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.