January 26, 2007

Hello everbody! Guess what? I finally have wireless on my computer so now there is no more waiting game for internet! I am actually writing this blog as I speak instead of writing it in a word document and uploading it later. Hopefully some pictures will be put up onto my photo website later tonight so that you can all see it, now that I have my computer to myself. Sorry I haven't updated in the last couple of days, not much has really happened but I will try to recap.

Wednesday was a fun day. Some people went to their internships and the rest of us hung out. Amanda, Mia, Sarah and I decided that we wanted to go back to downtown Cape Town and go to Green Market. This market is absolutley amazing. For anybody who has been to the Fair Trade Store in New London, take the type of stuff they have in there and multiply it by one million, that is the craziness that is Green Market square. It is pretty much like a flea market. Most of the stands were carrying things like baskets, soap stone figurines and bowls, carved figurines out of wood, things made out of beads and wires, jade jewlery, various types of bowls made out of different materials, hand painted items and masks. Some things you can tell are mass produced although each vendor will tell you that they made it themselves. What was even more amazing is that it turns out that I am pretty good at bargaining! I was psyched because I got an amazing hand painted painting (on fabric) of Table Mountain from Robben Island. It is gorgeous. It was supposed to be 100 rand and I would definitely have paid that but after having been in the market for over an hour and a half, all I had was 50 rand left. I told the lady that and she would go to down to 70 rand but she did not understand that I literally only had 58 rand left, 8 rand was needed for the mini bus taxi to get me home. Right before I left the booth with Mia, she was looking at other smaller paintings, the lady went down to 50 rand. I was stupid and said "Are you sure?" I thought I was ripping her off. The painting was soo gorgeous that I would have paid 70 rand for it but people tell me that they would not have sold it to me if it was a rip off . So, I have an amazingly beautiful painting, along with some stuff made out of soap stone. Downtown Cape Town is so much fun and I felt much more relaxed and safe in the city than I did the first time. I absolutely love it here!

So the craziness of Wednesday was the experience of the mini taxi. Amanda, I am not looking forward to taking you on one of these because you are going to freak out. These taxis are small vans which should hold 8 people but are holding 18. They speed, drive in and out of traffic and almost hit people. You really have a death wish if you step out in front of a taxi. It is absolutly crazy. There is someone that hangs his head out the window and shouts at people, telling them where the mini cab is going . If anybody shows interest on getting on, the breaks are slammed on and everybody gets shot forward. It does not help that there are no seat belts so you pretty much have to pray and brace yourself. This experience was so crazy and scary but at the same time, so much fun. It is also pretty scary because it is quite easy to get mugged on these things without even knowing it since everybody is packed into the car like sardines. Also, you never want to be the only person left on a mini bus taxi - it is really dangerous. Plus you never want to take them at night because the chances of you being the last one on the taxi is much greater. At night, primary transportation are meter taxis. They are much more expensive but more reliable and safer.

Coming back from downtown Cape Town was much harder than getting there. In order to get to downtown Cape Town, you pick up a mini bus taxi at the front of the Red Cross Hospital (basically for me, I just need to walk around the hospital since my room faces the back of it). But on the way back, you need to go to the Parade which is somewhere you do not want to be past 5:00 since the street children come out and mug you. Once at the parade, you get to a mini bus taxi platform where there are hundreds of mini bus taxis, all in line under certain signs that let you know where it is headed. Most people know the routes of these taxis so they know which one to get onto. We did not since there was no sign that said Rondebosch or Red Cross Hospital. It turned out that we needed to take the Hanover Park taxi and specifically state that we needed to go to the Red Cross Hospital. The taxi drives by the hospital but does not stop unless someone states they need to go there. The only way we figured this out is that we asked someone. Natives were looking out for us, it was nice. The mini bus taxi on the way home was crazy; the driver kept making fun of us for being American and he was the worst driver I have ever seen in my life. At one point, he was driving on the sidewalk to get past the traffic. It scared me, especially since I was in the front and could see what he was doing. Overall though, it was an extremely fun day and the mini bus taxi is certainly an interesting experience.

Thursday classes started. We have History and politics of South Africa at 9:30 on the UCT campus. Some people were complaining that they were going to take the jammie (the UCT bus that runs around this area taking people to different parts of the campus) but it is only once a week. The reason why people were complaining is not just because they are lazy but the campus is literally on the side of Table Mountain. It is pretty steep and is quite a workout but for once a week, I am definitely hiking up there. Plus it is a pretty walk.

Our class was okay. We learned about a very brief history of South Africa and we are going to go into more detail later on. Vernon's class was canceled because he still needed to bring other people to their internships. Marita's class is from 6 to 9 at night in our bar room. It is a little exhausting seeing as we have class sporadically throughout the day from 9:30 in the morning to 9:00 at night. Thursday was more exhausting then I thought it would be even though we did not have Vernon's class because I came down with a horrible cold. I was so exhausted and just wanted to go to sleep but I obviously couldn't. There was also a lot of drama going on in the house that I did not want to deal with. I am really starting to regret living in a house with 15 other girls. Too much estrogen! Marita's class was really good though. We watched a documentary on the schools in the townships. What happens is that every South African has to take a standardized test at the end of the 12th grade called the Matric. In order to go to college, you need to pass the Matric. To go to the college that you want, you need to get a high enough Matric score for that school. It is essentially the SATs and GRE's (which pissed me off since we all know how I feel about standardized tests). Unfortunately, the education system is still messed up after the apartheid regime. The township schools still have a really poor education system. Sometimes their teachers do not show up to class, they do not have heating or air conditioning, no computer access, and limited access to certain classes. There are no guidance counselors so they have to decide what path they want to take without even knowing what classes are needed in order to obtain their goal. Many of these kids show up to school hungry because their family could not afford food and sometimes do not even show up with shoes. The conditions were horrible and this documentary followed several lives throughout the process of studying for their Matrics. Three of these students were watching the documentary with us and answered our questions after the showing. The only name that I remember of the three was Barbalwa - they were the sweetest people I have ever met. Barbalwa has been text messaging me about how she wants to hang out with us again, how she had so much fun with us and cannot wait to see us again. She was so sweet and is such a bright girl. She was one of the few that managed to pass her Matrics with a high enough score to get into college. We saw a copy of the English exam and it was ridiculous! With English as our first language, we did not even know the correct answer to some of the questions, nevermind if we had english as a second language. It was a really good time, even though I was sick. After the question and answer session, we had a dance party going on with some Soul Candy (a popular South African techno group that we have grown to love because it is always playing in mini cabs). Our guests left, I took some medicine and passed out.

Friday was fairly boring. Many people went to their internships in downtown Cape Town with Vernon and the rest of us stayed home. I was thinking about going somewhere but everybody else just wanted to relax which turned out to be a good idea. I put on my suit, laid out by the pool, lathered in sunscreen, took a nap and then read a book. It was so relaxing and it was such a gorgeous day. When I got too hot, I pretty much rolled myself into the pool (which was significantly cooler) and then stayed in there for a couple of minutes. Almost everybody from our house was doing the same thing and it was so nice to relax. Eventually though, I got bored and needed to get out of the house. I thought about going online but the plumber people (a drunk person broke our faucet the previous night when I was passed out from exhaustion) had screwed up the power and we did not have power for 7 hours. Nobody thought anything of it at first because South Africa is having a power shortage so they frequently shut off powers to certain areas for hours at a time. This rotates so that they can try to conserve some amount of power. We figured that the power was shut off for our area but after 6 hours of no power, we knew something was wrong because power outages are usually only 3 hours. Thankfully, someone went across the street to our scary neighbors and asked them if they had power, which of course they did, and we had to call the landlord to let him know that the plumbers screwed up our power. Unfortunately, by the time we figured this out, all of our milk and eggs in the fridge had gone bad and our kitchen still stinks.

Friday night, Katie Welsh had organized all of the taxis and tickets to get us into A Merchant In Venice, a outdoor Shakespeare play that was being performed nearby. At first I was quite skeptical about it because we were not sure if it was going to be in English. It could have been in Afrikaans for all we knew but it was in english and it was a really good play. I had forgotten how much I loved Shakespeare plays and I had never seen this one before so it was fun to go to. Plus with it being outdoors, it made the experience even better. The night air was nice and cool to our skin after we had all accidentally burned to a crisp from laying out by the pool. The stars were gorgeous and just where they had set up the stage was perfect. Wilderness surrounded the stage and it just really made it a nice background for a Shakespeare play. It reminded me of Conn College's Shakespeare in the Arboretum. I miss those days!

Today was fairly interesting. All of us got up early and walked to the train station in Mowbray (the town that has the other house in it). It was a nice walk but took a good 30 minutes. Little did we know that there was another station much closer in Rondebosch that we could have taken as well. So we took the train (round trip was only 11 rand) to Muizenberg where there was a beach for a bunch of us to take surf lessons. I opted out of the lessons because I knew I did not have the upper body strength to pull it off and I did not want to spend the money. The people who did take the lessons had alot of fun though. For me, I decided that it would be a nice relaxing beach day. That was not the case though. First of all, it was extremely windy. When it is extremely windy, the sand kicks up and pelts you in the face. It hurt so bad. Plus with the wind, it was really chilly and I was freezing cold. Everybody else, besides the surfers, decided they were going to walk around the town since they were sick of sitting down and being pelted by sand. I volunteered to stay with the stuff; I did not realize they would be gone as long as they were. Thankfully, I had some company. We met a couple of people our age on the train who were planning on going to the same beach as us. The only names I remember are Julliette and Lucas. Juliette grew up here and was African while Lucas was born in Durban but lives in Switzerland. He is here to take English classes with his twin brother and several other friends from Switzerland. There were also two other African girls and two other African guys and they were the nicest people! Apparently they all knew each other through church and sat down and talked with me. We exchanged numbers (turns out they live right down the road - I was not giving out our address because I felt uncomfortable doing that but, to make a long story short, they now know where we live and that they live on a road adjacent to ours. It is in the same neighborhood) so that we can go running at the Commons. I had expressed interest in going to several futbol and rugby matches. They mentioned that there is supposed to be a great one on February 16 so I think I am going to go and get tickets sometime next week (it is supposed to sell out). They are probably going to get tickets with me and a couple of other people from my house. It should be fun and I am looking forward to it. I will tell you all about it Junktrap! :) So anyways, that was pretty much my day. Everybody, excluding Sarah and I, went out to a club. We were too tired and did not feel like paying for a taxi but I like it this way, a nice and quiet house to ourselves. I am totally pysched that we now have wireless because it just makes communicating with everyone easier.

So this was a long post but that sums up the last couple of days. Tomorrow we might go to Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens (we still have not made it there) or we might go to some concert that is being put on. It is all up in the air. I miss everybody! I hope everyone is doing well and drop me a line anytime!