Time flies

     It's hard to believe I have been here for over a month. This is the longest I have ever been out of the country. It has really flown by. It seems like I've been here my whole life practically. It probably helps that I wasn't very busy before I left. This experience has been great so far. The group I'm with are a bunch of exciting people. No one wants to sit in the house and do nothing. We've done some exciting trip every free minute. It's funny because everything is still such an adventure that even taking a 10 minute bus ride to a big grocery store can be fun. Hopefully, the next 3 months don't go as quickly though. I don't want this adventure to end!
     I finished my first full week of service. It was amazing. I got to know the school age kids really well. They are a super diverse and lively bunch. It really does make an interesting dynamic having first graders in the same classroom as eighth graders. The teacher has me go work with the little kids learning to count, spell, etc. I had to explain division to a girl and I think I just confused her. I'm horrible at math and apparently, that includes third grade math. In my defense, the teacher lets them use calculators and I'm trying to explain it to them the way I vaguely remember being taught. I also couldn't understand a boy when he was saying his name and I was writing it in dot letters for him to learn how to spell. I think I may have given him a slight identity crisis..
     We have a long weekend right now. South Africa celebrates Women's Day, so no service or classes on Tuesday. South Africa is one of those countries that has a billion public holidays that everyone has off. It's strange though because the primary and high schools all have Monday off as well. A four day weekend rarely happens at home, I feel like. This is also coming from the girl who had the most snow days of her life once she got to college. Everyone here is planning their spring breaks. It's weird to think of spring break in general because at GW, that would mean more practice and some meal money. Here, it means "cheapest safaris in SA" or "all inclusive trip to Mozambique." Or for those of us on a stricter budget, googling "cheapest rental cars" to do the Garden Route, a coastal driving route that has a lot of cool activities to do. It's the first week of September, so for all the American teachers and students still studying at home, you'll just be starting. If my mom doesn't come during spring break, then I'll brave the open road and visit various beaches along the eastern coast of SA and, hopefully, swim in the Indian Ocean!
     This weekend, we went to a market in Bo-Kaap. It was exciting because one of our tour guides from a few weeks ago saw us and was so happy we could make it. Unfortunately, it was the least exciting markets I have been to since coming here. Afterwards, we took a train (first class...5 rand) to a beach town yesterday. I had fish and chips and it was amazing. I walked into some really great beachy stores and I got excited to think my summer is just starting again. Almost, it's still really chilly here. Today, we went to a market near the Green Point Stadium, where the World Cup was. The taxi driver said he was driving some Asians around and they said after their 2008 Games, a bunch of the stadiums were torn down and the materials and land were re-used. Cape Town spends millions of rand a year to maintain the structure while they are installing public bathrooms in the townships for people to use as their main toilet.  It seems like a lot of people wish the World Cup had helped them financially a lot more than it ending up doing. The market was amazing. It's been my favorite one thus far. I bought a beautiful painting and want to go back to buy some more.
     Here are some pictures from this week. Hope you enjoy

My new friend, Cole, and I sitting in the circle before class starts. The teacher tries to make light of the kids' illness in order to keep them happy. When they have to get their blood drawn, she says they're visiting the vampire.

Sara and the boy I gave the identity crisis to. His name is Ayubulela

Harry Potter appreciation is universal, naturally.

This girl, Asive, is going home this Friday. She can be a bit of a diva sometimes.

A picture of the beach we went to on Saturday, Kalk Bay. I can't wait to go back there when it's summer!

And here is a picture of one of our mini-bus adventures. They are always interesting

Hakuna Matata

     I know The Lion King takes place in Kenya, but I'm still on the same continent so I feel connected to it still! The running joke here is that all foreigners (aka Americans) expect to see lions as soon as they step off the plane. Anyways, I watched and realized that the theme for my past weekend was close to Timon and Pumbaa's life motto. It was our first free weekend since beginning the program and we managed to still pack it pretty full.
     On Friday, I somewhat finalized a service schedule. It's nice to finally have something concrete. I'm going 4 days a week from 2-5 hours a day, coming out to about 20 hours a week. As of now, I'll be working with the children who are too young to go to school, but still need to be stimulated in some way. Basically, I'm going to research engaging activities that small children do in preschools and pre-kindergartens. I'm also going to see if I can do an after school program with the older kids because they are free from 2PM until dinner. That may be too much though. We'll see! (see my use of hakuna matata there?)
     Saturday morning, we went to Old Biscuit Mill. For all you locavores, it is heaven! I have actually never seen so much good food in one place. It's not quite like a farmers' market because most of the food is already prepared, but it's like a farmers' market restaurant type of thing. They also have some really great and unique clothes, shoes, blankets. Those come with your typical farmers' market price though. But, my group and I decided we're going back there every Saturday because the food was amazing! I had an eggplant sandwich that the woman said would change my life, and it did. I finally found an eggplant product that I liked!
     Saturday afternoon, we went to the Waterfront. I don't think I will ever get sick of that place. We took a minibus, which is a super cheap taxi. It's cheap because they squeeze 30 people into about a 15 passenger van. They have a guy who sits behind the passenger seat and yells out the window to people on the sidewalk. It's mayhem. Here is a video of a relatively tame one, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPeJkw8koZo&feature=related. I'll try to take a Flip one myself. Minibusses are super cheap. It's about a 15 minute drive from the Waterfront back to our house on the UCT campus. The 10 of us hired and it only cost me 7 rand, or about a dollar.
     Sunday, we decided to hike Table Mountain. This trip really put to test my hakuna matata-ness. For those of you who are lucky enough to be a Riley (or a rower), you know that we don't do anything that late in the morning. For those lucky to have my Dad as a father, you certainly know that starting a hike close to noon just won't go well. For those of you lucky enough to have a brain, you know that hiking without a map is just plain stupid. Well, we didn't start our hike until noon and our directions were written on a scrap piece of paper that included things like "turn at the square house." We also started the hike off by going down a path. I had given up finding Table Mountain long before any of this. However, our detours led us to some zebras and I got to see an exciting arrest over the illegal picking of Table Mountain National Park flowers. We didn't get to Table Mountain and some of us only got a little bit up Devil's Peak. Luckily, we still have a teensy bit longer here.
Here is a picture of the tables at Old Biscuit. They're old doors! And they had hay stacks with turf around tables for people to sit on outside!

The remnants of my crepe. And the ever present Exeter Cycles water bottle that doesn't leave my side.

Did I mention that while at the waterfront we saw The Real Houswives of Atlanta filming their vacation episode? I don't watch the show, but will keep an eye out for this episode

And here are the zebra we saw. I got too excited and forgot to zoom in all my pictures, but if you look in front of the second tree from the left you'll see one. *Note to self, don't wear tight white jeans..

I'm going to try to update this a little more often in order to stop this novel writing that I'm doing. For most of you it's summer and you should be outside enjoying the beautiful weather. At least when I'm writing this, it's in order to avoid some homework!

School's out for the summer-NOT

     So, it's July and I have just finished my third day of class. This whole switching of seasons thing is finally catching up to me. It's been cold since the weekend and it even snowed in South Africa. I'm slowly getting used to the no heat in buildings. It seems like the only way I can really be warm inside is to be in the shower. But the water here can be scalding one second and then frigid the next. It's an exciting part of Africa!
     Over the weekend, we went to High Africa. It's this ropes course and conference center. I didn't really feel like I was in Africa. It was a really American concept; team building and meetings. It was fun though. I hadn't been out of the city yet and the drive up to the center was one of the most beautiful drives. There was a tunnel that cut through a massive mountain. It was also so cold up there that I had on all the clothes I had packed for the whole weekend at once. We had to get all 10 of us across various low ropes right after we got out of the van. We're a group of talkers, so that was pretty interesting. On Saturday, we had a whole bunch of expectations workshops. We talked about what we thought before we arrived, during orientation, and all that fun stuff.
     We also decided what sites we're going to do our service at. I'm working at the Brooklyn Chest Hospital, probably with little kids. CIEE has been sending students to this site for 3 semesters now, so there is a good relationship between the two organizations. Last semester, one of the girls set up a Buttons for Hope program. The adults at the hospital have lots of free time, so once a week, a man named Jonathan comes in and makes really simple jewelry with them. The buttons are donated to the program and he sells the products for 10-50 rand. We worked with the adults for about 3 hours and I personally made about 7 necklaces. All the money goes towards improving something more sustainable than just giving the patients the profits. Last semester, the money went towards buying educational toys for the children's wards.
     Today, I just played with little babies. One of them, Zulu, called me auntie and was really interested in my sweatshirt's drawstrings. He also tried to take my necklace. Another little girl would go down the slide and she loved when I swung her up over my head. I don't know that much about TB, but the kids seemed like perfectly happy and healthy kids. I heard some wheezing, but nothing out of the ordinary.
     The hospital's staff try really hard to keep the kids active and maintain a sense of normalcy in their lives. Kids in the TB hospital can stay for any time from 2 months to a year, while most adults stay for over a year. The kids go to school and have after-school programs and can go home on the weekends. The adults just kind of hang out around their wards. I don't think they can really leave the hospital to see their families or have jobs. TB is more contagious with adults than with kids. Whenever I'm inside and around adults, we both wear masks. With the kids, we don't need masks. That's why I like working with them. We're also not allowed to work with the adults. I just wish they had more to do..
     My classes are going well so far. I'm taking Social Research Methods, which will be really useful to use at our service sites and the creation of our projects. I'm also taking Poverty and Development and Afrikaans. Poverty and Development should be a really interesting course that "covers everything all over the world." Anna, our teacher, seems really cool and very passionate about the advocacy work she does. I decided to take Afrikaans because it's more what they speak at my service site. And the schedule seemed much better. So far, I've learned about a history of the language. It was used by the apartheid government to oppress non-whites, but it was also a slave language. Quite complex. Suzalle is a great teacher because she is so interactive. We've watched youtube videos about the music scene. She is all about teaching us about the culture of Afrikaans.
     Here is a picture of the view from High Africa

Here is a picture of some cute kids who followed us around the township. Joel calls her Crusty Girl.

And, lastly, here is a picture of us on the boat back from Robben Island

Robben Island, Take Two

     Yesterday, I went back to Robben Island for the second time in a week. It was actually better this time around. CIEE hires a tour guide for us to do things around Cape Town and Thabo took us to Mzoli's Restaurant on Sunday and around Langa. He also ran the tour of Robben Island. The island is a half hour ferry ride away, and then you drive around in a big bus for about an hour and stop and get out to take pictures, and then you arrive at the prison where you get to see Madiba's cell. Our ex-inmate this time was a lot more interesting. He was accused of sabotage and terrorism because he was a part of the ANC's army. He was on the Island from 1983-1990.
     We also visited Parliament. South Africa has 3 capitals and Cape Town is the legislative capital. We got to sit in on a committee session for about 20 minutes. If you read Mandela's book, this is the building where he secretly negotiated with President de Klerk to end apartheid and release all the political prisoners. I kind of missed my iPhone while I was watching everyone on their Blackberries and iPhones. I enjoy my old school phone though. It doesn't even have a vibrate setting or a color screen. If I get mugged, they will give me back my phone..
     This weekend, we're going on our "Expectations Weekend" with CIEE. We're going an hour out of Cape Town to cabins and ropes courses where we'll conquer our fears. Kind of corny, but still really cool. I like a good ropes course every now and then.

We had a welcome dinner for the entire CIEE Cape Town program at Moyo's, a vineyard in Stellenbosch. This is my service learning group. We got our faces painted at dinner.

Why hello there!

     Long time, no talk. In case I haven't mentioned it before, the internet here is really expensive and my new house doesn't have it unlimited...yet. For now, I'm walking to cafes, buying some delicious hot chocolate, and using up megabytes left and right. Soon, that will all change. After spending a couple of days in a 4 star hotel, we moved into our house for the semester. 10 people, 9 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms. I volunteered with another girl to share a room. It's massive. Bigger than my parents' closet. It's great!
While we were at the hotel, we just had some meetings and watched Titanic. And we went to see Harry Potter on Wednesday night for $3! I think I'll leave my opinions on that alone and just reflect on the general amazingness of it. We moved into our house on Friday and began to visit some of the project sites that we'll be working at over the next 4 months.
     I came here wanting to work in Yabonga, an HIV/AIDS clinic for children affected and infected with the virus. However, we visited a TB hospital and something there just clicked with me. There are so many opportunities for different projects within the confines of the hospital. The children get shut away from the rest of the world, so there are many different ideas I came up with to maintain some sense of normalcy for them. Funny how things work out. Nothing is set in stone until this weekend though.
     The last few days, I have toured Bo-Kaap, a Malay community set slightly above Cape Town, and visited Langa, the oldest township in the Western Cape. Bo-Kaap is becoming an expensive and trendy place to live with bright little houses. Usually, if you google image Cape Town, Table Mountain and Bo-Kaap show up. That's not the case with Langa. Along one road, I saw shacks without doors and small gated houses. Our tour guide called these houses Langa's Beverly Hills. You needed to have a good imagination. I also tried some traditional South African beer on the tour. It's brewed by the women and drunk by the men. It was passed around in a big bucket and I felt like I was at a vert strange church service. I don't like beer and this was no exception.
     Tomorrow, I'm going back to Robben Island and then this weekend, we're going an hour out of the city to do some ropes courses and stuff like that. Classes and service work starts Monday. As soon as my house gets uncapped internet, I'll be posting up pictures from the last two weeks. It's so hard to believe I have been gone for 2 weeks already. I feel like I should be coming home any day now. Luckily, I have 4 more months! I'm just excited to get into a routine and jump into my service project.

   For now, in case you all have forgotten what I look like. This is a picture of me from Robben Island with Devil's Peak on the left then Table Mountain.

And so it begins..

Today, I left my wonderful hostel for the luxury of having a private bathroom, electronic key, and one roommate. She is arriving tomorrow sometime, so I have my own room tonight! Oh, and chocolates on the pillow. A step up, I must admit. My program officially began today and I met almost everyone. There are 10 people with 4 of us from GW. Everyone seems very nice and so eager to begin. I am so happy to finally meet them. I met 3 of the girls today when I was checking in and we went to Green Market Square. A vender was a very good salesman, but at the end we promised to come back on our last day, November 15. He was trying to sell us little hippos. He said us that because our "green papers" said "In God we trust" that he "trusts in us!"
We briefly went over the plan for the next couple of weeks because classes don't begin until 25 July. Surprise, surprise, we're going to Table Mountain sometime in the next few days. I'm becoming a regular there. A good place to be known! We're going on a tour of a township as well. If the weather keeps up, we'll go down to the Cape of Good Hope, the most southern tip in Africa, and where the Indian and Atlantic Oceans meet. Maybe I'll even get to see some penguins. Tomorrow, we're just having some more meetings and we'll be able to buy a cell phone. Besides Junior 4 Point at Gould (8 days in the winter woods), this is the longest I have gone in a long time without a cell phone. It's been nice, but frustrating at times. If I want to know the name of a song on the radio at home, I can just hold my phone up and it identifies the title and artist. If I want to know something quickly, I can just google it. Not here! I won't have a smart phone here, just a little one to text my friends here.
Tonight, we went out to dinner and it was fun trying to figure out the rand to dollar conversions. It's getting a little easier, but still so much harder than the euro. I'm looking forward to learning even more about CIEE and the service programs we'll be doing over the next 4 months. I'll learn about Cape Town's history, as well as South Africa's. It will be an information packed couple of weeks for me over here, but I'm so ready for it to begin.

On the picture front, it seems impossible to find anything compatible with my version of Mac. I guess it's too new? Oh well, I will get them up soon! I am getting sick of only looking at them on a 3" screen.

"Madiba is my real father"

Today, I went to Robben Island with Nimtaz. Robben Island is where Nelson Mandela was held there for 18 years. He was a member of the African National Congress, which had been banned under the apartheid government. I read his biography this past year and it was a really fascinating book. The Long Walk to Freedom was written during his time in Robben Island on teensy bits of paper because it was obviously banned to write  biography of the struggle during the actual struggle. Our tour guides today consisted of one man who had been a currier for the Pan Africanist Congress and another man who had spent time in Robben Island for being a political activist. The first one gives the tours of Robben Island to foreign dignitaries and met Obama a few years ago before he became President. Both tour guides were FULL of information. The leaders of the struggle were kept separate from the younger rebels to stop any influence the older men may have, but the prisoners found ways around this, including serving tennis balls filled with notes between the courtyards. We were shown Mandela's cell, which is very small.
I also went up Table Mountain again and got a totally different experience. The first time, it was beautiful and bright. Today, it was so windy and there was a little bit of a cloud cover. It was still breathtaking. And I went and dipped my toes in the Atlantic at Camp's Bay, a little town outside the city.
What's so interesting about the culture here is that people a little older than me lived through some of the worst parts of apartheid and people my parents' age basically lived through the entire thing. Everyone has this amazing respect for Mandela and the entire struggle. Their political ideology is all about reconciliation. Forgive and move on. It's the Three M's Method: Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., and Mahatma Gandhi. Madiba is Mandela's clan name and what people call him affectionately. I overheard a man on top of Table Mountain saying that his father had been imprisoned on Robben Island. Naturally, I followed and eavesdropped. He said his "real" father had been. "Madiba is my real father." I'm not the most political person around, but I do know that I can't say that about anyone in our government..
Tomorrow, I meet my classmates, housemates, and roommate! I am so excited that they finally get here. It seems like I have been here forever, while it also feels like my experience here hasn't even started. I can't wait to meet them!

I'm trying hard on the pictures! Don't give up hope yet!