electricity!

After 6 days electricity free, Eskom finally came and fixed it for us this evening. It was kind of amazing since we had kind of gotten to the point of thinking they weren't coming at all. Mma tried to seduce them into coming with lies about us having very important work to do on computers. James tried to attract them over from the neighbors' yesterday with his impressive Setswana skills. But we still had to wait our turn and they got to us on the list around 6 tonight. It's crazy how dependent you become on electricity when you have an electric stove, kettle, fridge, tv, etc, but after a week of sandwiches we are definitely happy to have our electricity back.

But I shouldn't say we haven't been eating only sandwiches. The week has been full of parties. On Sunday, we attended a confirmation party for Mma's brother's granddaughter also named Lebogang. It was in her home village, a bit south and west of here (it's not that far, but it took 2 hours on a taxi since we had to go to our shopping town and then there). It was nice to meet more of the extended fam as Mma has lots of brothers and sisters and various cousins, nephews, nieces, and grandchildren were also there. We didn't go to the actual confirmation, but showed up at the house around 11 thinking they'd be back from the church by 1 (there were lots of people already there when we got there cooking and hanging out). They didn't end up getting back until 3:30 and we had to leave shortly after the big entrance (people love to parade into parties and it's super fun. They have a brass band and you dance down the street) to make it back before dark.

Then we've attended two farewell functions at our schools this week. These involve 3 to 5 hour programs with lots of speeches and performances by the children followed by lunch (one was at a reasonable 2 o'clock, but the other wasn't til 3:30 or so and I was about to die of hunger by that time). At one, we made the program and I gave out awards to the best children in each subject. One of my potential friends was there (the mother of one of the children and a former school governing body member) and I asked her if she would help me with the service learning club I'm doing with the 6th grade next year and she's super excited about it. Tomorrow we get even more free lunch as we are both going to all day planning meetings with two of our schools.

Things have been really falling into place lately. We're excited for our plans for next year, and the principals also seem pumped. A few of the curriculum specialists at the area office are really interested in working with us and have already asked us to do specific things. The education support center coordinator has a long list of programs for next year that she wants us to work on with her. We're helping the learnership kids and some community members to start an old age home (or trying to help). We may be a bit overwhelmed next year, but it's in a good way. Though we haven't done much in the way of work in the past three months, we've really started to find our place here, and it's just crazy the relationships we have already built and to think how much more time we'll have to build on them.

As for the near future, we're excited to go to a wedding in Botswana with our host mom, 2 of the principals, and some other friends then off to the Wild Coast with Peace Corps friends. And for the immediate future, we have to catch up on all the soapies we have missed with no electricity the last week.