More Photos...!

This is my roommate at the bar... woohoo! Yeah, she was having a real good time :) And that is Brian in the background...
The other one of us was at Hemisphere, which is on the 31st floor of the ABSA building... IT WAS SO WINDY

Some pictures...

The first picture is my lovely school... This building is probably the most famous and most photographed... cause it's really cool... It's called Jameson Hall. Apparently everything (almost) has ivy on it because Cecil Rhodes (yes that British Imperial guy that there is a scholarship named after him and the former Rhodesia was as well...) put it in his will that all of the buildings had to have it or he wouldn't donate some large sum of money. Basically he wanted it to be Oxford in Africa. And as Nick Shepherd (this crazy tan white teacher that helps us out with all things academic... I wish I had a picture of him... haha) always says, we all know you can't have a serious institution without ivy on it... There are also a LOT of stairs in front of here and you can see a lot of the city from there because it is really high up.
This other picture is me and Lizzy, my lovely roommate from Wisconsin. We were at a party at a club last night and yes, that is fire in the background! There is sand on the ground too! AND the power went off a few times while we were there... but, TIA...

Already here over a week and still alive. Sounds like success to me.

I guess it has been a little longer than I realized... Well, in the past week I have had lots of very new and different experiences... I went to a few bars and to a very amazing beach called Camps Bay. It's incredibly beautiful but almost unbearably cold... You can't stay in the water for more than a few minutes because it's freezing. That beach is on the Atlantic side and the water comes from the Arctic or something, I'm honestly not really sure. All I know is that it is pretty damn cold! To get there, we've taken the train from a station nearby to downtown Cape Town. From there we usually walk outside and find a cheap mode of transportation that is what is known as a mini bus taxi and is supposed to be kind of off limits according to our program, but we always go in large groups, never just Americans, and always have your money ready. In general, I guess there are some rules that you just kind of follow, or at least I do because I think it's a good idea... such as...
1. NEVER leave your bag. Anywhere. For ANY period of time.
2. Always look like you know where you are going and pay attention to what is going on around you.
3. Don't give anyone money.
4. If you are drinking and you think it's kind of questionable, shake it and if it fizzes or gets foamy then there might be something in it (a girl at a bar told me this... I don't know if it's true, but it couldn't hurt). Just throw it out, even if you aren't sure...
5. If you take a taxi, never take it all the way home. Stop on a corner a few blocks away.
6. If you are on a mini bus or in a sketchy location, don't talk unless you have to. As soon as you open your mouth, they know where you're from.
7. Hide stuff in your rooms and never put anything next to the windows.
8. Don't talk on a cell phone in public for various reasons... you aren't paying as much attention to what is going on around you, they know you are foreign, and they know you have something that they can now steal.
There's plenty more, but that's all I can really think of at the moment...
At any rate, the bars were pretty fun. The first one I went to had dancing, which was really really fun although different. The other one I went to, called the Pig and Swizzle (sounds pretty classy, am I right?), is much more... I dunno, laid back? They have a lot of soccer games on in there and I was actually there the night of the Zambia/Nigeria match in the African Cup... pretty intense stuff! Let me tell you.... And somewhere in Nigeria, I guarantee Sakah Mahmud is celebrating a victory... Overall, most people are very friendly, although guys can be kind of creepy at times, such as when they talk to you and then proceed to stroke your face and tell you that you are the first blonde they have ever spoken to... Ah these things happen... that's why it's always good to have a guy there with you to be there in the event that you need to be removed from this kind of situation. They are also great for fending off potential creepers. For example, if a guy is near you another guy comes up and starts talking to him and then asks about you, he can always tell the creeper that he is your boyfriend or that you are actually a lesbian. Or that you are married and just had your second kid... although I feel like the first is probably the best option, although I guess that would kind of hinder any chances with any normal guys there. Regardless, South African bars are very different from what I've experienced in the US and even a little different from Germany. I think this is maybe because all of the bars I've been to in Germany have been at least somewhat classy, but I'm sure you all have your dives as well...

Surviving I suppose

So yesterday I got lost in Cape Town. Scary stuff! After we went to the mall (which we drove like halfway or something in the back of some guy’s truck, AND that mall is way better than the one in Lexington by the way AND they have Aldo, Claire’s, Timberlands, and Guess. WOW.), my roommate and I decided to the grocery nearby, which seemed easy enough. Well… apparently not for us! We got lost for maybe an hour or so, I don’t really know… and it was getting dark and windy. Also, neither of us had cell phones because hers wasn’t working and I still don’t have one because I didn’t have my credit card when the cell phone guy came (which was needed)! Even better… none of us can even pronounce our street name, Welgelegen! Yeah it’s pronounced Vehl-hel-hier-hen. Or at least that’s what it sounds like to me…

Today I went to my agency that I will be doing work with for one of my classes. It’s called the Medical Knowledge Institute and it seems like it’s going to be a really interesting class/volunteering thing. The first thing we have to do is rewrite a brochure so that the people in Khayelitsha can understand it better because not all of them understand English or are even necessarily literate. It’s really apparent here that there is a huge gap between extreme wealth and extreme poverty. It’s not uncommon to see nice, gated houses with expensive cars parked in front right next to townships, and the townships aren’t even that bad compared to other places, such as Khayelitsha. The ‘houses’ there are made of cardboard, plastic, or assorted pieces of metal and wood. You can see these shacks from the road and they seem to go on forever. It’s very different from the area in which we live and around the school. They keep telling us that UCT and Cape Town in general is a different Africa, and I can definitely see it. Cape Town has sort of a European feel sometimes because the British intended it to essentially be a little Britain where you could just kind of observe Africa from a distance or something to that effect…

Also they had us try sheep's head and homemade alcohol in the township... how did I forget about that? I honestly don't know...

And I went to the grocery and I incorrectly tried to weigh an avocado, and then I made the cashier angry because I didn't weigh the grapes, even though it had some kind of tag on it and the avocado didn't... go figure. Just have to recognize and appreciate the differences I guess...

Day ONE

So… I made it to Cape Town in one piece and I survived my first day! Sounds like a success to me… My flight from Detroit to Amsterdam was definitely interesting. We were over the ocean and then someone came over the intercom and said that if anyone was a doctor, they should go to row 10. Well, craziness ensued and then they told us we would be making an emergency stop in Shannon, Ireland, wherever that is… So we stayed there, on the plane, with the lights on, not really able to do anything, for about two hours… We finally left and then I had to sit around in Amsterdam with this guy from my flight for the longest time because we were apparently the only ones from that flight that were going to Amsterdam and basically everyone else came on a second flight. Eventually I made it to Cape Town, and at first, there was no one outside waiting from my program. I freaked out because I was the first one, and CIEE was pretty huge and loud. Finally someone came and asked me if I was in IES and it turned out that she was from my program. I feel really great that I only have one underweight bag by the way because people here are insane and pretty much all of them brought two bags. Many of them even went over and paid extra… So eventually everyone from our program made it (somehow we waited for forever while CIEE left really soon, even though they were picking up about 90 people and we only needed about 20 or so…), and we went and put all of our stuff on an incredibly small bus and during the whole drive things were flying off everywhere. They dropped us off at our houses and apartments, and when I got out at my house, a whole lot of people got out. Well… it turned out that my entire house somehow got an e-mail saying we were in the wrong house. We all ended up at Alma Road, which is all single rooms, but were actually supposed to be at Walgegensomething I don’t know how to spell it, it’s crazy. Long story short, we all went to the right house and were pretty disappointed to leave, only to find that our house was even more awesome because it actually has color, an awesome backyard, a laundry building type thing, and a garage that they made into a lounge and everyone thinks it’s going to become the party house or something to that effect but I kind of hope not. Today we toured the townships and it was ridiculously long so I am really exhausted and all of them want to go out, but I’m definitely not going, especially since it’s 11 pm now and we have to be somewhere at 8.30 AM… yeah I don’t think so…

Um, test?

So I guess this is kind of a test because I don't really know anything about blogs and ok maybe I am a little bit on the technically challenged side... Mostly I just want to know what happens when I do this and if you get an e-mail or whatever... Alright! And if you want to know... here is my flight:

Mon 18JAN NORTHWEST 3882*   OK     T   LV LEXINGTON     1040A          **
                                      AR DETROIT METRO 1205P        
         *Operated by PINNACLE AIRLINES

Mon 18JAN NORTHWEST 252     OK     T   LV DETROIT METRO 400P     D     **
                                      AR AMSTERDAM     555A#        

Tue 19JAN KLM ROYAL DUTCH   OK     T   LV AMSTERDAM     1025A          **
          AIRLINES 597                AR CAPE TOWN     1100P