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.