Garden Route!

Last week was our semester break at school, and my study abroad program included an amazing trip along the Garden Route (the southern coast of South Africa), a very popular spring break trip for South Africans and foreign students. We travelled for a week in a caravan of 10 seater vans and it was the best week ever! So here's a quick recap:

Saturday we left Stellenbosch super early and drove most of the day until we got to Buffalo Bay. This was my first experience staying at a backpackers (cross between a campground and a hostel) and the Buffalo Bay Backpackers was great. Nothing fancy, it had a great vibe and the people who ran it were quite the characters. We were right on a secluded strip of beach, slept in bunkbeds like summer camp, and I didn't even see any of the huge spiders they saw last semester. When we got back from a group dinner out, there was a reggae band at the backpackers who entertained us for most of the night.

Sunday morning we went to an elephant reserve in Knysna. We learned about the plight of the elephants in the region, and then got to feed them and hang out with them for a bit. It was kind of staged, and not as cool as it will be to see them in the wild when we go on game drives, but still awesome. They were amazing up close, and feeding them was fun. After that we went to Judas Square, a rastafarian community in the Knysna township (where the band from the night before is from). We got to go into their worship area and learn about the rasta religion/way of life. It was fascinating, and also really cool to see how they use tourism as a way to sustain their community. Everyone there was super friendly and excited to share their way of life with us.

Monday we were up early again. We stopped at Cango Caves and got to do some crawling around there. It was like being a kid in a giant playground. Funny story--a few years ago, a woman was stuck in one of the passages for over 10 hours because she insisted on continuing even though she was repeatedly told she was too overweight to fit through some of the tiny spaces. They got her out, but everyone behind her was also stuck. There were a ton of framed newspaper clips about it at the place. After the caves we went to an ostrich farm. I'm actually terrified of large birds, so this was a bit of a stressful stop for me. They let people ride them, which I thought was a bit inhumane (they put little bags over the ostrichs' heads when they reign them in because they don't panic if they can't see, and it reminded me of Abu Girhab and it was just weird) but it was hilarious to watch people hang on for dear life. Ostrichs are 1. ugly 2. wicked fast 3. stupid (their brains are smaller than their eyes). That's basically all I got from the ostrich farm.

Tuesday we hung out at the beach at Plettenberg Bay in the morning, and then saw some more animals that afternoon--Monkeyland, which was exactly what it sounds like (I hid my camera under my arm the entire time because monkeys are sneaky and like to steal) and a cat sanctuary, where we got to pet cheetahs. On Monday and Tuesday night we stayed at a summer camp type place that was in the forest and it was EXACTLY like Nature's Classroom.

Wednesday was the big day--bungee jumping at Bloukrans Bridge. It's the world's highest commerical bungee jump (216 m which is about 700 ft I believe). I was in the second group, so had to watch about 25 other people from my program go before me. It was hilarious watching how everyone reacted when they got to the edge. I honestly wasn't scared at all until right before I jumped, and even that wasn't so much fear as disbelief that I was actually doing it. The feeling of falling is pretty indescribeable, it's so surreal to be jumping off a bridge knowing you aren't going to die. It was actually quite peaceful, which I didn't expect. I had a pretty odd feeling after as well--my friend Andy and I both said how we felt like we could just run off the bridge and jump again (without harnesses) and we felt like we'd be totally fine. This made Alex nervous.

On Wednesday and Thursday night we stayed at Jeffrey's Bay, a world famous surf spot. The backpackers we stayed at was awesome, the stretch of beach we were on was beautiful, and the Billabong outlet was 50% off on Thursday. A bunch of people stayed for the weekend at JBay, which I totally would have done, but we had to get home early on Friday to head into Cape Town for the Two Ocean's Marathon.

Saturday AM Alex, Jim, Hannah, Micho and I (along with Courtney and Ilana our soccer moms and biggest fans) woke up at our backpackers in Cape Town at 4:30AM to get to the start for 6AM. I was way more terrified for the race than I was for the bungee but it went so well! It was a great experience, I'm so glad I did it and want to do another one soon. It was pretty crowded and the first 10K was alot of dodging and stopping and going, but I still finished in under 2.5 hours which is all I wanted. We all got medals and tshirts and were so happy about the whole thing. I've never run 13 miles in my life so that was pretty cool.

We stayed in Cape Town all weekend, Sunday morning we went to St. George's Cathedral for Easter (Desmond Tutu's church). Parts of the service were in English, Afrikaans, and Xhosa, so that was pretty cool. Then we went to the last outdoor concert at the Kirstenbosch gardens--Goldfish, my new favorite band. They're awesome and Alex, Micho and I want to try to get them to play at SMC. It was a perfect end to a perfect week/weekend. It was a bit strange not being home for a holiday like Easter, but we made sure that we had a memorable one here.

molweni & jammer!

That's Xhosa for hello everybody and Afrikaans for sorry, for being MIA for a while--because I'm sure you've all been waiting on the edge of your seats to hear from me. Right. Anyway, since I no longer have a laptop, any opportunity I have on a computer is usually dominated by schoolwork, job/apartment searching for the summer (if you know anyone who is willing to pay a college student to do almost literally anything in the greater Burlington area this summer let me know. I'm pretty desperate) or emailing home.

My bad luck from February has disappeared as far as I can tell. March was lovely, spent lots of time at the beach and a couple trips to the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens in Cape Town for Sunday evening summer concert series. I also have a new favorite SA music group--Goldfish, I suggest looking up their music! Adding to my list of adventurous food, I have now eaten a dried Mopani worm (very popular in Botswana and high in protein! But not very good) tried crocodile and wildabeast. My classes are still going well, I got a 73 on my first paper in my American Foreign Policy class which weirdly is actually really good--I don't really understand the grading system here but I guess a 75 is the equivalent to an A in America. Kayamandi gets better every week, as I get to know the students better and specifically the girls in my group. The program is pretty strict when it comes to bringing a camera, we have to ask permission and then can only take pictures in the last five minutes so we don't cause too much chaos, but I'm definitely going to take some pictures of my girls before I leave.

Everything is moving really quickly here. We leave for our semester break Garden Route trip next Saturday and I can't wait! And then the 2 Oceans 1/2 Marathon is the day after we get back from that. Yikes. We haven't been training too intensely, but I think we'll be fine, plus Alex says we will still be able to run while we're stopped at the backpackers we stay at during the trip. I'm nervous but really looking forward to the race. Micho, Ilana, Jill and I are also planning our end of the semester travels, which is exciting but I don't want to think about it being May or June yet!

Tomorrow I am going on an excursion with the rest of my intro to the SA wine industry class. We leave at 8:30 tomorrow morning and visit several wine farms in the area. The class was really interesting, I learned about growing grapes, making wine, the history of wine production in South Africa, how to taste wine properly (swirling it around, scoring it, etc. Very classy.) and how to match wine with food. Our lecturer said this is a really good time to get to see the wine production process because it's the start of fall, and the grape harvest just happened.

Talk to you all again after Easter!

the good, the bad, and the ugly

This title is pretty unoriginal, but I've had all three in the past week. I’ll get the bad news out of the way first, because really who wants to even hear about it?

First, for the past 2 weeks or so I had been feeling a bit under the weather. I won’t go into detail, but eventually I was sick of feeling drained (literally) and decided that it was probably time to pay a visit to health services. On Thursday I got antibiotics (and probiotic pills, which seems to me like they would just cancel eachother out but I guess this is why I'm not a doctor) to take care of whatever critter was wreaking havoc on my intestinal tract. After leaving the pharmacy, it was time to go to Kayamandi for the afternoon. I had my gym bag with me with my wallet and medicine in it. Usually I don’t bring anything with me to Kayamandi just because it’s annoying to hold onto it—we’re told not to leave stuff in the van because it’s parked outside the school where we can’t see it, so just to avoid any problems, we’re supposed to bring anything we take into the school where it’s safe. So, after the classroom time we headed out into the courtyard of the school for kickball. I put my bag against the wall along with all the other volunteers bags and the students backpacks. You can probably guess where this is going—when the day was over and we headed out, I looked in my bag to find that my wallet was gone. Andy (an AIFS student who helps coordinate the Kayamandi afterschool program) and I asked around, and immediately a bunch of the students told us they had seen “Tito” go into my bag and take my wallet. As it turned out, Tito was the younger brother of a 7th grader in the program. Techincally no other kids besides the students in the program should be on school grounds during the afterschool program, but when we go outside lots of little kids join us and it’s obviously hard to tell cute kids to get lost, but apparently this is why they’re not supposed to be there. Anyway, after lots of chaos and asking questions and translating English to Xhosa and the other way around and attracting A LOT of attention as two white people trekked through the neighborhood trailed by about 25 curious students, we tracked down Tito and his brother (who as far as I know had nothing to do with the theft). Tito literally had my cash in his hands (I didn’t have too much in my wallet at the time, probably $25 in bills and a lot of change, and I got almost all of it back). He had hid the wallet in a backpack, so I also got that back, however it was empty--my student ID and debit card were missing. He brought us to where he said he threw the cards after he nabbed the wallet, but we couldn’t find them. So it could have been much worse, I just had to get a new ID and cancel my debit card, my new one should come in the mail in a week or two. I was taken aback by the whole thing, and a little pissed, but the whole situation was mostly just demoralizing. The kid was only nine, he looked even younger, and it’s so sad that he already knew how to steal a wallet--he knew the cards were useless to him, and to throw those away and keep the cash. It makes you wonder where he learned how to steal. He seemed scared that he got caught, but did not really seem sorry. I hope he learned something from it and maybe won't continue down the road he's on. There are so many individuals in Kayamandi who are working to get rid of the stereotype of townships and better the community, but incidents like this undermine what they try to accomplish. The assistant director of AIFS also runs the International Office's Kayamandi Project, and he felt really bad about the situation, I guess this is the first time a volunteer has been pickpocketed during a program--typical.

Then, to make it a hat trick: we had an excursion this weekend (which was AMAZING and I will talk about soon), and I thought I had shut and latched my bedroom window but I guess I just shut it. Because I walked into my room Sunday evening to see that the window had blown open (they're like crank out windows not slide up), a bunch of stuff blew off my shelf, and the curtain hit my flower vase and knocked it over, drowning my laptop. I took it to the comptuer repair place in town, but I have a feeling it might be RIP laptop. Although I've heard stories of wet laptops working again after sitting around for a couple weeks, so I'm hoping for the best.

So, aside from all that, I had a fantastic weekend. My program group, along with eight South African grad students who drove the vans and were super fun to hang out with, went to the Cederberg Mountains, about a 3 hour drive north of here. We stayed in awesome cabins at a campground in the Cederberg Conservacy. We got there Friday night, and had an early wakeup call Sat. morning for about a 6 hour hike. It was so much fun, we hiked up and then into the mountains/caverns--to get through the "cracks" into the mountain we had to contort ourselves through all these tiny spaces. One of them is known as the "birth canal", we had to lie flat on our backs and slide under a boulder and then use our arms to lift ourselves up out of the space. At the top, it was like being on the moon or Mars--the rocks were unlike anything I've ever seen. I wish I could post pictures, but with the whole laptop deal I have nowhere to upload them. It was absolutely amazing scenery. After hiking back down, we went to a swimming spot surrounded by cliffs that we of course all jumped off of--the highest one was like 40 or 50 feet I think.

After a full day of outdoor activities, we went to a wine tasting at the Cederberg wine farm. The wine is sold in the States, so if you ever see Cederberg wine, buy it, it's delicious!! I only had enough cash on me to buy one bottle (because of the debit card deal) but I'm sure I'll bring home a few more. They were all delicious. My first wine tasting here and it was really fun!

Once it got dark, we went to the observatory that was up the road from our campground. The night sky was incredible because we were hours away from any big town. I got to see a comet and Saturn through the telescopes, and I saw about 5 shooting stars in probably 20 minutes. You can't see the Big Dipper here, which really makes me realize how far away I am. They have the Southern Cross, which is also pretty cool.

On Sunday morning, we headed out and stopped at some caves where there are drawings done by the San people between 1500-2000 years ago. There is also a spot known as the "town hall cave" where apartheid leaders met in secret. There are signatures from the late 1800s to the 1970s and 80s, some of the names are pretty significant to SA history. Ironic that the people who, as one of our drivers put it, planned to screw over black people left their mark on the same place that the native Africans did.


I borrowed these pictures from someone else in my group, hopefully I will find a way to do something with mine soon, so I don't have to wait until the summer to upload 3 1/2 months worths of pictures.

weekend updates

I've got several requests to update this thing...at first I thought I haven't really done anything too exciting recently, but I guess that's not entirely true. And I don't feel like studying, so here we go.

Last weekend, not the one that just happened but the weekend before, I went to an outdoor music festival called Raka. It was a trip organized through the international program, so there were probably about 50 or so foreign students who piled on a bus for three hours to go listen to South African music along a river. My mom's response was "oh good lord, you are turning into a hippie", I guess the 2 1/2 years at college in Vermont wasn't enough of a hint? Anyway, it was pretty cool, we were in what seemed to be a relatively remote location. The drive there was crazy, I wish I had my camera on me but it was in my backpack on the other bus at the time. We traveled three hours mostly on windy roads through mountains and it was like we were the only people for miles. Everyone tented along the river, but we weren't roughing it 100%--there were bathrooms and showers, and they still sold food and there was a bar. It was a nice atmosphere, and the music was pretty good. It wasn't African music like you're probably thinking, it was all in Afrikaans, basically acoustic rock to a little heavier rock, and there was one reggae type band called the Tidal Waves that was my favorite, so look them up. I didn't take any pictures because my camera was lost in our tent all weekend. Oops.

Classes have become more routine. My South African history professor is this crazy old guy who smokes like a chimney (halfway through the lecture we get a 10 minute "comfort break" aka cig break and he says he loves the conversations he has when he stands outside and chats with the other smokers in the class). He's a very interesting man with lots of knowledge and stories--the structure of the class is basically: if you want all the names and dates and dry history do the reading on your own, and at the lecture he just rambles on with his stories and social commentary. We watched Thirteen Days last week in my US Foreign Policy class, which is about the Cuban Missle Crisis. Kevin Costner plays JFK's special assistant to the president, and he and JFK and Bobby Kennedy all have overdone Boston accents in the movie and it made me smile. I have an exam and a paper due this week in the class, so I'm actually spending time in the library, which is something new up untill this point. The library here isn't open on Sundays which blows my mind. We loved Sunday library sessions at St. Mike's.

This past weekend we stuck around here. On Saturday we went shopping...nothing cool or unique, just a mall about 20 minutes from here. The few clothes I brought with me are starting to lose their form due to my constant state of sweatiness and the unforgiving washer and dryer in my building, plus I was getting sick of my same 6 shirts, so I wanted some new stuff. It's the first real shopping I've done, and it reinforced my realization that I will not be able to survive as a consumer when I get back home. The exchange rate is a little over R10=$1 right now. I bought a few shirts, the most expensive one was probably R150? So $15. The rest were under $10 I bet. On Sunday night we went out to dinner--we split an appetizer, I got a meal (brought home half of it) and a drink (sorry Dad, a girly drink) and it cost me $10 (including tip). I can get groceries to last me more than a week for about $25-$30. Roundtrip train ride to Cape Town is $3. So basically, when I get home I won't want to eat or drink anything that costs more than $5. I don't think that will end well for me. I saw this story on the NYT homepage today, about how Cape Town is awesome and not too expensive for Americans, aside from the flights. So come visit me!

We're going on an AIFS excursion to the Cederberg Mountains this coming weekend, I'm very excited for that. And I promise I'll take pictures.

go big or go home pt 2

Clearly I was still riding the adrenaline rush from skydiving, because on Tuesday night, I signed up for the Cape Town half marathon.

After some discussion, Micho, Jill, Alex and I talked ourselves into it. Well, to be more accurate, they kind of talked me into it because I was the most hesitant. I think we might have minor brain damage due to the recent smoke inhalation (kidding Mom, I'm kidding) but we're doing it! Micho runs xcountry at school and has alot more faith in me than I do at this point, because she said she's positive I could do it now if I had to. I know I can run 6-7 miles without puking and/or passing out, which I'm told is a promising start. Jill has done a couple half marathons before, and Micho obviously knows what she's doing, so we have a little training schedule and we'll see how it goes. There are a couple guys in our building we've run with before who are also training for it, so that will help. One minor complication--the race is on April 11, which is the day after we get back from our weeklong Garden Route trip. I mean, it's not like Cancun style spring break, but it's probably not ideal timing...oh well. I guess this means I should cut down on my recent bottle of wine per night habit (again, I'm kidding Deb.) I'm pretty nervous about the whole ordeal right now, but we all just want to finish and say we ran a half marathon while abroad in Africa. And obviously the tshirt is a big motivator.

This afternoon was my first day at the afterschool program at Ikaya Primary in Kayamandi. It was really fun, if a bit overwhelming. We're in a classroom of about 40? 7th graders, where we basically hang out with them and help them with whatever homework/project/assignment they have for the afternoon, and then they get a snack and have some type of physical activity for the last 45 minutes or so. Today was kickball. I'm really looking forward to getting to know the kids--they're a little shy to open up at first, and while they have been learning English for the past couple years there's still a bit of a language barrier. I think they will be entertained by my pathetic sounding Xhosa. I really can't imagine going to school here and not getting involved in or experiencing the township. This is some info on Kayamandi from the website of the township's community development center, and this is a website about the school.

Well, I gotta go get ready to run!

go big or go home

It's safe to say this weekend was the most epic weekend I've had to date. I think the fact that we were still pretty much surrounded by fire until today added to this. I know everyone at home would love some warm weather, but the past few days have been HOT. Too hot. A few days ago it was hot and windy, but not a nice cool breeze--really hot wind just blowing down your neck all day. Then the wind stopped, and things somehow got worse. I feel like I've just been breathing in ash and smoke since Wednesday. Friday and Saturday, I sweat more consistently than I think I ever have in my life. My eyelids were sweating. This was a new experience for me.

So anyway, while gallons of sweat were pouring out of my body, I had a pretty awesome weekend. Friday evening, a bunch of people from AIFS (my program) went out to dinner for a girl in our group's birthday. We ate outside at this nice Italian place in Stellenbosch and got some delicious pizza (although we may as well have been eating in the pizza oven for the amount I was sweating). Then we went to a Bob Marley tribute concert because it was his birthday as well. It was above a little pub/bar place and again, I sweat more than I thought was humanly possibe, but it was still really fun. Everyone was happy and dancing like hippies and there were some guys with the longest dreads I have ever seen.

Saturday I went SKYDIVING over Cape Town with my three flatmates and our two friends Jill and Tommy. It's something I've always wanted to do, so why not do it here? It was amazing and if I have any money left at the end of my trip I'm doing it again.

I don't think I ever was scared, but it really didn't hit me that I was actually going skydiving until they opened the plane door. I also was mistakenly under the impression that you jump out of the plane. You don't. You basically scooch your butt to the edge until you fall out of the plane. Freefalling was AMAZING and I wish it lasted longer, and then when my tandem guy pulled the chute and we floated along, it was so quiet. We got an incredible view of Cape Town and the coast and farmland outside the city. Micho had her camera attached to her wrist (she's gone before so knew how her arms would act...I definietly was too afraid to jump with my camera on me) and took a video while she jumped, so when she puts it on Facebook I'll steal it and post it on here so you can see what it was like.

Today, we had a group excursion to Cape Point and Boulders Beach. Cape Point is on the peninsula at the end of the Table Mountain chain. It has absolutley beautiful scenery (I'd say epic, going with the theme of the weekend), cliffs that drop off into crashing teal waves. We climbed around the nature reserve, which is inhabitated by baboons. I learned that I am actually terrified of baboons. We were told that if you didn't have food, they shouldn't heckle you too much. They did jump on two girls in our group who weren't doing anything to provoke them and tried to grab their bags/water bottles and hissed at them. Other than that they kept to themselves (although we were briefly charged at by a screaming baboon, but I think he was fighting with another one and it had less to do with us). Considering I've freaked out when I thought a squirrel was charging at me in the quad at St. Mike's, I almost peed my pants every time I walked by one.

Boulders Beach is famous for its penguins, and seeing those was pretty cool. We also got to swim, and even though the water temp. was equivalent to Maine beaches in June, I was so happy to get in. As someone in my group said, people pay money to swim with penguins at SeaWorld and we were doing it for free (well, kind of). It was really nice to get away from Stellenbosch for the weekend--I feel like everything has been this constant smokey haze and I've been sweating ash out my pores. So ankle-numbing swimming was very refreshing. And I tried Springbok for lunch because I was already doing crazy things this weekend--it's like a kind of antelope. I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it.

While I had an amazing weekend here, I got a couple of pieces of really unexpected/sad news from home, and I feel bad that I am so far away. I feel pretty disconnected and a little guilty knowing that people important to me at home have had such a different past few days than I have. I haven't been gone too long yet, and I'm already reminded that (obviously) time hasn't stopped back at home, just because I'm not there.

Anyway, I'm going to attempt to upload the millions of pictures I took today. The link to my Snapfish album (for those of you without Facebook) is on the left side of this page, I think. I've started writing postcards, and most likely if you're reading this, I'm sending you one. Unless there are a bunch of randos reading my blog that I am unaware of.

only you can prevent forest fires?

So those mountains from my pictures? They were definitely on fire last night.

I'll backtrack a little: Micho and I were leaving history around 4pm yesterday, and when we walked outside we both noticed that it smelled like a bonfire. As we walked down the street towards home and could see the sky and mountains better, we noticed it was really hazy. So hazy and smokey, actually, that you couldn't even see some of the mountain peaks. Then we notice that little gray flecks would occasionally fly by our faces. So something big was definitely on fire, we just weren't sure what.

About 45 minutes after this, Micho Jill and I left to jog to the gym for an exercise class. By this point, the air was really heavy and there was more ash flying around. It was really hard to see/breathe, and even though it's like an eight minute run, I was really out of breath by the time we got there. During the class, ash was blowing in the open windows and getting all over the mats. We walked home after, and the sky was the craziest color I've ever seen. The sun was just a little neon pink circle, and it seemed like the whole town was being enclosed in a wall of smoke.

We poked around a little online because no one seemed to have any idea what was going on (and we don't have TVs), and we found out that some brush fires had started a ways from Stellenbosch but because of the wind, they were spreading. We went out to dinner and to listen to open mic night at a place in town, and when we were walking there, it seriously seemed like the apocolypse. It was so windy and we couldn't open our eyes at all. The walk home was way clearer, the smoke had moved on and we could see the stars. But then we got home and looked up at the mountains and they were actually ON FIRE. It was like looking at a ski mountain from a distance, only instead of ski trails, it was paths of flames. I don't really know how to describe how close it was to us....like I said, we're about an eight minute run/15-20 minute walk from the gym, and the mountains are right behind the gym.

I found this and showed my mom when I was Skyping with her last night, which was probably a mistake. I made her a little nervous-- her exact words were "I think I'm going to throw up". But I told her that there was alot of buildings between the sports complex and where I live, and they definitely wouldn't let us burn to the ground. And we didn't. This morning everything was just still smoking but the fires were out. It's probably going to take like 5 showers to get the smell out of my hair. I think this whole thing was probably less exciting for people from places like California, but raging forest/mountain fires aren't really common in New England. My crazy experience of the day. Hopefully my mom managed to sleep last night.

In other news, I just bought a season pass to the Stellenbosch rugby games. Rugby is huge here and I guess the Maties (what Stellenbosch students are called) are really good. There are 5 home games, it cost me R50 ($5) and we got free gym bags and shirts. Now I just need to get some face paint. Also, I can't take credit for that first picture, I stole it off Facebook from someone in my group.