Gobble up these Thanksgiving thoughts

Dear Parents and Blog Followers!

Happy Thanksgiving from TTS22!  We are six short days away from returning home to family, holidays, friends, hugs, kisses and America.  The last couple days have been a reflection of what we have been doing the past three months, but more importantly on finals!  Yes, the girls are two math finals away from being finished with school at TTS.

It is a tradition for many of the girls to do a Thanksgiving Day run.  In many towns across the U.S, including Bozeman, it is called the Huffing for Stuffing and is a 5k.  As you may recall one of the group goals before the semester came to a close was for everyone to run and complete a  5k. Well, we did it!  Starting early in the morning to beat the Botswana heat we took off down the dirt road. We ran until Papa picked us up 5k down the road.  With big blue in sight the girls kicked into gear and all finished strong.

A view out of our Thanksgiving Day window: Elephants stand about fifteen feet away at a watering hole, no fence to divide us, while we eat dinner and watch them wander in and out of sight.  Sneaking up on us with their silent steps and splashing themselves to cool off in the humid Botswana air. We are at a long table sharing memories of  what we do and eat on Thanksgiving with our families back home.  Instead of turkey, ham, mashed potatoes and stuffing we indulge in kudu, impala, squash malva pudding and custard on out plates. New and old collide and girls leave with full bellies and smiles to their tents under the blanket of African stars.

Hakunamhathata! (Shona for no worries) and as the days speed by the girls are filled with joy and sentiment about going home and leaving each other, the family we have created over the months.  I remind them daily of a quote a smart man once said, “Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.”  -Dr. Seuss

We leave you with memorable moments from the students and teachers they are grateful for having on the trip!

Happy Thanksgiving,
Brenna
Heather
Sarah
Sylvia

Megan:
“Playing soccer in the road with the San kids when the truck was stuck.”

Sylvia:
“Seeing a giraffe spread its legs to drink at the watering hole.”

Peri:
“Finally seeing meerkats and having the chance to experience meerkats.”

Natalie:
“Papa finally letting me ride with him in the truck.”

Mara:
“Finishing up classes under the shade of the 1,000 year old baobab.”

Maeve:
“We were canoeing down the Orange River on the last day of our trip and our guide said we were going through a diamond sensitive area. He made us swim outside our boats so the diamond guards would not see us, but really it was all a joke. There were no gunmen.”

Anne:
“Riding in the truck with Rohan.”

Heather:
“The San village helping us push the truck out of the sand in the Namibian desert.”

Sarah White:
“Is thankful for all the new teen fiction trilogies the students introduced to her.”

Juliana:
“Grateful for the the opportunity to spend so many hours with Heather working on her algebra two homework.”

Brenna:
“Sleeping under the stars on the Orange River and my Mom making her first trip to Africa to get a glimpse of what I have been up to over the past 15 years.”

Katherine:
“Hiking up table mountain.”

Bird:
“Trying lee chi fruit for the first time.”

Molly:
“Sharing Thanksgiving with 19 of my new best friends.”

Eleanor:
“All water is ruined for me now that I have tasted the crisp spring water of the Tsitisikama.”

Lindsay:
“ The opportunity to push my limits on the trip both physically and mentally. One notable moment holding a large snake twice my body weight.”

Emilee:
“Repelling next to the waterfall in Waterval Boven. I felt accomplished once I reached the ground.”

Ariela:
“Sunrise walk up Dune 45 and shooting portraits in perfect light.”

Sarah:
Stomping our feet with the San kids at the primay school singing along to “sing, sing, sing to the lord”.

Hannah:
“A night I will never forget is when we had a dance party in the Gryffindor tower during study hall.  I don't know how we got from math to dancing in the kitchen with a strobe light, but I am so glad it happened.”

Thanksgiving Video

The girls created a super cute Thanksgiving video for you. I've shared it with you through YouTube. It is private so just like the blog you have to accept the invitation. Use the same login information as the blog. Check the "social" tab in Gmail for your invitation.

Happy Thanksgiving from all of us in Bozeman! Let the one week countdown begin.

Price 

Literature & Composition and History updates

LITERATURE AND COMPOSITION

Last week literature students wrote Drabble. What, you may ask is Drabble? I asked them to write a story in 100 words, no more, no less. Inspired by the economy of prose in 'The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo', students tried their hand at vivid language in a succinct format. Here are a few student samples.

Juliana, Montana

Sparkling white, lights black night. Frigid wind burns her nose, snow pierces body, scraping. Fingers burn, sizzle. Bones ache, feet dull, numb. tears turn icy. crisp hard snow encases her, sucking life. Eyes reflect a house, warm, glowing. Inside people laugh, champagne-warmed smiles, shiny red cheeks. Cinnamon faintly tickles her nose, spicy, sweet. Gold, silver balls glitter, dangling on a tree. Fire dancing, constantly orange, heats everyone. ragged nails meet crusty snow. Fingers rub raw, white turns red, body inches forward. Ragged breath freezes. Sounds mush together, vision fades. gasps fill silent darkness, frozen tears shatter on ground, then silence.

Molly, Vermont

Age 2

Skipping into the room, plaid dress swaying as she hops from foot-to-foot. Happily oblivious. She looks up, hundreds of eyes fixed with sorrow and pity. As she weaves through the legs of mourners towards the front of the room she smiles brightly, thinking that it is her new dress that is catching all these eyes. Now at the front, she sees a box and runs toward it, curious. when she reaches it and sees her father, she tries to hug him. Pulled away by her mother, this girl starts to cry. She doesn't realize that her life has changed forever.

History:

From our campsite in Namibia we looked across the river to night lights of Angola. What is the current political situation? How has society recovered after the civil war? What type of government do they have? Who is president? Questions filled minds as we looked out on yet another new nation. How little we know, they reflected. How much there is to learn. 

This week students are working on their final project, a map of southern Africa indicating our route, historical events, and their personal journey. I won't say anymore in the hopes that each student will share their project with their loved ones once home.

classes are busy, busy!

NATURAL SCIENCE

"Oh the places you will go"  P.D.Eastman

Imagine sitting next to an Etosha National Park watering hole at night.  You see eleven galloping giraffe startle and flee into the darkness. You marvel at their long gangly legs and the swing of their necks as they loop around to stop and stare back into the darkness.  Hmmm, what gave them such a fright? Your binoculars reveal two lionesses gazing back at the giraffes from near the watering hole.  Apparently they had given up the chase.

Next morning, few animals are around.  In the distance you see a lion pride finishing off their antelope meal.

This has been the nature of our supplementary learning in the Science course.  Classroom time (which never takes place in an actual classroom)  has been supplemented by numerous hours of field observation and experience. Whether poling down the Okavango River Delta or pulling acacia seedlings to stop bush encroachment, these experiences are irreplaceable aspects of the students' understanding of the ecosystems and the science behind their management. 

MATH UPDATES: 

At last night's study hall, Anne, Peri, Mara, Natalie, and Anna sat on a shared log, ignoring the sticky heat that had us sweating in our malaria clothes well after dark, and concentrated instead on Algebra 2 and Precalculus homework. Throughout the semester, I have been repeatedly impressed with my students' work ethic and dedication to learning despite the many distractions inherent in our non-standard classroom, which may be a patch of grass set just back from the beach at Jeffery's Bay, a circle of camp chairs with a backdrop of the Drakensburg mountains, or a campsite laundry room. In preparation for their recent test, Megan and Anna practiced completing the square while rumbling down the dirt roads of Namibia in Big Blue. When we were delayed with our truck stuck in the sand, Anne and Natalie sought me out for extra trigonometry studying. With only a few classes to go in both Algebra 2 and Precalculus, girls are working harder than ever to finish the semester strongly and prepare for their final exam.

Precalculus:
After completing our study of exponential and logarithm functions, Precalculus students have shifted to study trignonometry. Peri's colorful sketches of trigonometric graphs border on art work, as does Anne's unit circle reference sheet. Natalie has memorized the trig values of common angles with practice while waiting in line for lunch, riding on the truck, and other random moments throughout the day. Mara transferred earlier understanding of asymptotes to understand the graphs of secant and cosecant, and Hannah discovered the importance of restrictions on sine and cosine in order to guarantee inverse functions.
 
Algebra 2

Algebra 2 students have recently completed the most difficult chapter of the semester, which focused on graphing quadratic functions and solving quadratic equations and are now transferring their knowledge of quadratics to study the behavior of polynomials of higher degree. Katherine continues to ask insightful questions that push us to achieve a deeper understanding of the processes we use. Molly made an essential connection between factors and zeros of polynomials, setting us up perfectly to understand the factor theorem.  

Math Concepts

WTO, IMF, GDP, GNP, UN and more are the acronyms floating around in the girls minds the last weeks of the semester. Economics, supply and demand, macro and micro economics have been the overall focus on how these components relate to each other and in the world today. Globalization? Yes, the basic understanding of how the world operates, who operates it and how things get done in today's world. Though all of these organizations and concepts take a life time to understand it is important for girls to at least have a basic knowledge of what facilitates the world. Pros and cons of the WTO is our last subject to cover. Girls will learn both sides facing the WTO and will then be given a current topic and iin teams have to pick a side and debate the issue. This method helps give an understanding that sometimes right and wrong can be a little more tricky and a gray area does exist. It has been a fun semester in Math concepts and I hope the girls leave with an overall idea on what life might be like out from under their parents roof. I know for a fact each girl will be able to balance a budget which may be the most important.

Travel Journalism

After three and half months of traveling and numerous events and memorable moments, the students have a difficult time narrowing down and filtering their experiences into one developed topic. In travel journalism narrowing down the subject matter is the most difficult task especially when the matter spans a 16 week time period. What moment was so profound that an author chooses to write about it? Sometimes it is difficult to say it might be the whole experience, but then how do you write about it in 750 words? For this last article we are using images to conjure up moments. Once you pick your topic and narrow it down the new challenge is then how do you write so the audience stays engaged? In the last half of the semester we have had in class writing workshops paired with photos. Some classes the girls used their own photos while in other classes we worked with National Geographic photos. These classes focused on descriptive writing styles and creating a powerful image and feeling for the audience. One specific class we used poetry and imagery to work on descriptive writing and cut out the use of “filler” words. Another class used point of view writing the goal to understand how to communicate a view point through a photograph and develop empathy, and an ability to understand others by putting yourself in their position. This class is fun to teach from the view of the subject in the photograph, photographer or the audience perspective. As the semester comes to a close I see more and more enthusiasm for photography and writing I hope this continues as they travel!


Global Studies
As we traveled through Namibia, girls learned the history of various groups including the Nama, Herero, and San Bushman. During our stay at AfriCats, several parents joined our group for a walk through the bush with our guide Peter, who taught us about the social customs, hunting methods, and traditions of the San bushman people. A visit to a traditional San bushman village gave the girls a first-and experience with the advantages and disadvantages of ethnotourism, which they had previously read about and discussed with a local artist in Swakapmond. In preparation for our visit to Etosha National Park, students read articles about current issues in conservation in Namibia. Our guides at AfriCats educated us further about issues such as deforestation and overgrazing. We spent one morning cutting thorny acacia bushes to counteract bush encroachment that threatens the habitat of the cheetah, and planted seeds to help with AfriCats' reforestation project. Concurrent with our entry into Botswana, girls studied the history of this country, including its relationship to Namibia and South Africa, where we have already traveled. Although we will not visit Zimbabwe, girls have been reading up on the history of this country as well in order to learn more about the home country of our driver and cook. As we approach the end of the semester, the girls have taken the lead in global studies discussions in order to plan how TTS22 will give back through their zenith project.  

Family for a week ~ Just a few pictures...

For the TTS22 parents not on the trip: One man's view

As I write this it is 2:15 a.m. Thursday. Lolo and I arrived home from the TTS22 parents trip about 12 hours ago. My body stubbornly clings to TTS22 time and I cannot sleep. If I could I'm sure I'd dream of Africa.

We joined the girls Nov. 7 at Okonjima Luxury Bush Lodge, roughly halfway between Windhoek and Etosha National Park in Namibia. The parents spent three nights in luxury, the girls slept in tents under A-frames. From there we rode north with the girls to Etosha, staying one night each at Namutoni and Okaukuejo rest camps.

The Namibian bush through which we traveled is dry and desolate. Time between rains is measured in years. At first it seems completely devoid of life. No problem. As the rolling oasis known as Big Blue rumbles through the dust, the sparkling humanity of its riders shines for miles. I believe there's enough girl power on that truck to bring rain to the desert.

Recounting everything we saw and learned would take days. I snapped enough photographs to prove that, but somehow those pictures don't say it all. You can ask your daughters about sundown poetry, about the San peoples' love arrows, about the shimmying skit. You may not want to know about Rohan, Lulu and Doug.

They can tell you about the number of cheetahs per hectare, how the Kalahari apple leaf tree got its name or that Helen Newmarch and Simba chips (chutney flavored of course) are among southern Africa's greatest contributions to the world. They can tell you about Namibia's underground aquifer, what it's like to be banished to Robben Island and how the nitrogen cycle works.

Rohan and entourage.

But in the end, all the details are dwarfed by the sheer awesomeness of the girls as a whole. Simply put, I learned you have the most amazing daughters the world has ever known. They are accompanied by four of the most amazing teachers on the planet. Together they form a complex machine whose sum is far greater than the individual parts. I am in awe of each of them.

At the end of the last night of the parents trip, we stood arm-in-arm in a circle in the dust by the campsite. The temperature had dropped from 97, but it was still quite warm. Nearby a jackal searched for scraps. Down by the water hole rhinos drank under the spotlight.

One by one we said what we thought was special about our time together. Many choked back tears, overcome by the weight of the moment. What I said was eminently forgettable. What I wish I said was something like this:

Thank you girls and thank you teachers for bringing your life and your love to this group. Thank you for resuscitating my faith in our future. Every girl everywhere should become so empowered. Let's work to make it so. 

It's 11 o'clock somewhere in Namibia and I've grown drowsy. Good night and good morning.

Sunset selfies.

Keep checking back

photo credit: Eleanor

Wow! From the minimal tidbits I gathered during the parent trip it sounds like the group was BUSY! From watching the morning sunrise while game driving to weeding Africat pens to soda sundowners before dinner, the parents and girls fit as much as possible into their time together. While at the Africats center the group weeded over a hectare of bush area to protect the rehabilitating animals from the sharp acacia thorns. They went on a walking safari and encountered a group of cheetahs enjoying their fresh kudo kill and walked on to see leopards lounging in the sun. On another outing they stumbled upon a pack of wild dogs!

A few fast facts about wild dogs:

STATUS:

Endangered.

DESCRIPTION:

African wild dogs are the size of medium domestic dogs. Their Latin name, Lycaon pictus, means "painted wolf-like animal." Their coats are mottled in shades of brown, black and beige. They have large, rounded ears and dark brown circles around their eyes. The dogs differ from wolves and other dogs in that they have four toes instead of five.

SIZE:

The average African wild dog weighs between 37 and 80 pounds and measures 24 to 30 inches high.

POPULATION:

Between 2,000 and 5,000 of these dogs remain in the wild, mostly in game preserves or national parks.

The group moved to Etosha National Park on Sunday to experience an African safari. Etosha campgrounds are fenced in during the night to keep the people in and the animals out. But through the high chain link fences you can hear hyenas cackle and the occasional lion roar. For evening entertainment people head outside to the arena style seating around big watering holes. These lighted areas draw animals in to quench their thirst throughout the day. It is an amazing sight to watch giraffes gracefully wonder up to the pond, look around, and then take alternating shifts to drink and to stand watch for predators. Giraffes are quite vulnerable while drinking water as they have to splay out their legs or drop to their knees to lower their long necks down to the water. While the giraffes are drinking, kudu might also wander in. These animals might saunter back into the dark savannah as elephants, rhinos or lions wander down. It is an amazing sight to watch!

Keep checking back to the blog in the next few days as people share photos and stories. I encourage everyone who visited to share a short story and help those of us who stayed at home envision the adventure TTS22 is on. Here are a few photos from Rebecca via Susie:

Facebook

Hi parents and friends of TTS22 students!

We really appreciate everyone's cooperation and diligence for not tagging the girls in your Facebook posts. It is so hard-especially since Facebook basically does it for you. Please help other people who love your girls keep them safe, too. I've seen a couple of post from family and friends that have shared a TTS22 photo and tagged a student. I'd appreciate it if you could ask those folks to remove the tag until the group returns home. Here are some photos from the parent trip taken by Theresa Coleman.

Thank you so much!

Price

Hannah, Emilee, Sarah and Maeve

Hannah, Maeve, Lindsey, Ariela, Sarah and Molly

Jennifer, Sarah (teacher), Emilee and Maeve

Molly, Juliana, Mara, Megan and Katerine

Peri, Emilee, Anne and Bird