No more hot showers

More game playing. This was during the vacation before school started again. I borrowed monopoly from our school library- where it was still wrapped in plastic and didn't look like anyone was ever going to play it. The fact that all the cards were written in Afrikaans and English made playing extra interesting- plus the monopoly money was in Rands.

My massive clothes washing operation. This was the second attempt- first time was thwarted when the water went out and I couldn't rinse my clothes.

I haven't taken a real bath in here yet. I don't have hot water so I'd have to use my electric kettle or boil water on the stove and it would take so much water. So, I'm still bucket bathing- but just doing it in the tub.

My lovely 'cleaning my backyard clothes'.

Clearing a yard with only a shovel = lots of sweating.

Great beginning to month 5!

Mail here is delivered to my school. Our school messanger goes to the post office once a day (maybe not that often....) and returns with any letters or mail for teachers. The packages remain at the post office and we are given a slip saying we have a package waiting. The mysterious part is the secretary at school keeps these package slips so you never know if one has arrived for you.

On Monday, after returning from 2 weeks of training in the capital, I decided to walk over to school and say hello to the non-teaching staff who has been working even though the rest of us teachers are on vacation until Sept 7. Lucky me, the secretary is there and hands me 4 package slips! 4! So I immediately rush home, grab my passport (for id) and start the walk towards the main road. After a 3pula taxi and a short wait at the post office, I'm soon in possession of 4 amazing boxes from the states. Luckily, I brought some bags to carry them in but even then, there was no way I could do the 2 mile walk back to school. The gods must have been smiling on me that day though because a car stopped and took me all the way back to my school- which NEVER happens since people hate driving on the dirt road that my school is on.

In short, Monday was a fantastic day. I got all sorts of thoughtful goodies from the states- beautiful earrings, food, a ton of arts and crafts supplies and pictures of family, amongst many, many other things. Thank you so much!


This is in the front yard of my across the street neighbors- one is a music teacher and the other a science teacher. They decided to have a fire that friday night to 'celebrate' the end of the term, so I joined them. You can see my trusty nalgene in the front of the picture.