School days and driving the Honda girl

I absolutely love my job as the American student teacher. Collegiate High School for Girls, where I am completing my student teaching, is a 10 minute drive from my home. For the month of September the teacher I am observing has been picking me up for school in the mornings at 6:45am. Yes, I get to see the sun rise every morning. It’s glorious. The Botha’s have a car specifically for Mary and I to use; however, we have just been allowing ourselves to adjust to the roads a bit. In South Africa they drive on the left-hand side of the road and there are quite a few road signs that are different from ours. So this combined with the fact that we live in a fairly busy city, we have only driven short distances near our home. The blinker and windshield wipers are swapped too. I am sure you can imagine the roars of laughter when you try to turn your signal on and the wipers come on instead. Riaan has been teaching Mary and I to drive, he is such a nice friend to us. We have a cute little PURPLE Honda that we are eventually going to name.

I can honestly say that I love school. My students are the sweetest, most well behaved teenage girls I have ever met in my life. So far I have taught a 10th grade nutrition course, two 11th grade cooking courses, and an 8th grade sewing class. Everyday when they come into my class they stand at their desks until I say “Good morning girls” then they reply “Good morning Ms. Vickery”. I then ask them to be seated and we begin our lesson. It is so nice to be respected as the real teacher, even though I am only a few years older than my students. They love to ask tons of questions about America and American culture. A good many of the television shows that South Africans watch are actually American shows and of course the girls watch American movies. So the majority of what they know about us is through the media, which usually dictates the hilarious questions the girls love to ask me. My students have asked questions like, “Ms. Vickery, did you have a 16th birthday party like they have on “My Sweet Sixteen”, “Ms. Vickery, how many movies stars do you know?”, “Ms. Vickery, How come Americans are so obese?” “Ms. Vickery, Did you think before you came to Africa that we rode Lions and Elephants to school?” One class, my most talkative and social group, always begs me to talk about boys. They are very VERY interested in my love life as well as the love lives of my two brothers. I showed them pictures of Lake and Isaac and I couldn’t get several of them to focus back on our lesson! But my favorite question by far came today from the Kindergarten class I observed. The sweet little darling raised her hand to inform that Mr. Jackson had died. When I looked at her teacher for better understanding of who Mr. Jackson was, her teacher says “Alice means Michael Jackson”. I died laughing, it was just too cute! Alice then tells me that she watches the news sometimes with her mummy.

Today I realized from observing the primary grades that I really hope to someday teach this age group. I really enjoy teaching the high school girls, but the little ones are my most favorite. This just means when I get back to the states I must start immediately working on my reading endorsement so that I can become a candidate for teaching ESOL to elementary age students. And then more schooling to obtain a master’s in Early Childhood Education, someday, blah.

I am leaving today to go with Mary and three other American girls from Minnesota to Cape Town for 10 days. Tomorrow I am bungee jumping off the tallest bridge in the world! We are also going to hike Table Mountain and go on a few wine tours through the wine country! I wish you all could see how beautiful this county is.

Much more to come when I return from Cape Town.

Feel free to shoot me an email with any questions about South Africa at jenmivickery@gmail.com

As they say in South Africa, Cheers!