AS-SALT!

Tuesday, July 1st, 2008. HAPPY CANADA DAY!!! I hope the festivities were fun and exciting!

Went to the Internet café this morning. That’s when I found out my teaching placement for this upcoming year. I’m going to be a MUSIC TEACHER. Wow. That’s pretty cool. I’m looking forward to my first professional teaching assignment. Though Scoot warns me that it is a very high-stress job, I’m not too worried. Besides, I have good people on my side to support and guide me throughout this year. Haha… staying positive and keeping my fingers crossed for all the best. ;-)

Scott & Joel came to visit me from Swakopmund later. We had lunch together at The Raft restaurant. The restaurant is located by The Lagoon and rests on stilts above the water. It’s quite a nice setting. We ate and sipped our Apple/Grapetisers whilst looking out into the waters. Though the day wasn’t too sunny and threats of fog looked likely, we still were able to spot tonnes of bright red jelly fish and diving dolphins. I loved it!

Then the three of us had a mission to accomplish… to find a GEOCACHE! Both Scott and Joel are avid geocachers and I was the tagalong for the day. This cache was located on Pelican’s Point where there stands a lighthouse and an abandoned three-story house. oOooo… sounds adventurous eh? It was. Haha… and probably the most adventure I’ve had since being here. Anyway, we had to drive past the salt works (salt refining factories), along the ocean, and across soft desert sands to reach this particular cache. Lemme tell ya, I wasn’t feeling too perky sitting in the back of Squeaky Sam (Scott’s 4 x 4) during the excursion. Hah… driving in the dunes ain’t a particularly smooth ride. I wasn’t about to hurl or anything, but I did feel my stomach almost reach the brink of queasiness at several points. Whatevs… we finally got to our destination, found the cache (a plastic film container which had a tiny plastic soldier in it), heard and saw a seal colony in the distance, then backtracked our way out again. The ride back was a bit sketchy at first because it seemed that we were going away from our destination for a while. The view was great though. We got to drive so close by the ocean and witness seals swimming and lots of birds taking flight (probably ‘cause we scared them away). Eventually we got on the right path and was able to get out of the area. Haha… geocaching seems really fun. Perhaps I shall accompany the guys on more geocaching adventures. =)

Before dropping me off at home, the three of us swung by Garth’s work, Standard Bank, to wave hello and give him some signs of hope… haha. It’s the end of the month which means that the bank gets UNBELIEVABLY BUSY. I visited him once during work hours this week to find customers jammed inside and overflowing out the front doors. YIKES! The thing is majority of people only get paid by cheques here. They don’t like to do direct deposit or Internet banking because they are unfamiliar with those ways. So at the end of the month when everyone gets paid, the banks are always bombarded with clients. Garth had been working from 7:30am to 7 or 8pm this week. With no lunch breaks. It’s crazy! And get this, only recently did the bank start paying for overtime hours. Before, employees had to work at least 15 overtime hours to qualify for pay. Meaning, if they worked 14.5 hours or something, those overtime hours wouldn’t count. That’s simply absurd. Things like this wouldn’t be allowed in Canada, that’s for sure.

Anyway, I spent the rest of the afternoon at home plunking notes on Garth’s keyboard and writing out the melodies of common nursery rhymes and children’s songs for my Sunshine Kids. I plan to help the Music teacher at the center learn to play these songs. She’s never played the keyboard before or studied any theory, so I’m just gonna keep things simple. We’ll see how things go tomorrow.