first off i want to say that i've been having a lot of requests for more in depth insights. and frankly that's just too much to write on here. so i'll be sticking to this more general format of "what i've been doing." but i'll include small insights - of which there are a couple featured in this post. but due to my lack of televised entertainment i have been writing a few essays. i think i'm going to start a 2nd blog where i occasionally post essays that i've been working on. and you guys can offer me feedback on my writing and how i can improve - with the eventual goal of being published. so let me know if you'd be interested in reading those.

well the last few days have been really relaxed as far as being a tourist goes. Just going to classes, getting all sorted out, trying out clubs.

on friday during the day we had a bit of a scare in our house. Turns out a few of the local bums have been storing their stuff in our front yard and sleeping in our side driveway. in the morning laura talked to one of the guys and gave him a bunch of empty bottles (he gets money for turning them in) and had him tell all his friends to get their stuff out of our yard. and they did, so we thought everything was great. but then in the afternoon meg was just laying on her bed reading when an ARM came through her window. she said "hello?" and the guy removed his arm. then the guys just went across the street and hung out. they weren't at all concerned with leaving the scene of the crime. i had to call the police. they came, got the bums to leave the street and then made sure nothing was stolen from us. so yeah, kinda scary. but then i went to the kick off event of the wine cultural society. They had just a social party on the steps of the main hall on campus. it was fun and we met a lot of new people.

now everyone has been asking what the people here think of americans. i can tell you that south african guys LOVE americans. they think south african girls are really stuck up and conservative (from what i can tell, a lot of them are). especially in a social sense, where at parties they aren't outgoing, they won't really join in the festivities and they just kind of watch from the corner. it's a little strange. so these guys kept telling me that i was the most fun girl they had ever met and we were just standing on stairs drinking wine! not doing anything crazy at all. anyways, then i went to one of our program houses for a girls 21st. it was actually really fun because a lot of locals came as well as european international students. i met some guys from norway and i started telling them about Ballard and our 17th of may parade. they though it was so cool that i celebrated it. apparently in norway they party really hard on the night of the 16th, and then for the actually holiday they just sit around and wave a flag. they said our parade with pirates and vikings sounded much more fun. if only they knew how lame the parade really is...

saturday we also just hung out, then went out to discover how south africans do mexican food. they don't have black beans here. they just don't. and the food was good, but very meat oriented and not as heavy on the beans and rice. i had amazing fajitas. so it was exciting to know that i can eat mexican food here. then we went to yet another 21st bday party (which wasn't quite as fun) and we called it a night.

today was great though. this morning our house wanted to have an african breakfast so we went to this restaurant at the end of our street called the "african rest and bar." the service is slow, the food is average at best, and they usually don't have half the stuff on the menu, but we love it anyways. the other night i tried to go and get dessert, and they didn't have ANY of the desserts on the menu. well for breakfast we checked the day before to see how late they served breakfast and then we got there today with a few hours before they stopped serving it. but when we got in we asked our server just in case to see if we could order anything on the menu and she said yes. so we ordered various breakfast things. then she came back 5 minutes later to tell us that they didn't have breakfast at all, we could only order main course. so i tried to order an african pie, but naturally they didn't have that either. so we just ate chicken and pap, like we always get. it's the most basic african dish there is and they always have it. that's common around here to not have the things you offer. you can ask a waitress "can i have this?" and she'll just say "no." instead of saying something like "oh we're out, or oh we don't serve that after 4, or can i suggest this." it's always just plain "no."

then a few hours later our program took us to an outdoor concert at the kirstenbosch botanical gardens. our program director told us to bring a picnic of wine, cheese and crackers, so everyone did and it was so fun!. it was a huge concert, kind dave matthews-esque. everyone there was eating cheese and wine and various other snacks and the gardens are phenomenal. so that was a lovely afternoon and end to our weekend.

molweni! kunjani? ndiyavuya. (hello! how are you? i am happy.)

so lest i forgot i live in a third world country the last few days have served as a wonderful reminder. in the last 4 days 7 people on my program have been mugged. one at gunpoint. a little scary considering these events have all been in the same area between 2 of the houses. also they were never walking alone. our program director is getting private security to start patrolling the area. we think it's the same guys who just figured out where the americans live. hence, why i feel trapped in my house at night. you honestly can't walk anywhere, especially since i live by a colony of bums who by the looks of the sidewalk are breaking bottles all night. however, please don't let this scare you, as we are all learning what to do and what not to do from these events. they also generally only want the bag you are carrying, they haven't made anyone empty their pockets. also one girl's package came, only there was nothing inside. if you send me anything, make sure it's labeled something like "old gym socks."

also, the western cape (my province) has two power plants. one of them is broken and is down on "long term maintenence." the other one is currently experiencing technical difficulties or a power shortage or something. (i don't know since i don't have television or radio and i have yet to find an english language daily paper). what these technical diffuculties mean is that the entire province has been losing power on a pretty regular basis. sunday we lost it for about 12 hours from about 1am to 1pm. then yesterday it went out during my class (we just kept on goin) at about 9:15 am and it stayed out until 2ish. Then at like 7:15 it went out again until 1 am. today it went out again at 9:15 and stayed out until 12:30. Everyone keeps spreading rumors about how long this will go, how long each outage is supposed to be. until then though, the world cannot function. the university doesn't have a generator (but the mall does) so the computers are constantly down. no one can check emails, or add and drop classes. no one can cook.

last night in an attempt to make dinner a couple of my housemates and the boys from next door started up our braai to make a 5 course meal of all our frozen meat (and eggs). the only problem was that our fire starters were wet (they don't have lighter fluid here), our coals were damp and it was REALLY windy. we wound up coaxing tiny little flames for about an hour before we had something. Girls were holding up tables to try and block the wind. i was holding up the flashlight, the boys were strategically placing matches. it was pretty hilarious, we felt like we were on survivor (only we realized that without matches we would starve). but eventually we got some heat, covered the whole thing in foil to keep it from the wind and started cooking. we had fish, hot dogs, bacon, chicken, and we put over a dozen eggs in our wok. then one girl in our house had bought supplies for smores (although they were nasty strawberry marshmallows and cookies instead of graham crackers) so we made those. pretty funny.

so today i realized i better try to prepare for more of these nights and i bought more fish, some seasoning, more matches (we used a whole box last night!). gotta love the third world.

on a happier note my classes are going well and i'm gonna be a great dancer when i get home. dance class is really challenging but so fun and in xhosa today i learned how to greet most types of people i could ever encounter. including a xhosa princess: "molo nkosazana" i'm not sure when that one will ever be useful. maybe at garfield it would since half the girls there are named princess (which i learned is also a common name here). when greeting a girl named nkosazana if you said "molo nkosazana" it would be just like greeting any other girl your own age.

craziest, most action-packed weekend of my life. right now i can't stop feeling like i'm still rocking up and down... more on that later.

friday uct sponsored a party called "Big Bash." The title aptly describes it. I have never seen a larger school sponsored party ever. It was at an amusement park and there were at least 5,000 people there. the school bussed us there and back (the buses ran til 8 am!) The party was awesome and was co-sponsored by castle lager (the beer) and brutal juice (glorified smirnoff ice). so if you were vip (as we obviously were) and you ordered castle or brutal juice you got a free one. excellent! also we met some cute guys and talked to them for awhile and then we decided to go dance. While down on the dance floor a castle rep told us that if we went up to the stage and talked to some other rep he could give us free stuff. so we did. and that rep had 4 of us girls actually go on stage and dance. so i danced in front of a few thousand strangers and won a castle backpack for it! pretty cool!

saturday my house hosted an afternoon braai at our pool before our program went to a rugby game. we had about 50 people hanging out, drinking beer, eating meat. it was highly successful and lots of fun. we'll probably be hosting more. Then we headed off to the professional rugby game. We had standing room only seats. the stadium is full of crazy ass drunk men. We decided when we got there to go visit the "pub" because you can't drink in the stands (after seeing all these wackos, i've decided that that's a pretty smart rule). the pub is basically in a bathroom. the "bars" are made of plywood. and there aren't too many women hanging out in them. so as soon as all us american girls walked in it was like open season. one guy told me i was the most beautiful girl at the game and he took a picture of me with his camera phone. then we went back out to watch the game, where anything that happened seemed to the men in attendence like a good reason to start a fight. so after watching some of the game (which was crazy violent, btw) me and 2 guys went back into the pub and witnessed a fight (and promptly left). then we decided to leave the game early and went back to one of the houses to hang out. everyone came and met us after the game and the party continued. basically it was insanely fun.

now for the weekend highlight. today i went shark diving! and it was soo awesome. i have now accomplished one of my life goals. the only negative to the experience was that since this is kind of the off-season we only saw a couple sharks and there weren't any around when i was in the cage. but we did see a 17 foot adult male. The guides told us that that was extremely rare and in their 6 years of this job they had only seen a handful of sharks over 5 meters. it was so so so big. and it thrashed against the cage. we all got soaked. so cool. i really wanna do it again so that i can be in the water when there are sharks. and it wasn't scary. the rugby pub was 10 times more frightening than the sharks. when we were in our wetsuits in the water (freezing) and waiting for the sharks, the anticipation was crazy. you just seagulls everywhere and if you duck your head under water you see thousands and thousands of fish. the pictures i got weren't that good, but i'll post them on my picture website soon. we were out on the water for 5 hours. it was pretty chilly, cloudy and the swells were huge. you had to hold onto the boat for dear life.

so all in all, i'd say the weekend was extremely successful and one of the best of my life.

yesterday i had dance class for the first time. it's pretty intense. i need to loosen up a lot more. a fair number of the kids in the class are trained dancers so they are a little intimidating to watch. i guess was mid-range in my skill level. plus i was a little sore this morning, but that felt good considering how lazy i've been.

today was the first day of class. i learned my vowels in xhosa and also how to distinguish the three different click noises. i have xhosa every day of the week. my other classes are all 4 times a week. all of the class sessions are only 45 minutes long. then i had religion, sexuality and gender, which is basically a feminist class. I think i'll learn a lot about the different main religions though, which i'm excited about. I think religion is always an interesting topic. The thing that sucks about this course is that it's all girls, and more than a third american. i really want to meet more south africans in my classes. My archaeology class should be pretty intense as well. It's also mainly girls with a lot of americans. It sounds interesting though. The best thing about classes here, besides the fact that i'm done at noon everyday is that I don't have to buy any books. The reading here is a lot smaller in volume than in the states, and the departments often print copies up for you for free! one thing that's annoying though is that they don't have spiral notebooks. strange.

also this week i signed up for clubs. All the sports clubs are "social" and i really wanted to join swimming, especially because i talked to the guys at the swim booth (soooo hot) and they said that it's not at all competitive, they practice 3 times a week for an hour and then they party a lot. but it's at the same time as my volunteering, so i can't do it. I'm thinking about doing social water polo though. which is once a week followed by drinks and sausages. sounds like a good time. Also i joined the mountain and ski club. since there is no skiing here it's really just the hiking and climbing club. It's also a very social club, but they have a lot of hikes scheduled at all different skill levels and i think it'll be a great way to see more around the area. Then i joined the Wine Society. They have tastings every week and saturday winery tours. I'm really excited to learn more about different kinds of wine and to go see the wineries. They gave us a free glass of wine just for signing up! and we were drinking right on the main campus steps at noon! this place is wild. every booth we visited they told us a little about the club but mainly they tried to get us to come to their parties. a lot of my friends also joined hiking and the wine club. a lot also joined the yacht club or the underwater club. the underwater one is really expensive though, so i'm not doing it. even though things are cheap here, i've already spent so much money. a lot of it on groceries and basic things to get myself started. hopefully that spending pattern will die down though.

they don't sell chocolate chips here. it's insane. there are also no bakeries or coffee shops near me. this strikes me as insane for a college campus. i haven't seen a single starbucks - i've found their untapped market. also, i miss television. a lot. i've started writing travel essays because i've been so bored sometimes. also we've been drinking so much at night because that's all there is to do. there aren't any theaters close by, no one has a television and it can be awkward to sit around a computer to watch a movie. i'm really sad that i'm missing the olympics. i love the olympics. and for those project runway fans in my audience - i cannot believe nick isn't in the final 3! i'm rooting for daniel v.

tonight we went for valentines dinner with the girls (and a couple guys). we went to a fancy south african game restaurant called khaya-nyana. i ate crocodile and springbok. we wanted to order the warthog ribs, but the warthog was diseased. kinda makes you wanna go veg right there! springbok is a native type of antelope that the national rugby team is named after. it came attached to a giant bone. femur? they were both amazing but crocodile is like my new favorite meat. i would like to add that this was a very fancy meal at a restaurant that had leather-bound menus, zebra print cloth napkins, and when you asked what for example an eland was, they pointed it's head out on the wall. and we got it all, plus a lot of bottles of the house wines for 135R per person. This equals roughly $24. fantastic.

then afterwards we went bar hopping on long street. it sucked though because all the semester at sea kids were in town so the place was jammed with americans. even though we've been here for 2 weeks we feel so much more adapted than the other americans and we didn't want to hang with them. also the bartender pissed me off because he took 10 R of my change and put in straight in the tip jar. so i confronted him and he said that if he didn't do it then he wouldn't get tipped. so i got mad and demanded my money back and told him that maybe if he was nice and fun and didn't cheat people then they would tip him automatically. i still didn't get all my money back. asshole. also, at dinner these random south african guys came up to our table saying they were on a scavenger hunt and needed two girls to kiss them and they needed photo documentation of it and if they won they would win champagne. so me and this girl sarah volunteered. it was awkward. but i have officially kissed a south african man (who was kind of a hottie). plus we saw the big list of their scavenger hunt tasks, and honestly if it wasn't legit then they put way too much effort into scamming us. mom and dad, i'm sure you're glad to know that your daughter is the one in the group who can't turn down a dare.

i went to my first african dance class today. we didn't dance. but it's gonna be pretty intense. it's a 3 credit dance class. i'm excited though. i think i'll learn a lot as well as get good exercise. also, i'm gonna join the gym in the next couple days because this whole lifestyle of eating a lot and drinking a lot and then relying on gastrointestinal upsets to keep it balanced cannot last forever.

last night we went out to "obz" which is local speak for the bar neighborhood of observatory. we went the cool runnings in this location and it was awesome (probably because all vodka and brandy drinks, plus select beers were 6R). it seemed really segregated though. i got kinda weirded out. We tried to go dancing and it was like "um, what are the white girls doing on the dance floor?" people wouldn't come near us and they were looking at us like aliens. so we decided to just go back to the white kid room and to try to break the barrier another day. it's also strange because while the segregation everywhere and the hyper-consciousness of race is hard to get used to, the race relations are sooo similar to the u.s. lots of people think they're very clever when they start discussions comparing race politics here and at home. frankly, it's been 2 weeks and i'm a little sick of it.

ok so some of the wonderment is starting to wear off, and we don't all love each other anymore. it's kinda like camp where at first everyone is your best friend, and then you realize, hey, that chick is flaky as all crap and that guy is pretty freakin cocky. friday i registered for my classes. my dance class starts tuesday, the rest start friday. also on friday i visited the site where i'll be volunteering. The Baphumelele orphanage. it was so cool to play with all the kids. I was wearing jewelry so all the kids were enthralled by me. it was wild to be right in the middle of the townships. They are just sprawling flatlands with an endless expanse of rusting tin shacks. mixed in are lots of little fruit stands and cell phone shops.

i think i've said this before, but everyone is so soft spoken here, i can never hear them. also everyone moves sooo slowly. they all just kinda meander along, and i move with a purpose. locals are shocked that i plan to walk to campus instead of taking a shuttle.

friday night i went to a party past the other side of campus, which is far. getting home is such an ordeal. you can't walk unless you have a guy with you, and even then it can be iffy. then you have to call a cab, which is a pain because all the cab companies are just like one guy. for instance we called cecil, who was also taking home everyone else from the party. we had to wait like a half hour for our turn.

saturday we went on a tour of the peninsula. it was stunning. we went to cape point and saw the old lighthouse for ships hundreds of years ago. they stopped using it because there are hidden rocks off the cape and there were too many sunken ships. Then we hiked down from cape point to the cape of good hope. which is the southwesternmost point of africa. it's also where the atlantic and indian oceans meet. we saw baboons and wild ostrichs in the park. then we drove along the coast through all the little old british towns. we visited boulders beach where the jackass penguin colony is. They were soo cute! they mate for life and they were all laying around in pairs. we stopped for lunch on the beach in a town called Fish Hoek. after lunch when we were sitting along the beach and a baby came up and attacked jess with a plastic shovel! it was crazy that we survived the baboons and got attacked by a baby! when i got home i napped. then fixed dinner and went to bed. somewhere in there i managed to get about 25 spider bites. i itch like mad today.

today we went on a robben island tour. We saw seals in the harbor. the island was neat. the tour guides are all former political prisoners. ours was named Sparks. Nelson Mandela lived in Section B, which is the solitary confinement section for all the most influential political prisoners. These prisoners all worked in the limestone quarry, which was the worst and hottest one. They were never allowed to talk to other prisoners but they did by sending messages in tennis balls. we saw the quarry and we also saw his cell. We saw the group cell area of our tour guide as well. it was neat because they made it funny. They don't visitors to visit and leave angry and sad. They want you to laugh while you are there, and then leave with respect and love. It's a very african way of doing things. They always make a positive out of things.

After our tour we went to a sunday flea market for art and jewelry. i got a painting, a batik cloth, a crazy beaded pair of earrings and 2 necklaces. you really have to bargain or you will get ripped off. the artwork and crafts were beautiful though. as we were trying to leave and catch a minibus home these street boys were begging and showing us porn. it was so obnoxious, not like normal begging. then the taxi we got in was BLASTING the bass, as they sometimes are. and they were playing usher, who is very popular here. an el camino full of drunk guys flinging 40's around rear ended us and they drove up beside screaming at the passengers. since none of this was in english, i couldn't tell if they knew people on the taxi or if they were bargaining with the driver for possession of the american girls (us). but we made it safely home. just another african adventure.

yo yo yo. so we got wireless in my house and now i can post more often. finally. well, i am crazy tan. that's the result of living in a beach city and having a pool i guess. i think i need to stay out of the sun for a couple days, i'm feeling a little roasted. i think i will use this post to talk about things that are wacky and different.

first: food. the chips all have crazy flavors like oven roasted chicken with thyme. they have yogurt in every flavor imaginable and skim milk cannot be found. the diet coke here is amazing. and diet coke with lemon is my favorite drink. (it's so much better than at home, i think it has different chemicals). all the cereals are made with maize and not corn, so they can't be called corn flakes, they're just called flakies. they eat a lot of random meat. jerkey is their specialty and you can buy it anywhere. one good thing is that the fruit is crazy cheap. they have a great fruit selection at 7-11. also i drink a lot of warm tap water. ice is hard to find.

second: transportation. my preferred form of transport are the taxis. they are jam packed minivans that mostly poor locals take. and they storm down the streets hailing you. the train stations are a little frightening though. so crowded and white people stick out like a sore thumb. it's pretty safe in daytime though as long as you keep your wits about you.

third: money. the exchange rate is pretty kick ass. most take away meals (big meals) plus drinks are less than 20 rand. which equals less than 3 dollars. i bought a bottle of wine yesterday for 6.99R = $1, nice. the taxis are always less than R5, which means less than a dollar.

fourth: clothing. i wear the same thing every day. linen pants and a beater. it's too hot to wear jeans except at night, when it's so windy that you almost get blown over. and all the clothes that we hang on the line get blown off in the wind. everyone is pretty chic and summery. always in sexy tops and linen pants or denim miniskirts.

campus is stunning. with all the brick, ivy covered buildings built into a mountain and surrounded by palm trees. it's unbelievable. however, since we live down the hill from lower campus, it's a half hour up hill climb to upper campus where the classes are. i will be taking an archaeology class called "the roots of black identity: the peopling of south africa", a religion class called "religion, sexuality and gender", introductory xhosa (which is a click language), and african dance.

i'm also planning on volunteering at Baphumelele, which is a home for orphans in Khayelitsha (the largest and possible most devastated looking township in the cape flats). A lot of the orphans have HIV/AIDS. a couple days ago we visited a christian ministry called the Ark, which is also in khayelitsha. They house over 1000 people on their premises. These people were homeless in the townships. they have a school, cafeteria, computer lab, job services, babysitting. it was amazing. the kids swarmed us and wanted to use our digital cameras to take pictures of us and them. so cute. they stormed the buses and had to be pulled away. it's sad though to walk through these peoples' homes and classrooms just gawking like tourists knowing that your life is so different from theirs.

so much has happened in the last couple days. the first day we took a cablecar to the top of table mountain and saw the views of the whole city. that night we went to a bar called cool runnings (we went there the next 2 nights too). it was over 90 degrees the first couple days and our hotel hadno air conditioning and we were dying. the second day we walked around the city a lot, i ate lunch at an open air african market (with no tourists in it). we stuck out like a sore thumb. my orientation leader, lindizwe, helped us navigate and order us south africa food. then later we all hiked one of the peaks of the mountain. while we were there we saw this cloud coming over the rest of the mountain. the cloud is called the tablecloth and it creeps across really slowly. on friday our program took us out to a really fancy dinner at an african place. the wine was flowing (a lot) and we ate ostrich, kingklip (an african fish), and pap (a ground maize, basically the staple food). there was a band and dancers and we joined them in the dancing. then after the dinner a few of us went into this club called Rhodes House, which is very exclusive. these south african guys we met the day before got us on the vip list. apparently this is the place paris hilton parties at when she's here. on friday we also walked by the opening of parliament and saw all the security and the big parliament buildings. we've been taking taxis everywhere. the taxis are crazy! they are minibuses and they cram as many people as they can in them and it costs about 50 cents u.s. They honk along the street and they hail you, you don't hail them. everyone here is really soft spoken, it's hard to get used to.

on saturday we moved into our housing. my house has 6 rooms for 7 people. i live in the upstairs double and we have our own bathroom. The house has a pool, a living room, 3 bathrooms and a massive kitchen. the walls are sponge painted yellow. the houses are all very mediterranean, with lots of windows and big fences and gates to get in. there is a lot of security on the houses here to keep out burglers. we live right next to a main road (it's called main road) and there are a lot of homeless there. my roommate goes to georgetown, then in the house is a girl from scripps, a boy from brown, a boy from cornell, a girl from usc, and another girl. also on saturday we went to a giant mall that has everything, even claire's. it felt like america. weird. also we went to our first Braai. they say it's really different from a barbeque, but it's not. we had lamb and curried pasta salad and beer and cider. there's a popular drink here called cider which is like an alcoholic version of our sparkling cider. also, for the college students reading this: the shots are miniature. and CHEAP. (actually, everything is cheap).

there are only a few boys in the program, so there are only 2 in each house, it's kind of weird. it's also strange to have to be so protective of your belongings. one girls already had her wallet and phone stolen (out of her purse while she was wearing it) and another girl had her atm card sucked into a machine.

mom: they have mini licorice allsorts. i'll bring you back some.

i've already bought a jewelry item. a bracelet for 5 rand, which equals about 80 cents. and i've seen so much great art. today we were supposed to go to robben island, but the wind gusts were so big that they ferry operators canceled the trips. i nearly got blown over. but we are exploring our neighborhood instead. i learned that there are 6 hair salons on my corner. but i think all of them do braids.

so yeah, not much else to say. the next 2 weeks are still orientation. i'm going to figure out where i'm volunteering in the townships, which clubs i'm joining (maybe scuba and the wine club). and we'll be doing more touristy stuff like doing a peninsula tour and going to a rugby game. later!

i'm in africa! no time to talk much. it's BEAUTIFUL! i cannot even describe it. i've climbed a mountain, ridden a minivan with lots of people, learned a few words in a click language, made friends, gone a crazy bar called "cool runnings", eaten in a market stall where no one spoke english, and sat on my ass a lot. its amazing.