Table Mountain

On Sunday we visited the stunning Table Mountain!! The cable cart took us up to over 1000 metres above sea level! We were so high up you could feel your ears pop. When we first got there we stopped for a bite to eat at the top, most went for the healthy option of pizza.

        

We then ventured on across to Maclear's Beacon; the highest point. We had 360 panoramic views over the beautiful city of Capetown. We took loads of photos.

        

After the millions of photo's we enjoyed a much needed break. Amy did some yoga, others took in the view and some played games.

We then took a leisurely stroll back down to get the cable cart. Surprisingly after our long and tiring walk, we all had plenty of energy to sing Wrecking Ball at the top of our lungs on the drive back to the backpack. We even attracted some fans with our fantastic singing

Siobhan

Beach

After the 3 hours of retail shopping, we went back to the hostel to change and headed to Camps Bay beach. Almost everyone of us sunbathed for half an hour until Mr McGuckin and Mr Robertson came back from the shops with ice cream for all of us to enjoy in the sun.

        

Although we couldn't swim in the sea, most of us went down the edge of the water to pose for photos. But as we all were waiting on the photo, a wave came up behind us and soaked us up to our shorts!

       

As we waited on the sun to dry us, a few of us decided to bury James in the sand, some sat in the shade and the others attempted to play volleyball with an empty water bottle.

        

After two hours of trying to tan and relax in the sand, we decided to head back to the hostel to get ready for dinner.


By Beth

Woodlands Primary and GCU

Just After we went to Welcome Primary, we went to Woodland Primary, the first primary Mr McGuckin had a link with in Cape Town. We didn't stay for long but we were with the kids during there break and we met loads of new, nice children.

After lunch, we went to the GCU, run by Mario, for the last time. It was another sunny day for playing basketball and skipping. Since it was our last day there was plenty on tears. 

At the GCU, we met many children who we connected with and had fun playing games such as rope skipping, basketball and chess - which Mr Robertson reduced a 5 year old to tears. We all had the greatest time at the GCU and it was an experience none of us will ever forget.

Last day teaching

Our last teaching day at Welcome Primary was today and after finishing off the prepared lessons, we took letters written by the first year Balwearie pupils to grades 5 and 6.

 The letters from the Scottish pupils contained information about their home and school lives as well as questions for the South African students to answer. The pupils from Welcome answered these questions and provided details about their lives here in Cape Town. While they wrote the letters we walked around and got to know the children on a more personal level. 

The lesson went well, however, the pupils from Heideveld are keen to keep the pen pal link going throughout the rest of the school year, instead of just when we visit.

 This would benefit the pupils as they would get a better idea of what life in Scotland is really like.
By Ellie and Calum. 

Safari

The over night safari started with the classic tunes blaring full blast in the vans with Mr Mcguckin or Mr Robertson dancing away, breaking fast and constantly to cause the van to bounce or hitting the roof to the beat of the song. 

After a two hour car journey we arrived at Aquela Safari Park, which was beautiful, the views every and any where were gorgeous. 

We headed straight to lunch, which all though we had eaten so much junk on the journey there, was well needed. The lunch was a buffet, we all had mountains on our plates. The food was amazing! After lunch we headed to the rooms, we unpacked and headed to enjoy some pool time .

After some relaxation we went to the safari trucks to go on the long awaited safari. We had a bus to ourselves which was great! As we entered the safari we were greeted by some hippos in the water, who were huge! 

we carried on our travels around the safari and we met many more animals such as elephants which were lovely but very static and seemed very lazy. 

Rhinos, which were also big, but less lazy and moved about. Which was exciting to watch. 

Giraffes, who i underestimated the size of their neck, the giraffe was galloping around the park with its legs hilariously kicking around in all directions. 

We seen hundreds of springbok, everywhere we went they were there. They were so small and cute. 

We had a dramatic encounter with some
Lions, which included our bus having some flat tire issues with the wheels, which Mr Mcguckin grabbed as his chance to tease us all, which was not appreciated. We stopped to get a new bus and had some sparkling grape juice with nuts and other little snacks which were delicious. We took great advantage off with views and  roamed around with Dylan popping out off bushes thinking he was funny. 

When we got on the new bus we carried on, we spotted some antelopes, Buffaloes and zebras.

After the safari we went to the rooms to get dolled up for our nighttime meal. Everyone looked lovely! And the meal was fantastic, again we all took advantage of the eat as much as you want styled buffet. 

We then all gathered in one off the rooms, which were a lot bigger, for a while until a few of us went to roast marshmallows. We were given a lesson on stars by a nice man, who showed us where Saturn, Venus and Mars was.

After a long but exciting day we headed to bed early as we were getting up at 5am for the morning safari. It was freezing and we were shattered, but Mr McGuckin still Thought it was acceptable to sing the Jurassic park theme tune at different points off the safari, which would be okay if it wasn't 6am in the morning! We seem similar animals as the night before which was so good, but then we went to ARC (Animal Rescue Centre) where we seen animals which were rescued but could not yet survive in the safari as they couldn't catch prey or defend themselves from predators. They had a crocodile, a leopard, which we got to clap, a lion and chickens or as Mr McGuckin likes to call them 'Nandos'. 

After we headed back to the hotel to get some well needed hot breakfast which went down an absolute treat to everyone!! We then packed and went home which we were all very sad about but we had an amazing time!

Science

Our Friday at Welcome primary was very messy but enjoyable. We started our day by teaching the Grade 3s how to make exploding volcanos and playing element bingo with them. We went back and forth between two Grade 3 classes and done the volcano experiment with one class and a lava lamp experiment with the other.



After we taught the kids, they went out for interval. As soon as we walked into the playground and they seen our bottle green hoodies, a massive swarm of children would run up to you wanting high fives and giving you TONNES of hugs!! In the middle of the play ground there was two black bins where they would bang and open the lid of the bins to make music. It was great! They started chanting Scotland and even singing their own songs.😊The pupils took forever to go to their classes once the bell had rang, as we are all outside and they just wanted to play with us. So we had to rush quickly back into the school so they followed before they miss their next class.



We cleaned our messy bottles and went to a Grade 2 class where we done the lava lamp experiment, alongside the bingo. Personally I think the experiment went better with the Grade 2s as they were younger and just so excited to see the bubbles!! The bingo also went down really well as they were so competitive and just so eager to win.



After we finished our science lessons we said goodbye to the kids, which is so hard because they think so much of you. However, once we told them we were coming back on Monday their faces lit up again! Today was a very successful day at Welcome and a very good day overall. So we are all happy at the backpack!😁
By Natalie & Dylan

Oor Wullie lesson

Today was the first day of our 'Oor Wullie' lesson. Which went fantastic! Grade 2 were great at learning Scottish slang words! They really enjoyed learning head, shoulders, knees and toes in Scottish and they were very impressive. 

Colouring in Oor Wullie was also a success. When we went in to Grade 4, we were pleasantly surprised with  how clever they are!!

 We also taught them Scottish slang words but more complex words and they completed two different word searches on what they learned! They seemed to enjoy the 'Where's Wullie' activity and managed to find Wullie much faster than most of us! 

After we had finished teaching, we got to know the amazing kids! They all had many different hobbies and interests most however loved rapping and singing! They were all fantastic at both, it was great to see everyone getting involved and having so much fun!    

Siobhan, Catriona, Ellie H & Amber

Tartan

When we arrived at the school we were so excited to teach our lessons for the second time. 

Our class was grade 5, and they were so hyper, the all seemed so ecstatic to see us which we found very cute. Leila took lead and showed them how to make their own tartan, which they then followed and then added their own touch to it. 

The class were all lovely. We got some really good conversations going with the children, the boys were all rapping and asking us about the cost differences between South Africa and Scotland. We gave everyone our numbers and told them we would download whatsapp so we can keep in contact with them all! 

They done an excellent Job of their tartan, so much so we closed the lesson with a game of 'Heads down thumbs up' and 'who stole my pencil?' Which they seemed to love.

We are all super excited to see them again on Monday!

Maths Lesson Blog

Today was the first day we taught our maths lesson to the kids. We got to teach a Grade 7 class, which had pupils ranging from ages 12-16. It is fair to say that they were all extremely talented and intelligent at maths. They quickly finished the first treasure hunt task so we had to give them all 3 that we had prepared. They seemed to really enjoy the maths problems which came as a surprise to us and also seemed to cope well with the difficult Scottish words. We finished off the lesson by teaching them some Scottish words and answering the questions they had.

After break we got put with Grade 5B, which didn't have a teacher today. We handled the class well considering the difficult situation we found ourselves in. We did a bingo lesson with these kids which they thoroughly enjoyed. They found some of the maths slightly more challenging due to the younger age of the pupils, nevertheless they had fun and we finished off with a game of hangman with Scottish words.

We also found out that two of the kids were amazing rappers and they rapped the whole 4 minutes and 14 seconds of Eminem's Mockingbird.

Jodie, Eva and Calum

Teaching at Welcome

We arrived at the school and were separated into different classrooms to begin teaching our lessons. 

We have been planning lessons for the past 5 months and finally we were able to present them to the kids. They all seemed so excited to learn and to be taught by us. Our group consisted off Beth, Leila, Amy as us (Ellie and Morgan). We decided to let each child create their own clan tartan for their family's, they all were so amazed that they had their own tartan made by themselves! They all done an amazing job! One boy, Luthando, even managed to put a Scottish Flag on his tartan! Which we were all impressed by.

After we finished our lesson it was break time. The staff again made an amazing variety of of sandwiches, cakes and much more which we were so grateful off. They were so tasty and went down an absolute treat.

Break time finished and some of us went back to lessons but 8 off us, including Us went out to do sports with the Grade Ones. We were challenging them to Rugby,football, hoola-hooping and Amy and Leila were teaching them gymnastics at one point. The children completely exhausted us all. We were playing catch in a big circle, which was so funny watching them jumping about trying to gain the attention off the person with the ball. Rugby was great fun, although at one point James and Mr Robertson were very competitive which resulted in the both on the floor, which the children all found hilarious.  

We really got to know the kids as individuals and we got to know where they came from and their types of backgrounds which was upsetting but so amazing that they already feel happy to speak to us about anything. They love the high fives, pictures and cuddles as well as tiring us all out in the 30 degree heat.

We now have realised how grateful we all should be for having free, good education and I highly doubt any of us will be complaining in the future. 

This trip is amazing but the school is definitely one off the high points and we are all so excited to return to such an amazing place filled with such amazing staff and pupils!

Robben Island

Today we managed to have the opportunity to visit Robben Island. This is where Nelson Mandela was held prisoner after being charged with political offence. The boat ride to the island was great as we managed to spot whales that were not too far away from the boat. 

When we arrived we were lead around the island on a bus with a tour guide aboard. After the driven tour we were given a tour of inside the prison. We were shown around by a former prisoner who was sentenced for terrorism. His act of "terrorism" was peaceful protesting against apartheid. 

We learned that the prisoners were only allowed 1 hour of sports per day and for the rest of the day they had to remain in their cells. We also found out that male prisoners were kept separate from women and children who were held in buildings behind the prisons. The most surprising thing we were taught was that common law prisoners and political prisoners were kept in the maximum security prison, whilst murderers, theifs and rapists were only held in the medium security prison.

On the boat ride back we managed to see Dolphins and enjoy the beautiful views of Table Mountain and the Capetown Stadium which was built for the purpose of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. 




Sent from my iPhone

Feeding scheme

As part of our trip we were eager to help Mario and his wife who run the GCU feeding scheme-which is a fundraising scheme in which Mario and his wife make large pots of a different food each week to help many members of the community. We went In confident to help as many people as we could but it's fair to say we didn't realise the extent of the poverty and suffering of people in Africa. As we approached the old church that welcomes the families that are in desperate need help, we saw floods of people queuing up with their ticket numbers and tubs, some even had their children, to collect their food which they will try to feed their families with for a whole week. The group got split up between the two feeding stations and were shown what to do and how much food to put in each tub. We each took turns shovelling food from the pots onto the plates that we used to dish out the food, into the different sizes of tubs. We had to give different sized portions due to age or size of the tubs the families brought with them. As we got near the bottom of the pots the queues got distressed because they feared they wouldn't be able to eat for another week, so one of the helpers took over to dish out the food. One of the most heartbreaking things to see was young families and the elderly not getting anything to eat. Every one of us was in shock over how many families were needing the feeding schemes help and were upset that not everyone was able to eat for another week. Because this came as such a shock, most could not hold back the tears at the fact we take for granted having a variety of different meals and diet when so many people are suffering. It showed a different side to life that most of us have never experienced and felt touched when the families and people were so grateful. This was truly an eye opening experience.


By Beth, Eva and Ellie H

Mama Africa Blog

Tonight we had the great experience of going to the restaurant Mama Africa.

 After an eventful walk down from the Backpack, we were greeted by an amazing live band playing traditional African music on a variety of instruments.

 We sat down and ordered our meals, the majority of us going with the Mixed Grill. This included the animals Crocodile, Warthog, Ostrich, Kudu (African deer), Venison and the national animal of South Africa, the Springbok. 

Personally, the Springbok steak was the best on the platter and we would definitely eat it again. 

The second best for us was the crocodile, but everything we ate was amazing. However, the traditional African sides were not that good and were left by a lot of us.

Another highlight of the evening was the live band. At one point, they paraded around the whole of the restaurant singing and dancing which got everyone excited and in the African spirit.
- Jodie and Calum

GCU

The GCU is a fantastic scheme run by Mario, it invites children to come along after school to have fun and take part in multiple different activities ranging from skipping and chess. 

At the GCU there is also a library with with tutors who help some of the children with extra reading as many children are so keen to learn and improve their skills. This scheme helps make sure the children and teenagers of the area keep off the streets. They learn a variety of different skills. 

The boys from Balwearie got completely smashed during basketball.... by a team of 9 year olds; many have amazing potential and they clearly enjoy taking part. We were asked to take part in 'skipping', however this is not skipping as we know it back home. 

This is skipping which includes: Double Dutch, front flips, back flips, side flips, push ups, handstands and hopping. We were all absolutely amazed and slightly embarrassed at our level. 

Football, boxing and chess were also popular activities to join in with. We can't wait to go back to show them how we have improved with our skipping! 

Leila & Siobhan 

Sent from my iPhone