Welcome Back!

We're back in South Africa! We've left Andy behind to continue his studies at the Lee Strasburg Studio. He's busy rehearsing scenes from The Only Game In Town and learning monologues for auditions. He also has a beautiful girl in his life, Michelle, who works in both London and New York (yes, you guessed it, she's a model, quite spectacular, extremely bright, and a force of nature...HELLO MICHELLE! We miss you! Oh, and we miss you, too, Andy!) Andy will be back with us in Africa in September.

This round, we have Jody (you remember her from last time), her partner Beruk (who has become a great videographer under the tutelage of Charles), Charles (our co-worker from Zimbabwe), my great friend James (aka Jaime...he came last year to Joburg), and Andy's amazing brother Ben. Ben is getting married in September to one of my new best friends, Staci (HELLO STACI!). They will both be moving to Cape Town after the wedding to help manage our programs here.

So, Ben and Jaime came to the new fantastic apartment in New York for two days of training with Andy then Ben, Jaime, and I flew to London for a 13 hour layover. We put our stuff away in the pod hotel (called Yotel...very cool) and headed into Notting Hill for lunch with Andy's Michelle. We had a grand time then went back for a short nap before the 11 hour flight to Cape Town.

We're in a huge five-bedroom house here getting ready for our professional development programmes for educators and digital arts programs for students. More on that on the next blog. Ben, Jody, Jaime, and Beruk are in Kenya doing a follow-up to our recent Sara program while Charles, Ronel, and I are here filming in schools for our new programmes (again, as to keep this blog entry short, I'll describe what we're doing during this trip on the next blog entry). Our days are busy and filled with filming, cooking, editing, and creating documents for the workshops. Take a look at the attached photos to see Charles training Beruk, all of us celebrating Charles' 40th birthday, and some shots of us filming early learners at a local school.

More later! Erik