My first week!

Apologies, this is going to be a really long post so read it in sections if you like!

It feels like I've been here longer than just one week! I have done loads already and I'm loving it.

After I arrived on Sunday I was far too tired to do anything. I had a quick briefing with Chanel the volunteer coordinator (who lives in the house), I unpacked (not very well), had a shower and ate some pizza that we all ordered in. After that I pretty much crashed and slept from about 8pm til 8am the next morning.

The house consists of me and the other two ORCA volunteers Hilde and Freddie, the volunteer coordinator Chanel, the house coordinator Ulrica and two Belgian girls Lore and Marlies who are doing something slightly different.

MONDAY - my first day!
We went down to Ocean Blue Adventures, where I picked up my ORCA Foundation t-shirt. The guy who owns Ocean Blue (whale watching company) set up the ORCA Foundation. Attached to Ocean Blue there is also Sabrina Love Foundation which is a day care centre for disabled kids from the local townships. Lore and Marlies are doing an internship with Sabrina Love through their university in Belgium.

After I'd picked up my t-shirt Freddie, Hilde, Chanel and I drove in the ORCA van over to Nature's Valley to collect fish for the aquarium at Ocean Blue. Nature's Valley is a nature reserve not far from Plett and it really is beautiful. On the way we picked up Chanel's border collie Gemma from her parents house. She is SUCH a cute dog, I love her!
After quite a while of trying to catch fish in the rock pools by the beach (we only managed 3, they are quick little buggers!) we went back to Ocean Blue to put the fish in the aquarium. After that I don't really remember what we did! It's only a week ago and I've already forgotten. Oh dear.

TUESDAY
On Tuesday I went with Tracy, who is one of the managers of Ocean Blue and ORCA, to Nature's Valley to teach at Eco schools. This week was water week so we were teaching the kids about the importance of saving water. There were four groups and my part in each was to demonstrate the water filter we had made with a plastic bottle, gravel, sand and a bit of t shirt material. All the kids were amazed at how the dirty water we put in came out so much cleaner!

As we were on our way back Tracy got a phone call saying that someone had found a stranded baby turtle on the beach and had brought it into Ocean Blue. He has three flippers missing (we think they were bitten off by seagulls while on the beach poor little guy). The only full flipper he has left is his front right one. We named him Oscar. Everyday we have to clean his wounds and feed him and twice a week we have to measure and weigh him to make sure he's doing ok. He can swim around and even dive and hopefully when he's big enough we'll be able to release him back into the wild. Come on Oscar we are rooting for you!!!

In the evening we were invited by some of Chanel's friends to a braai by the river A braai is basically a BBQ and South Africans seem to have them all the time! It was really nice and chilled, we sat by the river, played guitar and sang. I'm sure we sounded amazing haha.

WEDNESDAY
On Wednesday I went with Chanel on my first boat trip! The volunteers' duties while on the boat is to take pictures of any amimals we see and also record the GPS location of where we find them for research purposes. On this trip we saw some baby hammerhead sharks and bottlenose dolphins. This is the first time I'd properly seen dolphins in the wild and it was amazing. We were fairly close to them and we could see them leaping out of the water. I love them!!

In the afternoon we had a lecture/chat back at the house with Dr Vic who is a renowned marine biologist. He talked mostly about whales and I learned loads. He seems like a really nice, interesting guy and its great that we have access to such a huge pool of knowledge!

In the evening we went to Surf Cafe for open mic night. Chanel and Hilde sang a song together and they were really really good. People are now trying persuade me to do it one night but I'm really not sure about that!!! I have never sang on my own public and would be so scared!! We'll have to see about that one haha.

THURSDAY
Thursday we went to preschool. ORCA do this every Thursday, we teach the kids and orca also helps them with money and things, The preschool is in one of the local townships. The kids we taught today were 5 - 7 years old (I think!) and they were so so so so cute!!! They could only speak limited English, their first language being Xhosa. This being water week we taught them about saving water, then some maths. I read them a story from a book of fables. We then got them to do some colouring. They got SO excited it was so so cute. They were so proud of their drawings and although they couldn't really speak much to us you could tell from their big smiles and showing us their pictures that they were loving it. We then helped with dishing out lunch (chicken, rice, carrots, cabbage and gravy. It was delicious)

Once we'd done at the preschool we went back to the house and had a lesson about marine guiding from Tracy. We have to option of taking a 3 hour written exam followed by a practical marine guiding exam on the boats. If we pass we would be qualified to guide on whale watching boats in South Africa! I really want to do it but there is loads to learn! I was actually going to read through the information tonight but I ended up writing this instead! Oops.

FRIDAY
On Friday I went with Freddie and Ulrica on the boats while Chanel and Hilde went to George to try and get Hilde's visa extended as she wants to stay longer! The boat was crazy windy, and we didn't see anything which was disappointing.

In the afternoon we drove to Knysna which is about half an hour away from Plett to watch a theatre performance in a school. Again being water week is all about saving water. Although it was obviously directed at younger kids it was actually very good and entertaining! After that we became tourists, looked round shops, ate delicious sushi and Freddie bought a ukulele. On the way back to the house we stopped off at fruit city (basically a massive supermarket full of delicious fresh fruit!)

In the evening we drank, played drinking games and went out to the club Zanzibar. I got very drunk and it was very fun!

SATURDAY
Saturday we pretty much did nothing. Lazy day watching lots of films.

And I'll talk about Sunday in another post because it was exciting!!