happy may day! this is the conclusion of a very long weekend. There was also no school thursday - as it was freedom day - so many students decided to leave for a nice long trip. i was too poor for that so i stayed here. last week was busy with paper writing, as this week will also be. i've been trying to spend more time hanging out with people i know who aren't in my program and introducing them to my "ciee" friends. last week i went out to dinner and then to a bar with my friend ed. at the bar i got harassed by the bouncer for not having my id, because i've never been carded once in this country considering the drinking age is 18. he asked me my birthday twice and then finally asked me my star sign. after i passed all those rigorous tests he let me in. anyways that was a chill night. i met a girl in the bathroom who goes to occidental and is on the SIT program here so she knows a bunch of my high school friends. very weird. then thursday instead of having a winter beach day i stayed in to work on a paper. Friday i lounged by my pool and then had a crazy fun night. I went out to mexican with a few friends and then we met up with a bunch of my other friends and neighbors at this crazy rugby bar called Springbok's. Every friday is R50 for all you can drink. I knew a ton of people there and we had a great time dancing and hanging out. Yesterday we tried to go to high tea at the Mount Nelson Hotel (the fanciest hotel in cape town). and after getting dressed up and getting ourselves down there they were all booked up. so we made reservations for next week and i'll tell you about high tea in the next post. then we walked down long street trying to find a restaurant that was open but NOTHING is open on sundays in the early afternoon. it was eerily quiet. we managed to hail a cab and get outta there to fat cactus, so i had mexican food again. But it was fun. Then i went to the local sports bar down the street for happy hour. This bar, Champs, is so low-key. It's the type of place you go when you're bored and just wanna hang out with a beer and not get bothered by strangers. But since today was a holiday champs was packed last night. and these strange men had bought an entire case of beer and wanted us to help them drink it. They were dancing (no one dances at champs) and one of them could not pronounce any of our names. he spent 5 minutes trying to get "garrett" and she spelled it for him, and wrote it down and he still couldn't figure it out. it was kind of ridiculous. anyways, we hung out with them for a little while and then just went home and hung out for the rest of the night. i know it may sound like i spent the whole weekend out in bars, but i didn't. it's just that otherwise it was a pretty mellow weekend with a lot of people away and everyone trying to work on papers. coming up this week i have a couple papers to write, a few plans made with friends, and what not.

i'll be home in 6 weeks!