Heart it Races

On Saturday Kat and I went out with my cousin Bianca. We went tobogganing! which was silly and fun, and then we went bowling, too.

Saturday night the Lexia gang went to a halloween house party in Observatory (area in Cape Town) thrown by some other American exchange students here. There was lots of food and drinks and jello shots, and there were at TON of people there, about half of which were American (even one from Irvine) and then others from South Africa, Botswana, Angola, Egypt... It was the most fun I've had in a while, and as silly as it sounds, it was really nice to chat with other Americans, partly to share experiences about being in South Africa, but mostly just for the feeling of having a beer and listening to bad american pop music and mingling with boys and girls and feeling somewhat in your own element for a night.

Yesterday we went hiking in the Cederberg mountains and got to see all the ancient rock art paintings from the indigenous Khoi-San people here. Today we went to the Kirstenbosch botanical gardens, which were very very beautiful. It was nice to just stroll around and take a nap amongst the flowers.

Tonight we're throwing a little Halloween party at our place.

Tomorrow we're going... somewhere, who knows anymore. Wine tour? And then out for a traditional African Meal. Thursday we're going on a tour of the peninsula.

Friday starts the program break! Kalahari Desert, Zambia (victoria falls) and Botswana. I am beyond excited.

I don't know if I'm going to get internet again before I leave, so if not... see you in about two weeks. and flood my inbox so I"ll feel really loved and overwhelmed when I get back.

added pics to the last album. here's some:




Obs Party

Team Padkos Strikes Again

So on Friday, five of us played in a soccer tournament for Wellness Day on campus. We were three girls and two boys with limited to no soccer skills (except for Kat), playing against tall, male, soccer warriors who have probably been kicking the ball around since birth. Needless to say it was a bit daunting, but what we lacked in skill we made up for in spirit. Being the underdogs we had our friends, crowd, and even the MC (yes, there was an MC. It was kind of a big deal) cheering for us the whole time. The score was 6-1 (the 1 being a shot they sort of gave to us at the end...) but we did get free shirts, water bottles, and lasting campus fame as those foreign exchange kids (MC suggested we were from Sweden... and one from Japan!) who brought the lesson of spirit and heart in the face of adversity to South Africa. oh, wait...

So, the soccer pics are up. As are pics from the Baxter and pics of Kat, Avril, Avril's Mom, and I playing around with wigs and hats. I love my host family. Here are a few, the rest are on the site:


With the star of The Magic Flute at the Baxter

Team Padkos Cheer Squad

Game Time

Number of Goals Made...

and a random pic of me, ari, and dan being bored before class:

ps. today was the last day of classes. icecream was had.

ps. (not sure why the ps is being used for anecdotal purposes, but here goes)Since the weather warmed up here, I have been getting eaten alive by bugs. Last night I went on a bug killing rampage right before I went to bed. If you had walked past my window at around midnight you would have seen a girl, magazine in hand, flailing wildly at mosquitoes, june bugs, and other flying/biting/generally annoying creatures as she jumped exasperatedly between bed, chair, and desk. Managed to kill seven or eight before giving up and hiding in my bed, the covers pulled up to my chin in defense. (evidence of this strategy not working uncovered in the morning, when definite mosquito bite was found on neck)

GO BOKKE!

Last night we went and saw a production of the opera "The Magic Flute," except it was "African-ized" with Marimbas instead of an orchestra and Xhosa dialogue and other really cool touches. It was so so so so so cool. !!! Really, it was like nothing I've ever seen before and I wish you could have seen it. Afterwards we saw the main guy standing out in the foyer and we were giddy Americans and awkwardly asked him to take his picture with us, which he did. I'll put the picture up sometime.

but the real news is the belated weekend update.

My Uncle Roger, Auntie Caroline, Auntie Rita, Uncle Phillip, Auntie Gail, and Cousin Kyle flew down from Johannesburg and picked me up at school and we went to Hermanus, a beach town at the Indian Ocean known for its many whales during this time of the year.
The weekend was really fun and was characterized by lots and lots and lots of food and lots and lots of alcohol (for me, anyway). On Saturday evening/night alone I think I had about 10 or 11 shots/drinks. yikes! But it was really fun regardless of my semi-permanent buzzed state and we saw lots and lots of whales and the beach was beautiful and the food was tasty and the company was wonderful.
The big event of the weekend was the Rugby World Cup, as South Africa was in the final against England. I'm pretty sure EVERYONE watched the game and it was a big weekend of celebration and general pandemonium. We won 15-6 and it was kind of a big deal. But yeah, anyways. That's the general weekend re-cap if anyone cared and here are some pictures and there's more on my picasa.

mwah.

rapid-fire updates:

• went to afrikaans teacher's other school and watched kids' concert
• ate afrikaans meal in stellenbosch
• went to see AWESOME theater/movement piece on slavery in South Africa called CARGO. Can't gush enough about this.
  
• today took a tour of parliament, also very cool.
  
• this past weekend went to hermanus with the family from johannesburg, which was so so so so so so fun and wonderful. bigger update and pictures to come when time permits.
• for now, random pics of other said events are up.
• currently, in a botswana-planning tizzy.
  

Outside the restaurant lookin' gangsta with my candy cigarette.

Yummy food.

Kat knits, wears cool dresses.

Thats all for now kids. Hermanus update soon.

hey all. put some random pictures up including our trip to kalk baby on sunday, the iziko museum, and district 6 museum yesterday. and as promised, bafana-bafana t-shirt pics.

lately things have been a little slow. working on papers and our proposals for our big research projects coming up. this weekend some family are coming in to cape town from johannesburg and we're going to Hermanas, which is a really nice beach area with whales and things so i'm baie excited for that.

i'm also pumped for our upcoming program break. kat and ariel and i are going to botswana and i couldn't be more excited! more deets later.


Wall Progress

Bafana-Bafana


District 6

Iziko

Procrastination Knows No Borders

So about that whole "avoiding work no longer" thing I was going to do...Papers are even less fun when Claire is not around to share alternating moods of panic and futility and caffeine cravings. And to read my brain and supply the right words.

Yesterday we went to Kalk Bay. We walked around, saw a whale, Whitney got stuck on a wall... We saw an improv theater group. mm... we watched the Rugby World Cup semi-finals game of South Africa vs. Argentina. Springboks won so we are going to the finals. More fun than watching the games is watching our host families go crazy watching them. YEBO!

ok, i have some bafana-bafana shirt pics that i took so i'll try to put them up later. i also have some pictures from today. we visited the company gardens and district six and a few museums.

blah blah i'm really just avoiding this paper i have to write. but i'll avoid it no longer.

and because this post needs a picture:

Langa

ps. send some updates. useless tidbits preferred.

Nippy Scare

Yesterday night Nippy was attacked by the neighbors' two German shepherds and then ran away. We looked for him all over but we couldn't find him but luckily this morning we found him under the couch. He went to the vet and got stitches but he's going to be A-ok. What a trooper. And what a scare, yeesh.

In other news, the group is making some pretty sweet Bafana-Bafana shirts in support of SA's soccer team. we've got yellow shirts and green spray paint and an awesome stencil made by Kat. get ready for an intense fan club.

Right now Ari and I are at Johan's work, bumming internet and laughing at people's casting tapes as he edits them.

ok that's it, really. I didn't have much to say but I thought a post was necessary given the internet access. peace.

Shake Sugaree

Langa and Aquarium pics up.


Baby, our chicken?



Site of N1 Riot.


This is a home. This is millions and millions and millions of people's homes here.

• With the help of our host mom Avril, Ariel has been crocheting and Kat and I have been knitting up a storm. Get ready for scarves. Lumpy, uneven, one-of-a-kind scarves.
  
• whitney made squash pie for canadian thanksgiving on monday (no pumpkin available). it was delicious, in it's own special way. much like our scarves.
• we have a really cool music teacher named Les. He's one of those artsy, age-less types with long, jointy fingers and clear, piercing eyes. He's taught us about traditional "Ghoema" music and even let us play on his drums and what nots. Apparently he's going to help us organize a concert featuring... us (oh dear). We're going to Ghoema-ize some American songs. Suggestions? For more info go to coffeebeans.co.za. Look for Les Javan.

Yesterday we visited the Amy Biehl Foundation and took a tour of the program sites. It was a great trip and we're hoping to volunteer after official classes end in November. The foundation has set up afterschool programs in the Gugulthu township, where Amy was killed. We got to see kids playing marimbas and singing and dancing and it was really amazing. Some of the girls were doing local Pantsula dance which was absolutely unbelievable. It's amazing how in touch people can be with their bodies and I think we were all pretty jealous.

Kaas Kos, Ndingubani?

so here's a smattering of recent updates/excuse to use bullets. still working on uploading the Langa pics and others.
• last week we went to a poetry reading shindig at school. we got to hear poetry from some pretty amazing guest speakers in a ton of different languages, including the "dead" Khoisan language. a lot of the poetry was extremely powerful and i sat through most of the hour with my heart in my throat.
• we have a chicken. named baby.
• on saturday we went to the aquarium with Johan and my cousin Bianca. !!! It was awesome. There was a scant jellyfish collection but it was made up for by some really sweet giant spider crabs. and don't worry, i've already coerced everyone into watching deep sea.
• i've also coerced people into watching This American Life, which my dad has so kindly taped and sent to me. Jealous? I thought so.
• i've been trying to cook for my host family on sunday's (ie: avril puts some ingredients out, asks for a grocery list and brings things back for me to prepare.) last sunday i made a thai peanut sauce with noodles and it turned about pretty well.
• the other night we went to Johan's cousin's house for a brai (barbeque) and toted our signature 5L box-o-wine along (white this time.... and warm. and gross). when we're inebriated we all decide that we are experts in communicating in different languages. between us we had a riveting conversation in german, french, afrikaans, and spanish. and a little bit of xhosa. and english when we had to. i'd like to say it was a pretty impressive and intelligent conversation and without a sober third party to discredit me i'm going to stick with my story.
• our latest assignment in Xhosa class was called "Ndingubani?" or "Who Am I?" which I thought was a pretty existential assignment for a beginning Xhosa class. Unfortunately, with our limited Xhosa vocabulary, who we are is largely determined by pretty weird details. I mean, maybe a Xhosa person really wants to know that I drink coffee, I arrive at school at 9:00 and I do not study Latin, but I doubt it.
• last week i got my confirmation for study abroad at the American University of Paris next semester.
ps. i can check g-mail/facebook but sometimes can't do anything outgoing (sending e-mails, writing on walls, sending messages, etc). but thank you for the bits of love from everyone. south africa is great but there's nothing like home and the people who make it such. Miss you all.

Langa

Today we went on a fieldtrip to Langa, one of the townships in the area. Langa is the oldest Township in Cape Townn, and also one of the smallest, at a population of about 250,000. The largest township in Cape Town and second largest in South Africa is Khayelitsha(first is Soweto in Gauteng), with a population of over 1.3 million.

Townships were formed during apartheid to separate Black Africans from Coloureds and Whites. Housing was built by the government but homes were not built quickly enough and the result was thousands of informal settlements, or houses built out of scrap and wood by people.

In Langa, as in other townships, the level of housing and economic prosperity differs among its inhabitants. Some of the houses we saw housed professionals such as doctors and lawyers, in homes that could cost over R300,000. On the other end of the spectrum were the informal settlements, small shacks often built out of metal and cardboard where people did not even have running water. In between these were small homes, some sleeping up to ten people (about three families) to a single room, with three or four rooms in a house.

During our tour we visited all types of houses, led by a guide from Langa. Our Xhosa teacher, Nkosinathi, also went with us, as he had lived in Langa for 15 years before becoming a student and then a teacher at UWC. In our tour we visited a pre-school where children gave a little singing and dancing performance for us, which was wonderful. Their dancing was unbelievable, but I can confidently say that small children of any culture are for the most party very tone deaf, and very loud when they sing. We also got to eat a traditional Xhosa meal (tripe, "live" chicken, curry, lamb, etc). AND we got the opportunity to practice our Xhosa speaking skills with people, which was also a great experience.

I took pictures and hopefully they'll be posted up for you guys sometime this week.

Salani Kakuhle (stay well)

Bo-Kaap

On Sunday my Aunt Fiona took me and Kat out to Simon's town and then to Boulder's, a penguin colony along the Indian ocean. It was might windy but really pretty and the penguins were waddle-y, as they always are.

Sunday night we went over to Dan's house to watch the USA/ South Africa rugby team. Score-wise the US didn't do too well but we still played pretty well and it was fun to watch.

On Monday we took a field trip to the Bo-Kaap area, formerly known as the Cape Malay French Quarter, a predominantly Muslim area. We went to the museum there and then on a walking tour. It's an absolutely beautiful area, and the streets are lined with these bright, pastel-colored houses that make the neighborhoods feel like big boxes of candy.

FOF Progress

As I mentioned the other day we are working with the ANC Youth League to help tutor students in a nearby township, Guguletu, on Saturdays. Well last Saturday was our first time and we managed to make plenty of friends-over-fifteen. They are all really nice boys and girls who don't mind humoring us and letting us practice or Xhosa with them. They even gave us all Xhosa names.

My Xhosa name is "Thulisa," since that's what they thought I was saying when I introduced myself. "Thulisa," in Xhosa means "silent one." I'll leave you to judge whether it was an appropriate choice.

Anyways, we didn't get much tutoring done as the program is still getting organized, but we did hang out in the school courtyard for awhile, where all of our friends seemed to have an amazing 10+ Xhosa song repertoire, complete with dancing/clapping routines. We stumbled around and tried to follow them but my attempts were pretty abysmal.

Later that night the boys called us up and picked us up in the Student Council Van (pretty sure that's not allowed...) and took us to the campus bar/club hang out, The Barn. After that we went to a nearby Shebeen to get alcohol (Shebeens are homes that sell alcohol after hours, since stores don't sell alcohol after 5 or so. Some Shebeens are legal, some are not. Shebeens are a little sketch but we were with a bunch of locals so it was fine), and then we hung out in one of the students dorms and had a dance party part two. It's a little embarrassing how bad of dancers we are compared to our new friends, but they were pretty nice about it.

Overall the night was random and awkward and a little crazy but it was definitely fun and I'm glad we're starting to branch out more.

Garden Route Trip

so we went on a three day garden route trip the other week-- a nice long roadtrip through cape town along the coast. we drove in a big VW Kombi, equipped with lots of padkos (food for the road) and nine mix cd's from the group.

Day 1: Outdshoorn

On day one we drove to Outdshoorn where we first went to an ostrich farm. We got to take a tour of the farm and then feed and ride the ostriches, which was really amazing and exhilarating. After that we went to the Cango Caves and took the "adventure tour," which consisted of fitting ourselves through very small, slimy cave tunnels coined fun names like "the devil's chimney" and "the coffin." The caves were huge and part of them used to be concert halls until people did too much damage to them. that night we went out to dinner for ostrich steak, which is pretty... steaky.











Day 2: George, Knysna, Bungee!

Day two was mostly scenic driving through hills and along coasts and what not. It was really nice and our final destination was the Bloukrans River Bridge, site of the world's highest commercial bungee jump. I wasn't planning on jumping before we got there, but driving up i got really excited about the whole thing and decided to go for it. they set it up in a way that you don't know when you're going to jump until about one or two people before you, so there's not too much time to get nervous. then you're getting all strapped in and stuff and before you know it your toes are hanging off the edge of a bridge and you're looking into a giant gorge and people are counting down and screaming bungee and just as your clenched toes are leaving the cold cement and you see this great, green, tree-y expanse below you, you think to yourself "i am jumping off a bridge right now." but then it's much too late to do anything about it save enjoy it. which is what i did.

that night we went checked into our rooms at the garden route game farm, had a big big dinner and proceeded to consume a 5 liter box of red wine, apparently a favorite past time of ours.










Day 3: Game Farm, Aloe, Home

We woke up really early for a game drive and got to see elephants and lions and wilderbeast and giraffes and all of that. we also went to a snake farm and i got to hold a half burmese python/ half black mamba snake. then we went to a cheetah park and stood in the same enclosure as the cheetahs, which i didn't find to be the wisest of decisions but it was nice all the same. after that we made a brief stop at an aloe factory and then we set off for the long drive home.







The trip was really great overall and a nice break from school. I don't think I could ever get tired staring out the window of a car here in South Africa, everything is so beautiful. Unless of course I were squished in an eight seater car with ten people. for three days. But really, it was awesome and I wish you all could have come along.

See all the pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/shareatoothbrush

kisses and hugs.