Random Updates

It has been raining for 3 days now so I suppose I will update.  Sorry for the delay.  This week has been a bit exciting.  Besides my usual last-week-of-the-month fun, with reporting and all, our office has been filled with people going in and out interviewing for positions with the RCT or as new peer educators.  The RCT people got their own office right down the hall from ours so they did their interviews secretly there while the new coaches had to sit in our office until they were called into a back room. 

We get to meet all the new coaches today - and by we I leave out Jess and Will because Will is still back in the states (heard he got a job offer!) and Jess is in Cape Town to take her GMATs.  Hopefully they are cool.  In other, even better news, Shuffle got hired to do Monitoring and Evaluation for the RCT!!!!  I am so happy for her, and proud of her.  She described herself as "over the moon" to me yesterday when I called her.  For more selfish reasons, she will now be in the office everyday.

Other new info:

Flavored water is the best thing.  You can even get sparkling flavored water so it is like drinking soda, but you are drinking water!  It is insanely delicious. 

Earlier this week I spent the day with Shuffle working on transcribing a Skillz Street focus group.  After our last Skillz Street we had random girls from different groups come an extra day and talk about their experiences, what they learned, how they would use the information, etc. etc.  Ngwenya conducted the discussion and it was entirely in isiXhosa.  The people analyzing the info are not Xhosa so they needed everything translated.  I sat in an office with Shuffle for 5 hours listening to a recording.  She would translate and I would transcribe.  It was not a bad way to spend the day - I was busy, Shuffle got paid, and Cape Town was happy.

I have over 40 active bug bites.  They are actually much better now then when I decided to mention this in my blog a few days ago.  There was a period of time that I was getting multiple bug bites every night.  They itched so bad I was going crazy.  I closed my window at night and I'd still wake up with 10 new ones!  I ended up buying this plug-in that you put a tablet in every 14 hours and it spreads an insecticide so that the bugs stay away.  This, plus me wearing bug spray to bed every night has helped immensely and I have gone 2 days straight without any new bites!  This is big news.  My ankles look disgusting.