And my site assignment is...

Port Elizabeth, here I come!
We got our site assignments last night, and I’ll be going to Port Elizabeth, about 700 km east of Cape Town, along the seaboard. I was pretty attached to being in Cape Town because of the program one of the staff is piloting with kids in townships using cameras – the Snaps Project – so it was a little bit of a shock when I was placed in PE.
The announcements were made at Grassroot’s COO’s house in Cape Town. He has this incredible place that looks out on Table Mountain. The sun had just set and one of the staff, a college intern who had been in Cape Town for the summer and was leaving the next morning, made the announcements. She would list the names of people at one site and we would go stand together and then we would get a “Welcome to Team ______.” At this point we were all so anxious to know where we were placed that the drama of the moment wasn’t totally appreciated. Earlier in the day we had made fantasy site picks, getting into groups of 3 or 4 and picking who we thought would go to each site, so it added some comedy to a pretty intense evening. I didn’t hear when my name was called for PE, partly because I was so set on being in Cape Town and partly due to the adrenaline pumping in my ears, so I stood there for a second not realizing people were waiting for me to go join my group. Obviously.
I’ll admit that I was pretty disappointed for about half a minute – I figured since I’d be in PE, I wouldn’t be able to work on the project I had gotten myself so excited about. But then I realized how incredible our group is going to be. There are 4 of us, 2 girls and 2 guys. I don’t think I could have picked 3 better people to live with for a year. PE is also GRS’s most productive site in that we graduate the most kids out of any other site from PE’s SKILLZ programs. We’re all going to get to organize tournaments and coaches’ trainings, work with curriculum development and evaluation, and numerous other projects. We met our Site Coordinator, Mpumi, and one of the Master Coaches, Siya (see-yah), and we’re going to dinner with them on Monday to get to know each other and hear about PE in more detail.
Following that drama-fest, we all went back to the hotel to change and then went out for the night. We were all in this great bar on Long Street and the intern who read our assignments was there along with some other people from the staff. I was talking with her and somehow the snaps project came up, and she told me that I will in fact be working on the project, among other things, but from PE. I can’t describe how happy I was to hear that. I don’t know exactly what I’ll be working on, but I’m so ready to get going on it. I think there’s a lot of potential in PE for piloting this program and getting some preliminary research going.
So that was all Friday night – pretty big night. Saturday morning a big group of us when to Muisenberg to surf. This was my first time surfing and the little toe is technically not supposed to be getting much of a workout yet, but I figured since I’ve been walking and running around Cape Town for a week, it can handle a day surfing. The area we went to was beautiful. It’s a bay that is surrounded by mountains and has this long white-sand beach. The waves were 1-2 feet high and 7 of us rented suits and boards from a surf shop. One of the guys with us (also one of my roommates) is a surf instructor at home, so he taught us the basics and helped us out in the water (side note: I’m also so pumped about PE because it’s an hour away from Jeffries Bay, which is one of the top surf sites in the world and my roommate has offered to teach us all to surf). It took a while, but I did manage to get up on my board twice. I was so shocked about standing up that I promptly fell over backwards. The little toe survived…kind of sore but it was totally worth it. The after-effects of surfing are also great – so tired, hungry, and sore, but completely satisfied with what you just did. I was smiling like an idiot for the rest of the day.
We have two more days of training, and then Wednesday we depart for PE. We’re taking the scenic route, stopping to see what I’ve heard is some of the prettiest sites along the coast as we go. Hope you enjoyed, and I’ll be in touch when I get to PE!