It’s getting hot in Livingstone :)

Last week started with a calm day at the office, writing some reports of the club trainings and collecting some quotations in town for the food we needed for the Fun Day. The following two days I basically just was sitting in the ZigZag Café (I don't have a desk at home and they have the best coffee in town and free Internet ;)) studying for the 2 weeks exam (I have from the 31.08.-14.09.) during the mornings and attending some club trainings in the afternoons.

The first highlight of my week was Wednesday late afternoon, where I joined the gym in the Golf Club :) It was so nice to do some real exercise. However, I’ve never been so off beat during an aerobic class :D Well, it was a challenge for me :D But the swim in the pool afterwards, in the light of the full moon, compensated for the small irritations during the aerobic class very well ;)

Thursday we had the monthly meeting with all the sport captains in Kwenuha, where we also planned the Fun Day we had on Saturday. You can’t and don’t want to imagine how chaotic it was :D When we finished the meeting, I didn’t have the feeling we had planned anything. However, I thought, “don’t be such a perfectionist and trust them. They probably know how they normally do it and everything will be fine”. Well, more to that in a minute :D In the evening I was invited to a BBQ at Siv-Hege's place (the Norwegian girl I met last week :)). It was a really nice evening, with amazing food! And I met two Norwegian girls, June and Birgitte (they are nurses and stay in Livingstone until November). 

Friday was the last Friday in the month, so instead of working at the office, I went to the club competition. Every last and first Friday in the month we are having a club competition in the afternoon. Or rather supposed to have ;) Yep, when Doreen (the head of the sport department in Kwenuha) and I went to the sports field (which by the way was almost an hour walk away from town) with one of the teams, only one other team had shown up. After sitting and waiting, we called the other teams but they had decided not to participate in the club competition, since they wanted to save their energy for the Fun Day the next day. That was, when I for the first time realised that the distance to the sport field is such an important factor! A bit crazy and sad at the same time that they couldn’t participate because of the long walking distance to sport field…

Instead of just sitting around and doing nothing, I decided to teach the children some volleyball skills. Their smiles and their motivation for learning, made my day :) It’s a really nice feeling, how you can lighten them up with such small things :)

Then Saturday had arrived and I was quite excited because of the Fun Day. I had no idea of what to expect but I was looking forward to meet all the children and do some sport with them :) At 8:30 a.m. (the Fun Day was supposed to start at 9) I was ready at the sport field preparing the rest few things with Doreen and the other sport captains. Well, guess what? Yep, I was the only one…When did the others arrive? Well, the first team arrived at 9:30 and after that, the other teams with their sport captains slowly appeared as well.  One thing I maybe should explain is that all the teams had to walk to the sport field. And since some of the teams had to walk more than an hour to make it to the sports ground, it’s “okay” they were late. I’m getting quite used to wait :D

At 10:30 the 280 children had arrived and we finally were ready to start the day :) Okay, to make a long story short, almost all the sport captains (coaches of the teams) had forgotten to bring the things for the fun games (for instance bottles and eggs for the bottle race and egg race) they were responsible for to bring. So we changed the plans and did some other warm up games instead:) Anyway, what seemed quite chaotic in my head, was apparently fine with the others :D The most important thing was that the children loved it and had a lot of fun:) Then it was time for the football, netball and volleyball matches :) It was such a nice picture and feeling seeing all the children playing and having fun!

Here are some impressions:

barrow relay race

Some kind of ball game :D

Football match

Doreen and me with the food for the children

 After lunch we had planned to do some aerobics and dance fitness. Since the children were quite tired and wanted to start walking home, we just did a short dance session. It is soooo crazy how every single child is able to move his/her body!!!! You should see them! It’s really impressive :) However, they were not able to do the worm (break-dance move) :) With that one I actually was able to impress them :D

Me, trying to dance as an African :D

All in all, it has been a really nice Fun Day, although I have to admit, I was quite exhausted afterwards ;)

But no rest for me ;) I went to another sunset cruise with the Norwegians and celebrated the birthday of one of Siv-Hege’s friends :)

We had an amazing time and ended the evening in one of the nightclubs in Livingstone!

Sunday, I finally had time to rest. Or at least I took me the time to relax at the pool at Siv-Hege’s place ;) (I actually had to start writing my exam paper for Norway. However, I’ve to hand it in on the 14th, so still some more days).

Sunset Cruise :) I just can't get enough of the sunsets!

Relaxing at the pool

So, everything is quite fine down here in Livingstone :) Even though it’s been getting really hot during the last days and I don’t know how to survive the October! Hopefully my body will adapt to the weather soon :D

This week I’ve attended more club trainings and worked on my exam paper. I'm so lucky that I can borrow Siv-Hege's place for studying and writing my exam paper :)

Studying in the shade

Taking a break at the pool in the sun :)

I really look forward to the weekend, where the Norwegians and I want to rent a car and do our own Safari tour in the national park close to Livingstone :)