Visitors from the NorthWest province

50 students from the NorthWest province are coming to the MTN Sciencentre on Wednesday October 10 2007, in addition to our casual visitors and our outreach efforts.

This particular group of grade 11s are coming all the way from Hoerskool Skoonspruit in the Freemanville suburb of Klerksdorp, now also known as the city of Matlosana.

But we have local visitors too, we hasten to add. This week, locals are coming from various parts of the Mother City, including the private co-educational Christian secondary school Elkanah House in Table View, organised by teacher Liz Broad. (For more on the school, surf to http://www.elkanah.co.za/)

Others are arriving from further away in the Western Cape, such as Hoerskool Stellenbosch, with teacher Daleen Muller.

Both Hoerskool Schoonspruit from the North West Province and Hoerskool Stellenbosch from the Western Cape were provincial winners last month in a travel and tourism award organised by the National Business Institute, and both are coming here this week, so they seem to be thinking along the same lines, despite the hundreds of kilometres that separate them.

TGIF 111

Only one formal school visit to the MTN Sciencentre on Friday, 21 September 2007.

But once again, a group that travelled long and hard to get here.

A group of 111 isiXhosa, Sotho and English speaking students from the rural town of Sterkspruit in the Drakensberg mountains of the Eastern Cape (just 37 kilometres away from the nearest border post with Lesotho) arrived here.

They came from Nomzamo junior secondary school under the guidance of science, technology and maths teacher Tshepo Slater. The school only paid for the transportation, the learners (from grades 6 to 9) paid their own money for everything else.

''It was very educational to our learners and it gave them a chance to manipulate the science exhibits and they enjoyed the laboratory ... they enjoyed everything that was in the MTN Sciencentre,'' said Tshepo Slater.

''It was our first time to be there at the science centre, we have never been to the science centre and I hope to go back in 2009 ... it takes two years to organise the trips. It was very interesting to me, hence I hope I will be coming back.''