Off to the races in 2008

Wow, have we been busy at VACorps over the past three weeks! On the 30th of December, we greeted professor Jan Brooks and her 11 students from the University of Illinois at Cape Town International Airport. For 17 days, Jan and her students traveled around Cape Town with the help of our driver, Sly, following an agenda created by Sean, Jan and her teaching assistant/ daughter Jessica in the months leading up to the group’s arrival. The itinerary incorporated a healthy mixture of tourism and volunteer work in addition to lectures by activists and community leaders in Cape Town.  The trip was an overwhelming success and we are looking to develop a further relationship with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Jan’s students were wonderful ambassadors of their university. We can’t wait for her next group!

Our January internship participants also arrived while Jan’s group was here, leaving me with the task of running arrival orientation while Sean managed the enclave program. After settling students into their houses, I took them to Newlands Stadium to watch a cricket test match between South Africa and the West Indies. I made sure to also invite my friend Tom, a British citizen and cricket enthusiast, along to help explain the rules of cricket to the other interns. Try as he might, his efforts were essentially a lost cause. The baseball analogies didn’t help us much because most of our interns don’t like baseball. “Where are the bases,” and “what is a wicket” were two common questions.  Perhaps I should give them a cricket test if they want to graduate from our program! In all fairness, I’ve had the benefit of three years to grow a respect and appreciation for the sport and was witness to the famous one day international test match against Australia wherein South Africa mounted the greatest comeback in the history of one day international test match cricket. Baseball is also my favorite sport. So perhaps I’ll give the guys a break. For now…!

I’ll be sure to post more photos and share more thoughts about this group once the pace of life at VACorps settles down a bit. They have the potential to be another great group of interns!

Cape to States: a VACorps internship success story

The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.” -Arthur C. Clarke

Of the many interns to have passed through our program this year, none has launched into professional orbit as quickly as Christine Nichols, who worked at the La Couronne Wine Estate in Franschoek, South Africa from September to December 2007. Christine returns to Oregon, U.S.A. in January to start a wine-importing company called Cape to States. And the story gets better. La Couronne is giving her exclusive North American rights to sell La Couronne wines and L’Aubade mineral water (also owned by the Estate). La Couronne is a boutique label, which means its wines are crafted with a four-star quality in mind. Should you have had the luxury of flying first-class on Swiss Air or Virgin Atlantic, you would have been served wine from the La Couronne range. I’ve sampled the complete range and there isn’t a single wine I dislike. Whenever I’m out at La Couronne for a meeting I inevitably drive back to Cape Town having purchased several bottles of wine (absolutely love the 2003 Shiraz and the 2006 Chardonnay Reserve). The wines are splendid.

Christine will begin selling La Couronne wines in Oregon, a state with a healthy wine culture and a reputation for producing outstanding pinot noir. I expect her to have few problems selling her wine to the sophisticated audience of wine drinkers living in Portland and Eugene. But Christine’s vision extends far beyond the boundaries of Oregon. When I last spoke to her, she mentioned that she already has plans to sell La Couronne wines to restaurants and wine shops on the east coast.

Christine is creating her own destiny by building a career around her passion for wine. Future interns will be inspired by her example and her story will be cited often during future VACorps arrival orientations. Cheers to you, Christine, for acting upon your dreams. You are an inspiration to all of us at the Volunteer Adventure Corps.

A new video!

Hello Everyone,

During the winter of my senior year in high school I made my first digital movie using the lovely, though rather basic, iMovie application. The functionality of iMovie has changed little since 2001, and I am quite appreciative of this fact because I can navigate the application well enough to produce quality movies in less than a day!

The newest iMovie video I created looks back upon a tremendous year at the Volunteer Adventure Corps internship program! Our stellar 2007 participants will be remembered as an example of how to make the most of an internship experience in Cape Town. I must say, though, that this group was exceptionally lucky to watch Springboks win the 2007 Rugby World Cup. The energy was absolutely electric during the Bokke’s campaign to capture the Ellis Trophy and our participants, not to be relegated to the sidelines, danced in the streets, jeered the opposing players and even sang portions of the national anthem alongside the most partisan Springbok supporters! I pay tribute to this special atmosphere in the following iMovie video. In many ways, the South Africa’s 15-6 victory over England was the defining moment of the 2007 internship experience.

If you’ve viewed this blog before, you will notice that the title has changed from participant online journal to journal of the VACorps Program Director. I had hoped that participants would be a bit more willing to share entries from their personal blogs on this journal space but alas, the effort required far too much arm twisting and I’m not really into this. So instead, I will use this space to give readers a perspective of what is happening at the Volunteer Adventure Corps through the eyes of the program director.

Enjoy the video and thanks again to all the participants who made this year one for the ages!

Oh, what a year!

While it’s only November, I wanted to take a moment to reflect upon 2007. Some absolutely remarkable participants have made a great impact with our program and I thoroughly look forward to monitoring their progress long after they leave Cape Town. I have been taking photos of our various participant legends throughout the year and I am going to select a Volunteer Adventure Corps participant photo of the year. I will base my final decision upon the image that best manifests our esprit de corps:

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” -Mark Twain

Here are the candidates:

These are the candidates for best VAC participant photo of the year. Please comment on the above photos. Which photo strikes you as the best representation of our program’s spirit? I will announce the winner sometime next month.