TEAM SA LOGBOOK - 15th May - Port Natal, Brazil

15th of May 2009 - 2nd port day -Chrissy Braun

Today there were several points on our schedule. We had colours in the morning, as usual and there were several people that signed up to give language lessons at a small high school for children and adults that normally take extracurricular English lessons there. One group of us went in the morning and another in the afternoon. The one who went in the afternoon spent the morning walking around town, doing some grocery shopping and then ended up sitting in front of the port gate with Mr. Hurley who went with us. We came back an hour early though because none of us really had their uniforms with them and we were actually meant to wear them but when we arrived, we found out that the ship had gone to re-fuelling and so we were stuck at the port without our uniforms …

The school we went to was pretty small and different to our schools. Two of us went into each classroom and spoke with the teenagers. They had many questions as to what life on a ship is like. Some of them spoke English very well and some did not really know how to express themselves but they tried really hard and asked a lot of questions.

Afterwards we rushed back to the ship for our reception. All the students were back already, getting changed and packing bags. Today was also the day we got to meet our host families and everyone was really excited and anxious to meet them. We were all wondering how many `siblings` we were going to have and what the houses/apartments would look like. A few of us Class Afloat students were together to go to a family and so Helen was going to be my sister and stay with me at another girl's house. Our host mother was the last to arrive and so we waited, ate chocolates and got to meet everyone’s families. It was really sad because although we would see everyone the next day, it did not feel right being without them. We went to our new apartment, got to know the family and ate home cooked supper. It was delicious and it felt really good to be in a home again. The apartment we stayed in and the family we stayed with were both really nice and we thoroughly enjoyed our first day `home`. We went to bed with the excitement for the next day on which we were planned to go dune buggying in Natal and along a few beaches.