Meg feeling at home as she nears the end of this life changing trip

Of course it is the last two weeks here and I am just now REALLY starting to feel like a local! Let me share some experiences that have made me feel like we have fully infiltrated the area:

• Last week a teacher at my school looked at me and started to speak in Afrikaans. We both laughed when we realized what was happening and then she explained, “You are with us so much I just feel like you belong now!”
• Our typical morning minibus driver knows our schedule and that we are going home soon. He also asks me how things are every time I sit in the front (which is often since our bus is very crowded these days), this usually gets us some interesting looks because no one expects me to be a ‘regular’ except the other regulars.
• Another minibus driver who has taken us home a few times past us the other day and honked and waved just to say hi to the “red cross girls”.
• We were able to navigate the city last weekend to get from District 6 to Bo Kaap to Green Market Square and back to the minibus station to actually take one home on a day that wasn’t my internship!
• The last time I was on the train I was able to help someone figure out when their stop was and realized I actually know most of the stops my memory now!
• I have started using their expressions and making their sound effects on a regular basis…
• We all teamed up and held our very own braii! It was quite a success and such a great way to get everyone back together again. I feel like this is really a right of passage here.
• The neighborhood we live in actually feels like home. I have a weird attachment to the Woolworths around the corner, the run around the commons, the walk to work, the vendors outside the hospital, and who wouldn’t be attached to our table mountain view.

On a different note, I am also starting to realize how hard it is going to be to leave my internship. Not going to CMES three days a week and being surrounded by that incredible staff and all the amazing students is definitely going to take some getting used to. I am really starting to see the growth in these kids and even on the hard days something positive always happens. Today we were reading with the 7^th graders and it is so rewarding to see how far they have all come. When we started basically half of the class could not get through reading a paragraph out loud and now almost all of them can, or at least they try and don’t automatically give up. I also am really starting to see how much of an impact we can make on them. For example last week we talked about the female reproductive system and menstrual cycle in our girl’s one on ones and it was SO apparent that we needed to be having that conversation. Some had a little knowledge about the topics but not nearly enough as they should at their ages. I think the one that shocked me and broke my heart the most was the 12^th grader who is already a mom but had no idea about anything we were covering, which basically means she had no idea how she got pregnant (besides obviously sex) or where the baby was while she was pregnant.

The staff at CMES keep saying how we will probably have so many stories to tell when we get back. I feel like this is the understatement of the century, but on the other hand I don’t even know if I will be able to do this experience justice by simply telling the stories I have accumulated while being here. I really do wish everyone could come here and experience this country and its people. It really has been a life changing trip.