each course is 1 block in length, the equivalent to four weeks. We are starting our next block next week. The next block will go from June 27 to July 24.

That’s a quick overall summary of what I’ve been doing at work for the past couple of weeks. Looking back, I can’t believe how fast that it’s actually gone! It seems as though only yesterday I was stepping off the plane at O.R. Tambo International Airport (Joburg Int’l Airport). Now here I am half way through my internship.

Out of school hours have been quite busy with weekly action cricket matches, weekend outings to various areas around Joburg, and braai’s. My Afrikaans lessons are coming along. The next post will have some more Afrikaans sayings in it so that you can wow all those that don’t read my blog 

Looking ahead, I’ll be taking a trip out to the Ezemvelo nature reserve, which serves as the eco-campus for the school, and some other day trips.

Happy Thursday to you all (actually it will be Wednesday night for you North Americaner’s, but nonetheless it will eventually be Thursday!). TTFN!!!
I’m going to post pictures tomorrow, so stay tuned!!!

Unreliable Internet Access

Hi All,

Sorry about not having regular posts up, but the internet in SA is unreliable.

First week done… week 2 here we come!

Action cricket game & arena

My first week in Joburg (short for Johannesburg, SA) has been absolutely fantastic! It’s been full of warm and wonderful people, a beautiful country, and scrumptious food.

I am living with a wonderfully hospitable South African family. They are showing me the ropes of daily South African life. From preparing regular Afrikaans meals to learning traditions and the Afrikaans language!

 

My first full night in South Africa took me to watch my very first action cricket game. This game is played indoors and has 8 people per team. It was incredibly fast paced, and hard to follow until it was explained to me. There are many different ways to score points and have points taken away from your team by the referee. Please see the attached picture for a quick glimpse of the game (disregard the mesh). The game is very entertaining to watch, I’d like to try to play it sometime soon.

 

The Afrikaans language is absolutely a mystery to me. It is like no other language that I have ever heard or learned about before. The words are spoken very fast and in a low tone as compared to English.

 

This week I learned some common words and to count from 1 to 10. I’ve provided some words and pronunciations below for your learning pleasure.

 

English              Afrikaans                      Pronunciation

1                                  Een                              ian                                                                   

2                                  Twee                            tah-wee-ahh

3                                  Drie                              dree

4                                  Vier                              fee-ar

5                                  Vyf                               fife

6                                  Ses                               ses

7                                  Sewe                            see-eva

8                                  Agt                               ah-ech-t

9                                  Nege                            ne-ech-ha

10                                Tiene                            tee-en

 

Me/I                             Ek                                ack

Kick                             Skop                            skop

You                              Jou                               yo

Please                          As-ah-bleef                  Please

Thank you                    Dankie                         Donkey

 

I will continue to learn the basics of the language, and will hopefully learn to compose some basic sentences next week. It almost feels as though I’m back in grade 1 learning to speak and spell again.

 

The food is absolutely amazing here! In South Africa it is common to have a braai on the weekend. A braai is like a bbq, but instead of using a propane bbq, they use traditional wood in a grill. For my first braai, we had steak & ribs in a delicious marinade, grilled sandwiches of fresh vegetables, sauces and cheese, and a baked bean salad that had mango chutney, mayo, and bananas in it. The whole dinner was a feast!!! I am definitely not going hungry here

 

Working with the Maharishi Institute has been great so far. All of the people that I have met have been absolutely fantastic and very down to Earth. It is going to be a pleasure working with all the staff and the students in the upcoming weeks. My first week at the Institute has been very educational. I’m learning all about the Maharishi organization and the roles of each of the staff. Everyday I go and I learn something new about them,which gets me increasingly excited to work with them. I’m very excited for the chance to work with such an incredible organization, and I know that it will be great!

 

Hope that everyone has a fabulous week! More to come shortly!