Hey everyone! 

I have had so many things to share with you that it has taken some time before I’ve gotten you up to date with what I’ve been doing for the last 2 weeks. So here comes an update on what I’ve been up to lately!

First of all, I have gotten myself a new family! The MacArthurs have been so kind and let me stay in their spare bedroom in their beautiful and just newly renovated house is in Claremont, which is about a 15 minute drive from Cape Town city. Ronney is the mother of the house and she’s a stay at home mom. Doug, partly works in Ghana, but has been home for the last 2 weeks. Emma is their oldest daughter who is my age and she just finished high school and finally there’s James, their youngest son and he’s 16.

Here Emma is making us a delicious lunch

I have also started my placement at St. George’s Home for Girls, where I am having such an amazing time. If you want to read a bit about the home you can do that here: https://annathomassen.com/2014/10/29/future-plans/.

Over the last 2 weeks I’ve: 

• Fed a horse

         Emma has her own horse, and she participated in a horse show jumping event last weekend (more pictures on that later). 

• Chilled by the pool with ice cream

• I’ve seen an enormous mansion in Camps Bay

Look at the size of that white palace! 

• Decorated my room

• Watched the Volvo Ocean Race 2014, which stopped in Cape Town.

It was really cool to see all the big boats that travel around the entire globe.

Haha, that is what they actually look like; we only saw this…..

Note to self: When you forget your camera, you get terrible quality pictures. But you can sort of see some colourful sails amongst all the boats

       After we had watched the boats sailed off from the harbour in Cape Town, we went to grab dinner in Camps Bay, and got to see the sunset with the boats sailing straight into the horizon

I know they look like shark fins, but I swear they are huge sailing boats 🙂

The sunsets in Cape Town never fail to impress

• Went to church during a power out

This is the Groote Kerk in Cape Town city, and we went there to go see Ronney’s sister sing in the choir. Cape Town suffers from power outs once in a while, so when we went to church there was no electricity. So there the priest was, preaching at the top of his voice (in Afrikaans), and as the sun went down, we were all sitting there in the dark – it was a true Cape Town experience. After a bit too much preaching and a bit too much Afrikaans, we left and had a nice Sunday dinner.

Alongside all those experiences, most importantly, I’ve been volunteering at St. Georges!

Once again, I can’t show you the girls’ faces too clearly, for safety purposes, so I tried to find a couple of photos which I can actually post.

Helping one of the girls study for her Biology exam (this is when I realized how much I had forgotten since May!!)

Picking up the little ones from creche

She had some fun editing the photo 🙂

 She thought she would strike an artistic pose 

It’s a very different experience volunteering at St Georges compared to Fikelela. I’ll give you a long essay on everything a bit later, but just to summarise, some of the girls are much older, so I interact with them in a completely different way. I have also heard some stories that young girls should never have to have experienced, but it feels good to be there and to have fun with them, attempting to make their everyday as normal as possible!

Overall, I’m really enjoying myself these days 🙂