Off to Gugulethu!

Just a quick update--me and three of my roommates are doing a township homestay this weekend! Today at 4pm, we will be meeting with a group, then going to the township of Gugulethu to meet with the families. We get a tour of the township, eat dinner with them, and then in the morning we go to a church service with them, and then to a braai restaurant called Mzoli's. Which apparently is amazing. My roommates have been before and highly recommended it, they had an amazing time. So I'm excited! I guess Anthony Bourdain had an episode there and god knows I trust that man. Here's a pic of Mzoli's and updates to come soon!

Randoms

In Cape Town...I do not feel like doing work...ever. I feel like school is getting in the way of me living life, which is annoying, and I just cant seem to get anything done in our party house. At school I am very studious, even though I am a huge procrastinator, but it all seems to work out ok. Here, I am concerned for my GPA, but hey, I'm having a great time!

So Stephen's birthday was a lot of fun, we decided to go out in Camps Bay a more ritzy area of Cape Town (my mom is staying here when she comes in a month!!!) and went to a bar/club called Cafe Caprice. We took cabs there, and just had a great time celebrating the day of Stephen's birth with him, and as per usual on a 21st birthday he got wasted out of his mind, and his roommates had to take care of him a bit afterwards, but it was one for the books I'm sure. A few pictures survive and are attached.

I also did SHAWCO this week, its an organization through UCT that tutors and teaches young kids, and high school kids in 5 of the townships surrounding Cape Town. What I do is called KenStep, and it is a program where I teach English, like reading comprehension and punctuation to 5th graders in the neighborhood called Kensington. I actually started last week and had a really really tough time actually. I had every bad kid in the 5th grade, it was SO unorganized, I had about 14 kids to myself who were all hitting each other with notebooks, stabbing each other with pencils, and like a picture in my mind I just see my frantic self sweating, having no semblance of control over any of them looking around at the other tables of well behaved children who are paying rapt attention to their volunteers, and thinking "I never want to come back to this place." So today I was dreading it, but my roommate Taryn switched into KenStep because the program she was doing had too many volunteers and we needed some, and we still had a lot of kids, but they were much better. They even remembered me, and were so excited to see me and it was still chaotic but so much more fun today. Because we still had a lot of kids, we did not really get to teach too much, but hopefully that will calm down even more as the weeks go on.

Another observation about South Africa:
people are so freaking stylish!! People get dressed to the nines to go to class, and are just so effortlessly chic all the time. And, South Africans are a BEAUTIFUL people. Like they are all ridiculously good looking as Derek Zoolander would say. I mean I am just blown away by the fashion here, it is so on all the time and people just look great. I've found a few stores that are exciting here, though 100 times a day I want to ask someone where she got her shoes...its wonderful. I also feel like I want to be like t. He is a blogger who has a fashion blog that is dedicated to going around the world, and photographing people on the streets who are stylish, and I want to do that here...though I think people might think me a creep, haha. So I take imaginary pictures of all the people with incredible style on my campus and around town and file it away for a rainy day. Oh South Africa...how I do love you.

Living the Life

So, here in Cape Town, I am living the life. This week was just another school week, nothing too exciting to mention. Though Wednesday night I finally got to try the Mexican food in CT!! It’s a restaurant called Pancho’s and its right on our street, and it was pretty good, but everything was just s little bit off, haha. Like the chips were a little bit weird, not exactly corn chips, and the guac was a little bit salty (probably for most people’s tastes, but I like salt so that was great), the margaritas were wonderful, but how can you really go wrong there, and I had a mushroom quesadilla that was delectable, and the portions were HUGE, so much food for one person, so I literally had half of my dinner to take home with me, awesome. Then I went out with a few friends in Obs, cuz Wednesday night is Obs night, so our little town is super busy and bars and restaurants are full. We went to the usual, a pool hall called Stones, and had two for one beers and of course saw everyone we know there, haha.

Thursday, I was skipping class to go back to Stellenbosch with Jess to have a follow up appointment on her arm. The head of Two Way Travel (the company that hooked us up with bikes and wine) drove us to Stellenbosch, which is a good 30-40 minutes away, which was so incredibly nice of him, we would have had to take a train if we didn’t do that and well…you get the irony. When we got there, we waited for a bit in the waiting room, and then saw the extremely nice doctor, who proceeded to take Jess’s stitches out of her big wound, and the wound looked great, it was healing really well and the other stitches that were in other places had dissolved, so it was great to see that it was healing nicely. Only 4 more weeks in a sling, and then she is good to go! She even walks around with out a sling, and can fully extend her arm. She is a miracle child. We got back around noon, and were convinced by our roommate Ari that we needed to go to the beach instead of class, so we skipped a second class (only African dance for me) and went to Muizenberg to get pelted by sand and deal with torrential wind storms. I still managed to fall asleep on my stomach and get extremely burnt, haha, and had a delicious meal at a place called Knead there. Then Thursday night is “jug night” at Springboks, a club/bar in Newlands. What jug night means is that you put a R20 deposit on a jug and you can get it filled with whatever you want, pretty dangerous if you ask me, haha. The cool thing about Springboks though is that it was super local, like besides the obligatory couple of kids we run into everywhere, and our house of 17, most of the people were local, which was awesome. There was a great DJ, and it was just really fun dancing, and hanging out with all my favorite roommates and friends.

I did make it to class on Friday, haha at 11 am (I think I’m the only person who has class til 4 on Fridays, and it SUCKS). Had marketing research, astronomy, and business finance, woo hoo. Then I headed home, and made a bee line for my bed because I was so tired I could barely stand it. Slept until almost 7, then got up and roommates had just started coming back from their various fun days at the beach or in Cape Town, whatever. We all kind of decided that we needed to stay in Friday night so that we could go out Saturday and Sunday which is exactly what we did. My friend Stephen and I watched some more episodes of Dexter season 2, so good, I’m hooked.

Saturday we all got up early to head to the Old Biscuit Mill Market, one of our roommates had been talking about it because he went last weekend, and had an amazing time, so we decided to check it out. It’s this open air, shopping, food, antiques, and awesomeness market. It was so chic, the clothes and jewelry were amazing, and the first place we went in to, was an antique store that had independent sellers in it selling the most amazing mixes of olives, cheese, biltong(which is like beef jerky), pestos, and breads. MY HEAVEN. And all these samples, so we walked around the shops first, and then decided to hit the food. There was a whole separate tent for the food, and it was glorious. There were fish sellers, meat sellers, cupcakes, breads, baked goods, mushroom kebabs, I cant even describe the extent of it. There were of course the alcohol venders as well, who were making a killing I’m sure. It was also hotter than hell, so we walked around for a bit, I got a really cute shirt J and then decided to have lunch and head home. So I got a falafel with hummus, onions, fried cauliflower, cucumber, all so good, and a drink called a mule, that was half vodka, strawberry pulp, ginger ale, soda water, and lime and a mint, very good and very strong. After that we decided that we should head home and get ready for the rugby game we were going to! Two way travel hooked us up with rugby tickets to a regional game, the Stormers (who we were supposed to be rooting for) against the New South Wales Warratahs. So we came home, and were all so sweaty and ridiculously hot, took some cold showers, put on our rugby attire, and headed to another student house to have a few beers before the game. The thing was that there chill area was outside, so we were just as hot there…not the best. Then we all met in Rondebosch to make it to the game together, we actually walked to the Newlands stadium from there, and then got to the game!







We were about an hour early, so we decided to get beers (duh). Now this was funny, the basically put you in a holding cell to drink beers, you cannot take them out into the stands at all, so you are in this ugly painted brick cell essentially drinking beers and then you get to go outside and watch the game once you’re done, haha. Of course, I only saw about 5 minutes of the rugby game, but that was fine, I had a lot of fun anyways. After the game, we headed home but were so hungry that we stopped at one of our favorite locations, the Asia supermarket in Obs to get some Pad thai for cheap cheap cheap. So we got some food, and then my roommate Ari and I decided to go out and get a beer, Obs happened to be one happening place last night. So we went to a bar called Scrumpy Jacks, and had a beer, then came home to find our roommates having a dance party in the kitchen. What an awesome thing to come home to! So we definitely joined in, haha, and then all just passed out from being in the sun for so long and having such a fun day. It was incredible. Tonight is our friend Stephen’s 21st birthday!! At midnight that is, so we’re getting classy and were going to Camps Bay to celebrate. More stories to come soon!

So as I said I would not be a procrastinator on my blog…and I always have ideas that would be great to write, but it just seems that I just don’t seem to find the time. So I will not exhaust you with another super long post, just short updates on what I’ve been doing for the past week!!

So Jess’s parents came to visit her to make sure that she was doing well (which she is, she is doing GREAT) and we got to meet them which was wonderful. They were so much fun, the first night they were here they took a group of us, which is never a small number, out to amazing sushi at a place in Obs called 1890, and it was so good. Dinner and drinks, they were just so glad to meet us and see Jess that they wanted to take us out all week! So the next night we were going out to a club called Hemisphere, which is at the top of a building in downtown Cape Town and so we went to Long street with the Halperns’ to this place called Café Royale, and words don’t even describe. They kind of specialize in gourmet burgers and it was AMAZING. Hands down the best veggie burger I’ve ever had. In. my. Life. It was actual ground soy meat, topped with caramelized onions, garlic aoli, relish, pickles, onions, and the softest roll accompanied by sweet potato fries. Amazing. (Sorry I’m foodie-ing out on you, haha but its necessary). Then Hemisphere was awesome too, the view alone is great, and its fun to dress up around here every once in a while. The next night was the Halpern’s last night and they took us to a really nice dinner on the Victoria and Alfred waterfront, which is super touristy, but kind of awesome, and to a place called Belthezar, which claims to be the biggest wine bar in the world…right up my alley right? Haha, so we all had appetizers of fried camembert, calamari, oysters, and a shrimp and avocado cake and that was absolutely scrumptious as well. Then our main meals were all extremely fresh fish, caught that day, and accompanied by the Pinotage wine, which is a blend between a Pinot Noir and an Hermitage, and the grapes are unique to South Africa (I learned this on the wine tour before Jess’s accident). Followed by another night out…Cape Townians know how to party like nobody’s business.

I told you about my crazy landlord right? Well he has all these friends who work for him, and one of the guys who is always around our house Andrew, lives in a township about 15 minutes from Cape Town called Nyanga, and he and his family were hosting a braai there, and all of the kids in the houses that our landlord owns were invited and we all decided to go. We had an orientation for a service organization at our schools called SHAWCO and then in the boiling hot afternoon sun we all met up at the Obs train station and took buses, one of which just blasted dance music the entire time to Nyanga and to Andrew’s house. When we got there his sister was cooking up a storm and the braai was going with incredible scents coming from both the kitchen and the braai outside. We kind of just hung around outside, managed to get a cool drink because it was hotter than hell, and after a while kids and neighbors just started emerging from their homes and wanting to hang out with us. The kids mostly, they just LOVED us, and everyone had a child hanging on their back or on their shoulders and in love with them and following them around the whole day, it was a lot of fun to play with them all. A pick up game of soccer started and people were just drinking and eating and having themselves a really good time.

I was trying to figure out why braai’s are so different from barbeques back home, and the South African’s just know how to kick it way harder than we do, haha. Everyone is content just hanging out in the street, drinking beers, eating delicious homemade food, and there is just such a greater sense of community in the neighborhood braai’s than in American barbeques. I was so tired from the night before that I don’t feel like I got to experience it fully, but fingers crossed I will get another opportunity to drink and hang out and play soccer and experience it to its greatest extent. The funny thing is that we were actually warned in orientation that everyone will have profile pictures with little black babies running around and all that, and there are many of those photos, but whatever. They were great little kids.

Sunday was a recovery day, and today we started school again. I FINALLY got some textbooks, and am hunkering down for another week. I honestly feel like school is getting in the way of my experience here, haha, hopefully that will change. Oh so here are some pics, and I am too impatient to label them but there are pics of a juice box that was just so funny it says “apple or pear or grape & apricot” juice…what??? Hahah, there are too many “or’s” in that sentence, it just cracked me up, and its next to my little V-day gift from my excellent roommate Callie :) The others are of our house Valentines day dinner, of salmon, and roasted eggplant, mushrooms, onions, and stuffed peppers…so good. And of course me with the Halpern family, I had to get a picture because they were that fun…haha.

Oh, and I GOT WORLD CUP TICKETS!!!!)!(#*$!)&#%)(* I didn’t think I wanted them, and then everyone was excited to get theirs, and I had to apply. So last Tuesday I applied, and found out today that I will be attending the France v. Uruguay game on June 11, the first day of the games in Cape Town. Happy birthday to me right?!?

My dear lil Jessica

So as I previously mentioned, we had a little freak accident on our bikes and wine tour yesterday. As we were leaving the winery, and heading to the second one, Jessica was at the back of the group with our other roommate Amanda, and the rest of us were at least 100 yards ahead of them and one other girl. So we had gotten to the next winery, and were all waiting out front for the rest to catch up. The last girl got a flat tire, and the guide who was in the back of the group was helping fix her flat tire, while Jess was by herself and about to cross some train tracks. So Jess was concentrating really hard on biking, Amanda was ahead of her and had already crossed the tracks, and a train was coming. The trains here make really different sounds, and it was really quiet, so Jess didnt hear it, and it clipped her arm. She was so shocked, and fell off of her bike, and then realized that her arm was hurt really really badly. It was cut down to the bone, lots of skin was taken off, and her arm was broken in half. As most of us were across the street we had absolutely NO idea what was going on.

Amanda and the other girl with the flat tire were screaming for help, the guide who was in the back was already attending to her wound. Across the street we didnt know how serious it was, so a few minutes later Taryn and I ran over to see what had actually happened. There was a lot of blood, and the guide was holding gauze to her arm, and Jess as brave as can be warned us and said that if we couldnt handle blood we needed to leave, and that her arm was like jello and that she had a large wound. There was blood and pieces of skin all over the sidewalk, the emergency vehicles were called and Jess was in a lot of pain. Taryn was absolutely amazing and just got in there, holding her hand, her friend Stephen was calling his parents and her parents to let them know what had happened, and Jess was just the biggest trooper of them all. She was still making jokes, and completely coherent the entire time, she was thanking us all for being there with her, and was just generally amazing. Once the emergency vehicles got there it got to be kind of a zoo, there at least 8 of them, and all these passersby who stopped to see if she was okay. Jess was put on a stretcher, and taken to the Stellenbosch hospital with Stephen along with her in the ambulance. We were left there in shock.

Taryn and Amanda decided that they wanted to go to the hospital to be support for Jess and Stephen, and Jacob and I stayed to finish the wine tour. I really did not think I could handle sitting in the ER, I thought that someone would have to comfort me and that would have been the worst possible situation. So Taryn and Amanda had to wait for one of the guides girlfriends to come pick them up, take them home to get things for Jess including her insurance for abroad, then ended up taking a train back to Stellenbosch. Jacob and I solemnly (and not willingly on my part) finished the bike tour. I did not drink any more wine, the bike ride was extremely hard, mountain biking that none of us were prepared for and frankly we could not enjoy it. We were getting constant updates from one of the three who were with Jess, and from the guides we were with as well. Jess's friend Stephen was really the most amazing person of the day, only second to Jess. He went to the hospital with her, he had to call her parents and tell them the news, he had to sit in the ER all day by himself until Taryn and Amanda got there around 5pm, he had to pay for all of the services on his credit card, and Jess is his best friend, I can only imagine how the whole experience affected him.

So Jess had surgery almost immediately, after x-rays to repair the compound fracture in her upper arm, she had a screw and a nail put into her humorous bone. Stephen, Amanda and Taryn got to see her after surgery, and even though she was a little drugged up, I think this was the best part of it. As Stephen tells the story, all three of them felt so much anxiety and fear going into Jess's room, but she was in SUCH great spirits when they saw her. She was smiling her giant Jess smile, and just handled the situation better than I think anyone else could. She got to talk to her parents after surgery, and then she spent the night in the hospital.

All of our roommates came together, and Jacob and I told them the situation, what had happened etc, and we really just had to wait for Taryn and Amanda to come home to hear how she actually was. We were still getting constant updates from one of them by phone. I had terrible anxiety all day, and once they were home and told us the good news, that they had seen her and that surgery went well, a wave of relief came over me. Jess is EXTREMELY lucky. The doctor said that he has never seen anyone get hit by a train and survive the impact, Jess is a miracle, and her good spirit and attitude makes me admire her so much. She was spared, and she should be, she is a living miracle.

Today, Taryn, Amanda, Stephen, our other roommate Callie and I all went to the hospital to visit her and she was in even better spirits. We spent the afternoon laughing with her about the accident, and laughing in general, and it was wonderful to see her doing so well. Taryn, Amanda and Stephen are all such amazing friends who had a really rough, trying day, all to be there for Jessica, they are such amazing people. She will be home Tuesday morning, and I cannot wait to have her back!! There is such an absence in our house of 17 without her. I love you Jess!!

Catch Up

Catch up

So I have been deliquent on my blog, which is not acceptable because I end up writing insanely long posts that are daunting in their length, haha. So I’m gonna try to keep this one on the shorter side.

So on Thursday, me and my roommates Taryn, Jess, Amanda, Callie, and Jacob and our friend Stephen trekked to Long street, which is a party place at night, to see what it was like during the day. There were so many cute shops! But since I’ve been here, I’ve gotten really good at dividing by 7 because that’s how much the price difference is, like if something is R350 (350 rand) then it would be $50. Also, I’ve become extremely cheap, haha. So I’ll see a dress or something for R350 and I will be like this is SO expensive! When I would totally drop $50 at home on any little thing from Anthropologie. Funny right? Anyways, so Long street had this awesome open air market, and we walked around it for so long, all the booths kind of had the same thing, or a variation on a theme, but the sellers were so aggressive, like really. If you even looked at their products, or touched anything then they would jump up, come over and try to bargain with you, potentially get mad at you, it was kind of strange. Oooooh, we also had lunch at this restaurant called Fork, on Long street, which was tapas, but not Spanish tapas, because I am not a fan of Spanish tapas, so lots of little plates. Me and my roommate Taryn shared little fried goat cheese balls, on top of carmelized onions and a sundried tomato crisp…it was so delicious, and asparagus wrapped in parmesan and filo dough, and some roast broccoli and it was so wonderfully delicious, just ignited all of my foodie senses!

After Long street we just needed to get home because we were all so tired, so we sat in traffic in a cab for about an hour, and then made it home, had a little lie down and Jess and I went on a run, and then all the roomies came home from their respective places and we all kind of hung out and drank some wine, and just kicked it. Its so fun to live with so many people J

Friday was the first day of class! My schedule problems were miraculously worked out and it was posted on PeopleSoft, our schools version of Blackboard. Plus I was in one extra random class, so that made me feel better. I went to school early with all my roomies so I could figure out where my classes were, because you have to go to the department of your major to see where your classes are…backwards? I think so. Anyway, I got there about 9 and I didn’t have class until 12 so I got to get a few things I needed to do out of the way. I had to go to the dance department and find out when our African dance class starts, and went to check out our schools gym, since we all got gym memberships. Then I headed down to the town of Rondebosch to try to return this converter that I may or may not have broken, but it cost me R250 so I was gonna try anything. I walked in there and they asked me like 2 questions and then just gave me R250 in cash…haha, TIA. Then I went to my first class, which was Astronomy, it seems pretty cool, not really my thing, but it was alright. Then I was done because it was a Tuesday schedule, so I found some peeps and we all had lunch at school then went to the beach! Muizenberg…which is not my favorite beach, but its the best beach to surf at, and people wanted to surf so that’s where we ended up.

Friday night, our friend Stephen had a braai (barbeque) at his house, so we all went over there. Two of his roommates have been here since last semester, and one goes to my school, so they knew how to throw a legitimate braai. They had DELICIOUS salad sides, and cous cous and pasta salad, and it was lovely. I brought the vegetarian braai sausages of course, and it was just a lot of fun. Then people went home to drink and then go out on the town, but me and some of my roomies were doing a bike and wine tour in Stellenbosch the next day, so we decided to stay in that night and get our rest.

6:30am on Saturday, we met with our bikes n’ wines group, and took a train to Cape Town, and then another train to Stellenbosch to get to our destination. Stellenbosch is beautiful, its wine country, so its very similar to Napa valley, and Sonoma county and such. We were all so tired that we slept on the train, and were all so delirious and hilarious and we were having so much fun together. So we get our bikes, and then get to the first winery…and we realize that this ride is not gonna be a piece of cake. This ride is going to be hard, haha. We stopped at a winery called Welmoed, and tried about 6 different wines, and were even more giggly after that because we had eaten breakfast so long ago. So when we were headed to the next winery, my good friend and roommate Jess got into a freak accident, it was awful, but she is okay, and a post to come later on that.

The rest of the day was a blur, Jacob and I were the only ones who stayed on the bike tour, and it was really hard to enjoy, unfortunately few pictures are involved from this day too because of the accident, but heres a few. So we went to three wineries and a brandy distillery, which was interesting. So these pics are from the our day on Long Street, the braai, and bikes and wine.

Kayaking

So unfortunately, no pictures exist from our kayaking adventure, but it was so much fun!! Me and four of my lovely roommates got up early, we had to meet at 730am which was very new for us. We met on campus, then took a train to Fish Hoek (where the shark ate someone two weeks ago) and then a bus to Simon's Town, which seemed very British. It kind of reminded me of Gibraltar, that rock in Spain that is a British territory, kinda different.

From there, we met a guide who was giving us instructions on how to kayak, but my roommate Taryn and I had to use the restroom, so we didnt hear them...and we paid the consequences. So we set out, and Taryn was the "captain" and I was the "navigator" so she was in back and I was in the front, and we struggled so hard, hahah. We were so far behind everyone else and our guide was yelling at us that we were paddling wrong, and that Taryn needed to steer better, haha, and we were just cracking up and we were going straight into the wind, it was kind of difficult. FINALLY we got the hang of it, and were able to kayak with the others who were kayaking and it was so much fun.

We got all wet, the kayaks were open, so we were completely drenched, and we got to see the penguins! They were the same penguins we saw the first time, but from a very different angle. Then we stopped at a beautiful little cove and layed out a bit, some people went into the water, but it was really really cold, so I just enjoyed the sun. On the way back it was much easier, and Taryn and I did much better, haha.

After that we had lunch on the waterfront, delicious calamari, and headed back to Obz, we were so beat from the day that we all took naps when we got home and made dinner and then decided to hit up Long street again. It was a Tuesday so it wasnt the biggest night to go out, but our roommates broke it down on the dance floor in a bar called Jo Berg, again...so much fun. And yesterday we went to school to finish signing up for clubs, and we met up with our new South African friend Jethro and went back to that ridiculous mall for a bit. Had another interesting mini bus ride (something funny always happens on those) and my roommate Jess and I went on a run, and then we went out in our own little neighb Obz last night.

We have become locals in this little tiny dive bar called the corner bar that is literally a block away from our house. Everyone in there is a local, they are open til 4 am and then sell samoosas...needless to say someone from our house is always there. So last night I got to talking with two South African guys about everything in Cape Town at the Corner Bar, and they wanted to know about Obama, and healthcare, and what its like to go to school in the states, and they told me I have to go to Stellenbosch, and do the Garden Route and all sorts of cool stuff. Oh South Africans...they are wonderful. So since no pics exist from kayaking, heres a pic of my excellent partner Taryn and I, and some mini bus pics...they arent the best, but I'll get a good one soon enough. School starts tomorrow!!

Running? No way

So I am not a runner. Anyone who knows this knows how much i HATE running. But here in South Africa, I'm being very very open minded and doing all sorts of new things. Two of my roommates and I went for a run around Obs yesterday, and it was actually nice. There's not like a gym here, so we gotta do what we gotta do.

The funny thing about it is that people stare at us like we have 3 heads, like we are the craziest people around. Everyone we run by has comments like "get fit get fit!!" or today I got "Chop Chop!" haha, and "we support runners." I'm sure South African's work out...I'm just not sure they run, maybe they work out in gyms? It has yet to be determined, haha, but running definitely gets us some looks, some claps, some honks, and lots of stares.

The other portion of today was filled with getting our ID cards...which...well TIA. My roommates and I had the bright idea to run to school, and then get our stuff and run back, but Africa time thwarted us yet again, haha. We actually started at the medical school, because someone told us we could get our ID cards there, but we went to place to place to place and people told us that we needed to go to campus to get them, so we headed there. It was also plaza week, where all the clubs have tables out in the quad area and are promoting their clubs, but this is not like at any other school. The kids here pay for their club experiences, so they are WAY more legit than ours. There was a hiking club, surfing, capoeira, jiu jitsu, rowing, basketball, soccer, rugby, charity organizations, yoga clubs, hip hop club, the radio station on campus, intellectual clubs, religious clubs, atheist clubs, film club, they have everything really. And because you pay you get so much more for your club experience.

My roommates and I joined the SHAWCO, which is a charity organization and will be joining the hiking club, and I might be joining the wine and culture club ( you guys know how I enjoy my wine). The other cool thing was that as an international student I get 3 free clubs, that the international department pays for, so thats really cool.

So back to ID cards...we waited 1.5 hours, which is less than some other people we talked to, and we met a cool South African boy who really helped us figure out what we were supposed to do after that, and some Zimbabweans who were enrolling in UCT for opera, who just loved my California drivers license, haha, they thought it was so cool, and asked us to take them to the states when we left. After that we had to go to a computer lab to see our schedule online (online?!?! this was big). But all my friends are humanities faculty (which means department here) and I am commerce faculty (which means business). So I had to go to the commerce computer lab to see my schedule. Where I figured out I am only enrolled in two classes....and told that I need to come back friday to see about my others, but school starts on friday. So Friday should be an interesting day. And this was probably the first real frustration I have had about the education here, so I guess thats saying something. Anyways, tomorrow we go sea kayaking with penguins! Early, so that will be fun, and hopefully I can bring my camera to this event, cuz I would hate to miss the kodak moments that are sure to present themselves. Until then!