Hey everyone!
These last few weeks have been super busy with schoolwork. This semester is shorter than usual because everything is pushed forward because of the World Cup, but the teachers are still trying to cram everything in. This means lots of work for us! I’m officially on Autumn Break though and leaving for Namibia tomorrow.
Last week I was asked to try out for the Western Province Volleyball Team! This is the team for South Africa’s Western Cape. It was really cool being asked to try out for an international volleyball team, though I didn’t really enjoy try outs very much. The courts were made of cement and we didn’t have kneepads. I have also never played with balls so hard in my entire life, very painful! The whole thing took about 6 hours because Cape Town doesn’t really run anything on time. Tryouts even started an hour and a half late, so they just had us warm up with hard balls for that whole time, not that fun. Overall it was very cool to be chosen to try out from the UCT team, but it made me very thankful for the sports facilities in the US.
Last weekend I was finally able to surf!!! I have tried many times here before, but for some reason there is always something keeping us from going. The beaches get really windy here, so our intentions are thwarted a lot because of the wind. Surfing did live up to all of my expectations though! We were able to get lessons, a board and a wetsuit all for only 100r which is about 14 American dollars. The instructor even let us keep everything for 3 hours without an extra charge. Three other girls from the house came with me and we were all able to stand up! I even rode one of the waves all the way into the sand on the beach which was awesome! It was a really good day for surfing, so there were a lot of people there. I was more afraid of getting killed by another surfer than I was for the sharks. We surfed at Muizenberg which is pretty close to Seal Island where a lot of great whites are. Every beach has shark watchers out and a flag to indicate what the shark situation is. A white flag means that there is good visibility and no sharks have been seen. A black flag means that they can’t really see, so swim at your own risk. Finally, a white flag with a black shark in the middle means that a shark has been spotted and get out of the water! An alarm also sounds when this happens. The flag was black when we went surfing because it had been misting, but I decided that we were fine. I figured that the shark would eat the instructor first and we could just paddle away. I would have loved to have been able to surf all day, but after a couple of hours I couldn’t feel my feet or arms too well. It was hard getting up on the board when you couldn’t feel your arms, so we decided to call it a day after a little over 2 hours surfing in the water. The board was a lot bigger than I expected and I looked really awkward holding it because my arms were too short for me to hold the board like a pro. I woke up sore the next morning and had bruises from where the board smacked me, but it was all worth it! I hope to surf more while I’m here, but we will see since the weather is changing.
We had another dinner at Ida’s this weekend, which was a lot of fun. It’s really nice getting a free home cooked meal here every once in awhile. She has all 80 of our names memorized and talks to each one of us. Luckily she has a courtyard in her backyard because we definitely wouldn’t all be able to fit inside of her house.
SHAWCO was really good this week. We taught the kids about human rights and the South African Bill of Rights. We had them write into Parliament about what rights they felt needed more attention as a 12 or 13 year old in a township. They all got really excited about it, but they didn’t believe that we would actually send their letters to Parliament, so they all asked for proof of the envelope. Some of the letters were cool to read because some of the kids talked about how Nelson Mandela was their hero and stuff like that. There were a few that were sad because some of the kids just wrote, “help us!!” a lot of the letters. We also told the kids that they could write in their native language of Xhosa, so maybe they wrote in about how they needed better SHAWCO teachers or something like that and I wouldn’t have noticed.
We are still undefeated in soccer! This week was a close one, but luckily we pulled through. One of the ref’s talked to Ainsley (only other girl in the league) and I about how happy he was to see girls on the field. He said that he has been trying to get girls to play in the league for about 10 years, but we are the first ones he has seen. He even said that he wants us to rough up the boys a bit and he won’t call fouls against us! So I’m looking forward to the next game we play where he refs!
Girls for the most part here seem to be a lot different from American girls. They really don’t play sports for the most part. At the volleyball tryouts there weren’t any white South African girls, which is a really common thing. Girls seem to be pretty meek, prissy and cliquey here. We have a huge lecture hall for my Sociology class, but the fresher girls only let their friends sit next to them and there isn’t enough room for all of the students to have seats. Some of the girls are nice, but they really aren’t very outgoing or friendly to people outside of their group. The boys are much nicer here I think.
Another interesting thing about going to UCT is how much people dress up to go to class here. A lot of the girls wear dresses. Some of the girls even wear dresses that are really sparkly and in the US would only be worn on New Year’s Eve, but wearing those things to class is appropriate here. There have been days were I have had to wear workout clothes to class, if I had a soccer game in the middle of the day and then volleyball soon after. On these days everyone looks at me funny and asks if I am sick or just went for a jog or something. Back home, I wouldn’t think twice about wearing workout to clothes to class, but here it’s basically a sin. A lot of people in Cape Town don’t wear shoes, but our kitchen floor is normally covered in broken glass from 20 people bumping into each other in the kitchen, so I don’t think it would be safe for us to do that. Students don’t really use backpacks here, so I know Americans stand out in that way. I am glad that I must be fitting in at least a little because a girl started speaking Afrikaans to me the other day at volleyball! I had no idea what she said, but still it was exciting that she thought I might know! Girls all use huge pencil cases though and take notes in lots of different colors. A lot of people have dreadlocks here. What I find very disturbing is that there are a lot of mullets here and even worse…a lot of rat tails. The mullets and rat tails are a lot more chic than the trailer trash ones in the US. They are very deceiving though. There are lots of very put together guys on campus and then when they turn around it’s startling to see a mullet or rat tail in the back.
On St. Patrick’s Day, my roommate, Kathryn, and I went to the Kelly Clarkson concert!! It was so much fun! It was in an arena in a huge gorgeous casino. Inside the casino there was an ice skating rink, a movie theater, bowling, an arcade, a hotel and tons of restaurants. It was also really interesting to look around because it was modeled after District 6. I hope we go back sometime to take advantage of the ice skating rink. While we were there, we found out that people had been fighting over tickets since December, so I guess we just got lucky that we were able to get some. My roommate just stumbled on them online and they were pretty cheap, so it worked. The opening act was the winner of South African Idol and he was really good. A lot of the girls were going crazy over him. We were standing pretty close to the stage. I expected to be much further back. I’m also glad that we chose got standing seats because I would think she would be lame to see while sitting down the whole time. Kelly was great!! She played every song that I wanted to hear, plus a lot that I had forgotten about. I didn’t realize how many singles she has had, so it was fun knowing all of the lyrics. Kathryn and I definitely knew more of the lyrics than most of the South Africans, so I think they thought we were really intense fans, which we weren’t. Whenever people hear our accents they want to talk to us and one of the guys asked if we were following Kelly around the world. We said yes and he thought that was completely normal and believed us. It was an especially fun concert because her songs are fun to sing to and catchy and all. I didn’t realize how big of a deal it was for someone like Kelly Clarkson to come to South Africa, but I guess it’s really rare. The show we saw was actually her last official show of the tour. She is spending a few more days in South Africa, so I’m sure I’ll run into her.
Tomorrow we are leaving for Namibia!!! 10 of us are roadtripping in a 10 seater van there. It will definitely be an adventure. Tomorrow night we are staying in Springbok, South Africa which is an hour or two from the Namibian border. We are planning on going to the Fish River Canyon which is the second biggest canyon on the world. We are also going to Keetmanshoop which has sweet quiver trees . We’re going to Sossuvlei which has the world’s tallest sand dunes. Then we are going to Swakopmund which is Namibia’s adventure capital. There we will sandboard and do other cool stuff and probably spend some time at the really nice beach there. We are camping most of the nights. We are going to be in very close quarters most of the time, but hopefully it works out fine! It seems like we are going to be doing a lot of roughing it, but that’s what Africa is about! We have some flexibility with what we are thinking of doing, so we’ll see how our plans go.
Cheers from South Africa!
Megan
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