they make tissue paper flowers in south africa too

The new school year begins in January here, so while we're here for our 2nd semester, it's the first semester here. There's a tradition at Stellenbosch called Jool/RAG Week, that is seriously the most bizarre thing I've ever witnessed so I'm going to attempt to explain it:

RAG is like...SMC orientation on steroids. It's supposed to welcome the first-year students, and it's kind of like a welcome/initiation. The 6,000 first-years all live in different residence halls (they call them rezes), and it's kind of like living in a frat. All the RAG events are like a competition between the different rezes. Their Acas (like RAs/orientation leaders) are basically drill seargents through the whole thing. They wake up all the kids at like 6AM (trust me, we have heard it every morning) by driving around honking their horns and blaring techno music and screaming into megaphones. The kids are basically forced to participate in all the events, but one of our AIFS program coordinators explained that it's a rite of passage and the first-years, for the most part, enjoy it? He said there's a strong social heirarchy and because many of the students come from private schools, they're used to it.

The first event was a trolley race, where the different rezes raced shopping carts down one of the main streets in town. While only a couple kids were actually in the race, the rest of their rezes were lined up in cheering sections along the street. They have theme colors/shirts, and are all about body painting/wearing absurd costumes. It was like being at a college football game but far stranger.

The event the next night was the weirdest--it was called fensters, which means windows in Afrikaans I think? It went from 7pm-11pm, and each rez perfromed a short skit with music and dancing and costumes...like, really intense music and dancing and costumes. And legit theater lighting. They performed the plays every 15 minutes for the 4 hours, while spectators walked around the campus to each one. It was like being in Boston on the 4th of July it was so crowded. It was a very carnival like atmosphere, except that instead of rides, you were watching freshmen (even the guys) prance around on stage.

Then yesterday, Sunday, there was a parade. Lunenburg homecoming style with tissue paper flower floats. Except again, on steroids. There were 18 floats and they all were huge and had mechanical moving parts and the students marched behind them and collected change as a fundraiser for the class.

The most impressive and insane part of the whole thing was that they basically accomplished all this in a week. Because it's ALL they did. From 7AM to god knows how late, the kids were outside working on their chants/dances/making their float. They weren't allowed to drink either, really the only way I can imagine SMC kids (especially guys) doing any of this stuff. My building is part of Academia, one of the first-year rezes, so we got to watch the whole thing unfold over the week. Unfortunately, our Academia kids were really bad at everything and had the worst play and float.

The entire town really gets into this week. Their were families and people of all ages at the fensters and parade, and all the events are sponsored by big businesses in the area. Some students in my program who go to schools with frats or sororities said it vaguley reminded them of rush/pledge week, or other Greek life events, but everyone agreed it was the strangest thing they've ever seen at a college. I really didn't do the whole week justice in this post--this is a video of the trolley race and parade to maybe give you a better idea.

So yeah, being around for RAG week was definitely an experience, but I'm kind of glad it's over. No more early wake up calls and the same 4 songs playing over and over while the Academia kiddos perfected their dance moves and essentially got hazed for a week.

I'm here!

Well, actually I've been here for almost two weeks, but we just got internet today! I didn't really mind not having it, but now I have so much to talk I'll probably forget stuff. So I am living in a building called Concordia, which is a building of flats for international students. There are students studying here from all over the world, but the majority of them are Americans. I live with three other Americans, two girls and a boy. Ilana goes to URI and Micho goes to SMC, but we actually didn't know eachother before we got here. Frances goes to school in CA and he was here last semester too, so he's been really helpful. Our campus is gorgeous, we're surrounded by mountains and vineyards, and I think it's been cloudy one day since I got here. Even if I wasn't in another country, just the size of the school is different enough from St. Mike's--there are something like 23,000 undergrads here, and 2,000 at SMC. We definitely got lost ALOT the first few days, but now we're getting used to it. It's about a 15-20 minute walk to my classes, the gym, and a little more to get into town.


The first week and a half has been alot of meetings, orientation, and finding out about classes and the International Students program here. We have tons of opportunities for excursions around South Africa, and we're planning on traveling to Victoria Falls and seeing some other countries at the end of the semester. We also have lots of opportunity to volunteer in Kayamandi, the township outside of Stellenbosch. People who are volunteering went on a walkthrough of the community today; it's a poor, black township that is such a huge contrast from Stellenbosch, which is a wealthy, mostly white town. Parts of Kayamandi are what you expect when you think of "Africa"; shacks, unemployment, kids running around barefoot, but parts also aren't what you expect; there's a really nice community center, it's way cleaner than what I saw in the poorer parts of Lima, and despite issues from the poverty and HIV prevelence, the people we met were proud of where they lived and the efforst to better the community. Most of South Africa is like this because of apartheid--there are underdeveloped, poor, predominately black townships outside of the more affluent cities and towns. It's really hard knowing that the huge gap exists, especially because our accomodations in Stellenbosch are so nice.


That is one thing that has been hard to get used to; Stellenbosch is more diverse than St. Mike's (not much competition there) but it's still not as diverse as I expected. Lots of the students are very priviledged white South Africans, and this area was basically the birthplace of apartheid. And since it didn't really end all that long ago, some people still say and act in ways that are really surprising to college kids from the Northeast.


So along with figuring out how to live and get around here, some of my friends and I have gone hiking, and we did a group day trip to Cape Town. It was gorgeous, and I can't wait to go back. There's a train that runs from Stellenbosch to Cape Town that's safe for us to use before dark, so we might head out early Sunday morning to go to the beach and explore the city some more. I'm starting to get a little sick of not having a schedule, so I'm looking forward to classes starting next week. I'm taking mostly classes for international students that are taught in English--Intro to the South African Wine Industry, South African History, Xhosa (the language spoken in Kayamandi), an art class, and I'm taking one mainstream politics class with regular South African students. It will be taught in half English and half Afrikaans, so we'll see how that goes.

Okay well this is getting to be quite lengthy so I'm cutting myself off for now. My internet is a little bit shaky, and I accidentally deleted my sound driver (long story) so once I get everything figured out and my sound reinstalled (somehow), Skype me, my name is michelle.chapdelaine. Or send me emails!