Friday afternoon when the school’s competition ended, Jana and I went out with some of her colleagues. We went to a cute little bar for a round of beers… followed by another… and another… as Jana and I struggled to say that we hadn’t eaten all day and really needed dinner, but our wanting to eat was not us saying we weren’t having fun and wanted to leave. In fact, it was really fun. These women spoke fluent English and some were close to our age, others just acted like it. The conversation was full of teasing, gossip, whining, and some real discussions about culture and current events. It was refreshing. We did eventually convince everyone to go out for pizza and had a very awkward racial experience (maybe I’ll talk about that later) but overall the night was very fun.
Jana and I started our Saturday pretty early since she lives in a hostel with the girls (like a boarding school) and it is impossible to sleep past about 7:30 on weekends. We had a fabulous breakfast at a little café and did enough grocery and school supply shopping to last me for the month. We walked around town quite a bit and up and down the beach quite literally from one end of the town to the other. Swakup is adorable. Almost all of the buildings are very german looking (colorful cottages with wood accents) and the brick sidewalks make it feel like you could be in a little German town. This isn’t surprising because of its history and also because now it really is a tourist town geared mainly towards Germans. We had dinner at the lighthouse restaurant next to the ocean and got to watch the sun set over the sea- it was fabulous.
Sunday was another café breakfast and spending time at a little bookstore before waiting due to all sorts of miscommunications about my ride home. I finally got picked up though and after stopping to pick up seal meat to feed to his cows (apparently a common feed here??) my principal, the large woman, the 5 year old and I headed back through the desert. We did get to see herds of springbok and although I enjoyed the weekend immensely it was nice to get back to familiarity (and my students waving as I drove through town).
Only other news is that you are looking at (reading the post from?) the new girls soccer coach. First practice is Wednesday, you know I’ll keep you posted.
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Oh man! That does sound fairly awesome. I wish I could try to send you some drills to teach the kids over the interwebs. I feel silly for asking, but do you have pictures :)? Also, I hope they aren't baby seal meat, cause that would be sad. Normal seals would be fine.
ReplyDeleteOh! Another cool fact about Swakupodmund:
ReplyDelete"In August 2008 filming commenced in Swakopmund on the AMC television series The Prisoner starring Jim Caviezel and Sir Ian McKellen. Swakopmund was used as the film location for The Village."
It was that show that we thought would be awesome. I recall it took place in a dessert, which was apparently the one outside of that town!