It's prob the same temp in SF right now, and its winter in CT

^^ haha, so true. So like I said in the last post, I have been doing a fair bit of enjoying the good weather this May in between the studying. And if you all don't know, its fall/winter-ish right now, so every beautiful day you really just have to take advantage of.

For example, on Saturday after the biscuit mill, it was so beautiful and actually HOT that me and the girls decided to take a picnic to Kierstenbosch gardens, a botanical garden in Newlands, and it was one of the best ideas we've had in a long time. We went to the grocery store and got some bread, cheese, hummus, guac, chips, cookies and took ourselves to Kierstenbosch.



Its kind of an expensive cab ride, so that wasnt the best, but when we got there it was some kind of botanical holiday (??) and we got in for free! Even more of a great idea at this point...

we just sat and shot the shit for a couple of hours, laughing til we cried (the usual for me) and munched, and enjoyed the natural beautiful scenery Cape Town has to offer. Callie is leaving in less than two weeks, and its been weighing on us a bit.


On a more positive note, finished my 4th exam today!! One more on the 3rd of June, but in between now and then I'll be going on a quick vacation to Durban with 9 of my lovely roommates. Looking forward to some R&R from studying, and enjoying all of SA while I have the time.

ALSO...Sunday night we went to a sushi restaurant called Beluga. It is known for its half priced sushi on sundays and it was a great great great deal for an awesome amount of food, and a great atmosphere. It was actually a really nice restaurant (I dont know what I was expecting) and we just ate our hearts content of raw fish and it was delectable! Here's a quick pic of the five of us, from left to right, Amanda, Jess, Callie, Taryn, and me:

Last Month in CT

Finals are upon us. They are so much worse at UCT than at USF and that is a general consensus for all the kids here, not just me. They count for about 60% of your grade, so everything else you do all semester doesn’t matter at all because if you bomb the final, you are done. A lot of pressure, and all I want to be doing is enjoying the beautiful fall weather here in Cape Town!! (Lets be real-I’m doing a lot of enjoying of the weather as well as studying…)

This past week was full of finals and not so fun things like studying day and night, but it also had some really fun moments. Background: There is a little restaurant right across the street from our house called Hello Sailor, and it is a tiny tiny little place that serves amazing breakfast and lunch, and amazing coffee and our house eats there A LOT so they know us pretty well. We decided that for the end of the year we wanted to have a house formal dinner, so we asked the guys at Hello Sailor if we could have it there, they came up with a Cape Malay style menu with desserts and drinks and it was absolutely fabulous. I had had two finals that day so I was a bit wiped out, but I rallied and made it to dinner only a bit late.
Dinner at Hello Sailor:


Everyone was dressed to the nines, and the food was amazing…for the veggies there was a fruit and lentil dahl with spiced rice, and for the meat eaters was ostrich and a lamb stew and something else meaty. The starter was a potato leek soup, and it was all so delicious! Dessert was milk tart and malva pudding (a South African specialty) that I can’t even describe, but it melts in your mouth and is one of the most delicious things I’ve ever had. They included some traditional South African shots, and we all made it a party. We told funny stories about our house, and then made it back home just in time to take a family picture and then head out to the club hemisphere! Where we saw Wayne Brady….craziness ensued.
Family Photo:


The next day was our friend Nicole’s 21st birthday and she had rented out a boat for a sunset cruise leaving from the waterfront. Drinks were included and we made it there at about 5pm, just before the sun started setting and it really was incredible. Being out on the water looking back at CT with table mountain in the background and green point stadium (where I will be going for the world cup!) with all your friends and the most gorgeous setting…this last bit of my travels in Cape Town is turning out to be quite memorable. Peep the pics…words really don’t do it justice.
Amanda, Dan and I not even posing for this wonderful photo:


Incredible sunset


What am I going to do when the glorious, majestic table mountain isn’t the background to my life anymore?
Amanda and I :

High Class in Cape Town

Blog deliquency...I do realize is not a nice thing. But alas here I am with stories of high class moments in Cape Town. Which if you don't know are few and far between for college students in general, and study abroad even less so.

I mentioned we have bars and razor wire all around our house right? Oh and that one college kid time where I wanted raisins in my oatmeal but didn't have any so I picked them out of my peanut and raisin mix and added them to my oatmeal. Yeah, proves a point right?

Now onto the classier stuff, or as Amanda would say "grown and sexy." This weekend was our roommate Anthony's 21st birthday celebration, so Friday night we went to a club called Assembly and experienced drum and base night...we keep on discovering these new places in Cape Town, perfect time to do it. Then of course we ended up at the biscuit mill, where I just could not pass up the latka with smoked salmon and poached egg with hollandaise sauce AGAIN. So good. Oh and an iced coffee, and a cupcake :)


This pic is at the biscuit mill and just makes me laugh every time I see it because I had just stepped on Jacob's toe (he is to the left of me) so he has a look of pain on his face, I am laughing hysterically of course, Anthony is to the left of Jacob and has witnessed this happen, and Ari on the far left is just doin his own thing. Good pic of some quality roomies.


Saturday night, I went to the Cape Town ballet!! It wasnt the most amazing performance of my life, but there were a couple of dances that blew my mind and a couple that didn't. It was still a great experience, and was classy to the max.

On Sunday, for Anthony's official birthday celebration we went to the Mount Nelson hotel to have high tea. We got dressed up and headed out around 2:30pm in order to make tea. It was from a movie, there were cucumber finger sandwiches, and little personal sized desserts and every kind of tea infused strangeness you could imagine. Plus the grounds were beautiful. Pic is of 14 of the 17 roommates, missing Will, Katie and Lucy!



I have a month left, 5 exams to go, and I feel so strapped for time! I want to see everything I want to see, eat everywhere I want to eat, travel everywhere and do everything. It's a strange feeling...I'm not sure how I'm going to feel about coming home in four weeks.

Mother's Day

To a Mrs. Wendy Boyd Johnson:
Thank you for putting up with 20 years of Ariana Boyd Johnson-ness, and being the best, most patient, understanding, funny, adventurous, spontaneous WONDERFUL mother a girl could ever ask for. I love you so much mom and am so sad that we have to spend mothers day thousands of miles away from each other.

Lion's Head!

So since this is basically the last week of classes, school is getting difficult. Here at UCT you get evaluated before you even take the final, its called "making DP" and if you don't make it you don't get to take the final exam...so you wasted a semester for nothing. I guess this could be personal opinion...but I think that their system is SUPER flawed.

On to other news...last Friday night, a few friends and I climbed lions head to watch the moon rise! It was absolutely fabulous. The hike is only about an hour, but includes like chains and ladders and rock climbing...kind of scary, but it's great. Reaching the top is incredible...you really can't get tired of the views in Cape Town, there is really nothing like them. Here's an idea:



we made it!




Then some sushi was seriously dominated (Asia supermarket in Obs is going to be something I miss dearly when I can only get super expensive sushi back in the states), and then we had a day party!

Our roommates who go to Wisconsin (who are a majority) have this day party thing there called Mifflin, blah blah blah, it was an excuse to have a party, haha. So our amazing roommate Katie made all 17 of us a giant pancake breakfast, that included banana nut, sweet potato (!!!), carrot, chocoalate chip and too much deliciousness. There were also different types of whipped cream that she whipped up and compound butter and did I mention Katie is amazing?? It was a success of a day, and lots of fun, lots of people, lots of ridiculousness...recurring theme right?


There may or may not have been a whipped cream fight. Just sayin.