Piderman!

Sorry it's been a while since my last update. I moved out of my Cato Manor homestays on Saturday morning and stayed the night at this really nice cottage/hostel place. We had a lunch banquet for all of the families there and it ended up being really crazy. One of the kids decided to jump in the pool but didn't know how to swim and started drowning. Our party wasn't by the pool, it was in our cottage, but fortunately there was another party by the pool and this man jumped in to save him. Our program director thanked him and told him that she would replace his cell phone (he jumped in fully clothed). It was pretty ridiculous.

Sunday, I moved into my new homestay in an area called Manor Gardens. It's like 2 blocks away from the SIT offices, and really isn't too far from Cato Manor. It's such a different experience, though. I'm living with a woman named Cookie, who runs the KZN Network on Violence against Women, and I'm helping her out this week. She runs the network from her house because they almost had to shut it down when they lost funding and their offices. I have 3 sisters and one of the sisters has 2 little boys, the youngest is only a month old! He's so cute and tiny! The other one is about 3 or 4. His name is J.J., but I call him "Piderman." When we moved in on Sunday we watched Spiderman on TV, but he can't make a "sp" sound, so he says "piderman" instead. He's really funny.

Anyway, thus far I've helped Cookie with a powerpoint presentation that she'll present at a convention in Mexico in November. I'm also helping her re-work the network's constitution. She recently got more funding for the next 4 years, so she's working on creating more structure and getting offices again. She goes to a lot of conventions to learn about new programs and share her own experiences. She works with a lot of partnerships since it's a network. Basically, she's awesome. It also feels pretty cool to know that something I helped make is gonna be presented in front of a bunch of people!

My updates might be few this week because my research proposal is due on Friday and I'll be devoting a lot of time to that. I'll try to give little updates though whenever possible. Sala kahle!