The last few days in pictures

Hi!  I have had a picture filled couple of days!  I can't wait to share with you. 

On Sunday Jules and I went to Kalk Bay by train to spend sometime on the beach and soak up the sun. We bought fish on the dock, went antiquing, book shopping and into a garden shop.  It was a really lovely day.

Steam train!  In Kalk Bay

The yellow tail that Jules bought

My fish! 

Seals

My fish being cleaned

Garden Heaven!  

Jules in garden heaven

my fish in garden heaven

Waiting for the train

This is the amazing sandwich I made.  It's had avocado, red pepper hummus, and roasted veggies!  SO GOOD

This was my view when I was eating my best sandwich ever.  

The theme of cook club was fish.  Jules made sushi, Rachael made salmon dip, Omololu made a salad with smoked oysters and I made fish stew!  We had way too much food, and on top of it all, the majority of a chocolate cake Jules and I made on Saturday night.

Cook Club! (not pictured: Omololu's salad)

Sushi

pickled onions 

My fish stew! 

the best chocolate cake ever.  Coconut!  It's the secret, coconut milk, coconut fat, coconut flakes.  

On Monday I took a field trip with one of my professors who has grad students collecting data for the WHO's healthy learner survey.  So we drove to a beautiful rural area.  The town we visited was one of the first settled in the Western Cape and had the first school in South Africa!

view from the Bathroom

the Blacksmith's shop

This bell was a gift

this is the church!

the walk to the garden

surrounding hills

THIS BUG WA HUGE! it really was.  Bigger than my hand.  I should have put something in there for scale. 

On the way home we drove along the coast. It was beautiful and we saw many whales!  My professor brought a bunch of food along with us, and when we commented on that she said that it was something all coloured people do on road trips because they are still used to not being able to buy food at all the places they go through.  So we had really good egg salad sandwiches.

The ocean!  I missed them, but there were some whales out there.  Very cool!

I'm at the beach

a shell

On Saturday at 5:30 am I will be going on my Spring break trip to Kruger National park for a bit of a Safari!  I am really looking forward to it, but I have two tests to get through in between now and then.  Pray for me!  It is really really stormy here today.  I fell asleep on the bus and missed my stop this morning so I had to take a mini bus taxi from the bus terminal back to campus! It was an adventure!

Also, yesterday I started a sourdough culture.  So we'll see how that goes.  Right now it is resting. Updates to come

Clueless American

Hello!

This was a bit of a rough week.  Some things went really well (I found a stellar hat and romper) but somethings were not so great.  The biggest disaster of the week was missing a test I thought was supposed to be on Friday.  It was actually on Wednesday.  oops!  Hopefully I will be able to play the clueless American card, as much as I hate it, I don't want to fail the class! I'll keep you posted.

Week one with no hair has gone well!  there are a lot of women here with short hair, but most of them are rocking the mini afro, something I cannot pull off.  Working on it!  So far I haven't missed my long hair, but I need to get more hats!

Today a few IES students and I went to a training session for a mentorship program in the area.  It was a field trip for my IES class about effective and ethical community development programs.  Not only was the information and the program really interesting, getting to know the other volunteers and hear their reasons for volunteering was really interesting and inspiring.  I also got to have a very interesting conversation with two women in their 40s or 50s.  They had a lot to say about the differences between the generations who had or hadn't experienced Apartheid.  Work ethic was the biggest change they felt they had seen and entitlement.  Maybe this is a realisation every generation has about the next, but it was very cool to get to talk to them about it.  Having conversations like this is definitely something I embrace about being a clueless american.  If you ask questions and are attentive to the answers there is no end to the amount of insight people want to tell you.  It's fun!
Last night I made poppy seed scones!  They were very good, but I ate wayyy too many of them. I need to learn to bake smaller batches.

 Tomorrow is Sunday and I am looking forward to going to the 75 min flow class at 9:00.  It will be the hardest class I have tried so far, but I think I will like it. A Challenge!  And then if the weather holds I would like to go the beach!  I am planning on making some Fisherman's stew for some of my friends tomorrow night, so I hope to buy some fresh fish close to the source!

I dont have any pictures of my own to share this time (again)  but here is a picture of Annie's dorm room:

So cute!  and SO Eugene.  We raised her well.  :)

it's been a while...

Hello out there!
I know, it has been more than a week!  Too long!  whew! I do have a little bit of an excuse:  I was waiting to post until after my Robben Island trip, but then it got canceled due to weather concerns with the ferry, and I didn't feel I had much else to write about.  But now I am rallying! I had another wonderful week.  The weather has been a bit iffy, but I am rising above.  And really, compared to Oregon winters this is nothing.

One fun and new thing in my life is "Book Club"!  It is actually a cooking club.  Every week there is a new theme (like Zucchini) and everyone cooks a dish surrounding that theme.  We rotate through cooking a main, appetizer or dessert.  I am very thankful I did not get dessert for this week, the theme is Fish.  I am going to make fish stew!  Last week I had a food disaster and burned everything trying to make butternut squash "french fries".  I am keen to get my mojo back this week.  It's going to be EPIC!  In addition to cooking club, I have been baking a lot, Rooibos cookies, ginger/lemon/oatmeal cookies and last night cayenne pepper brownies.  Some projects have been more successful than others.   I have also been doing a lot of hot yoga, which I still love, and reading.  This morning I finished the book White Teeth.  It was very good, and reminded me, as most books I like, of Magical Realism.  Delightful.  This week I have a paper and my first exam!  I am equal parts excited and worried.  I think it will be fine, but the other students are freaking out.

One thing that is freaking me out, on the other hand, is Anne and all of her friends growing up!!! Watching them (on facebook) get ready to go to college is so weird!  Especially in a place that is so removed from it.  It's so weird to think that by the time I get back they will be done with a whole semester!  Crazy.

One of the highlights last week was going to a rugby game!  It was CRAZY.  So violent, but still impressive.  There were some large men and some small men.  All of them were probably concussed.  It was extreme.  I wish I had pictures to show you!

I also got to skype some of my favorite people on Sunday.  I had to show them my hair!  On Friday I cut it all off!  Buzz cut. I actually like it a lot. I am excited to be able to wear hats and not worry about hat hair and other funny things like that.  So far no complaints regarding that decision.

hah!  look at emily's face, even sam made it!

 

I got a hat!

paul pierce's baby, prince.  i just like how hard the baby is chilling.  this is to make up for my lack of pictures.

WOW

Greetings from abroad!

I have had an amazing weekend that has carried over into the beginning of an amazing week!

You all know what my Friday was like, full of wild flowers and new friends.  I rounded off the evening by trying to make croissants with out yeast.  They turned out more like rolls of REALLY flakey pie crust, but were yummy in the way that anything made of predominately flour and butter is.

Saturday morning I woke up and took the train to Muizenburg with Jules.  It was sunny and train was crowded and lively.  So many people to watch!  I love riding the train.   Muisenburg is a very popular surfing beach.  It is also popular with the sharks, but Jules and I got in the water because we have no fears, sharky or otherwise.  I think it is actually very safe, and it was SO COLD that we only got in to about our belly buttons anyways.   We spent the rest of the afternoon reading on the beach, eating carrots and peanut butter.  Around three we grabbed some falafel and jumped back on the train to Rosebank.


This is where my day really started to become fantastic.

I had talked a little with a girl from my program about giving her yoga studio a try.  I was curious because I am looking for a structured, less than super strenuous, physical activity to do here.  As we were walking to yoga she asked me if I had ever done Bikram before.  I told her I had never done any yoga before, and she burst out laughing and laughed until she cried.  Then she ducked into a connivence store, bought me a 2 liter water and told me to start drinking.  I LOVED IT.  I am not someone who likes being to hot or stretching, but for  some reason it was exactly what I needed.  And it was really fun.

On Sunday I went to beach frisbee with two of the girls from my program.  It was also really really refreshing!  The weather was a bit cold, but the beach was beautiful, and it was a great way to practice throwing in the wind.  After the game we all rinsed off in the ocean and went to breakfast.  Yummmm.  It's really tempting to join a frisbee club here, but I might just stick to pickup and other informal frisbee forums.  It was nice to go back to enjoying the game for the fun of it.

Today my only class was canceled, so I took it as a sign that I should finally check out the anarchist bookstore in Observatory.  I walked down this morning, checking out some second hand stores along the way and found it! It did not disappoint, and was full of fun books.  I got one that is called Conversations with Gayatri Chakavorty Spivak, who is billed as a feminist, marxist, postcolonial scholar.  I'll report back on that one.  Now I am hanging in a coffee shop, about to walk back for yoga at one.  I am excited to see if I like it as much the second time.  updates to come!

Friday!

Yesterday I went on a very fun day trip up the western coast with some lovely people, Claudine, David, their visiting Namibian friend Maia, and three of their daughters.  It was really nice to get out of Cape Town for the day.  The weather was LOVELY.  

One thing I have been quite impressed with here is car size.  I know this is like a VERY American thing to say, but cars are so much smaller here.  Yesterday we fit all seven of us in a car about the size of a square back Subaru!  Comfortably!  We would have been in trouble if any of us had brought luggage, but for the day trip it was perfect.  

I was picked up at 8:30 and we  set off up the coast.  The objective of the day was to see wildflowers and we did!  We also saw a lot of cool birds, and some VERY large grazing animals I have forgotten the names of.  Then we had lunch on the beach, took a little hike and came home.  It was lovely, here is the proof: 

view from my kitchen!

view from my balcony!

view out the window of a building at the park

view of the park 

the gang

FLOWERS!

cute beach

After the trip I walked to get groceries and mad some soup!!! I am very excited because I have leftovers that I am planning on freezing and eating later in the week.  It was pretty good!  We went out to Pancho's, a Mexican restaurant for dinner.  I got a chicken almond burrito, which I probably would not order again.  Also, instead of wrapping it up in the burrito style I know, they folded four of the tortilla edges under the filling.  It looked a bit like crepes are sometimes served, and definitely required a fork and knife to eat.  It's fun to try South African versions of familiar American (or mexican) dishes.  The results are often a tasty twist on the original dish.  still yummy, but different. I am on the hunt for re-imaginings that I like better so i can come back and share how we have been doing it wrong all along!   I'll keep you posted.  

Today I think I am going to go to the beach and my first Yoga Class!!! 

Still Alive!

Hello out there!  Many apologies for my lack of posting as of late!  I have been trying to get into the grove with the new location, and limited internet.  

This weekend is a three day break because of Women's day! I am about to be picked up to have an outdoor adventure tomorrow.  I am reallllly excited about being outside!  The weather is beautiful today, and hopefully it will stay that way.  

Two days ago I baked my first pie in South Africa! It was glorious!  The crust worked just fine and I was thrilled!  I am still very very happy to be living in Rosebank.  Not only is it beautiful here, there is something so much nicer about living in an apartment setup as compared to a dorm.  I am very pleased.   So far the +/- hour long commute feels more like a refreshing daily ritual than a chore.  

Classes have been good this week. It seems like they get a little better each session!  I hope the trend continues.  

Lots of love from South Africa!  Happy Women's Day! 

View from my balcony of the sun rise and train station. 

Mountains!

My room!  

More to come after the weekend! 

Homestay Weekend!

Hello out there!
This weekend my internet stopped working all together!  I am ashamed to admit how much of a drag it has been, but I'll quickly adjust. I have been reading a lot and still knitting up a storm.  I have now officially finished the front of my sweater, and I'm having commitment issues about starting the next piece.  The book I'm working on is called My Traitor's Heart and it's written by a man who grew up in South Africa, moved to the US to avoid being drafted and then returned.  So far it's been a good history, but I need to remind myself that it is just one man's perspective.

Yesterday night was our homestay.  We lived with Mama's in Gugulethu, a neighborhood of Cape Town.  We had samp, squash and chicken for dinner.  It was super yummy.  My "Mama" has eight, mostly grown daughters, and 19 grandchildren.  Not everyone lives in the same house, but I think we met almost everyone.  It felt like we did at least!  Playing with the little kids all day tired me out, and I slept really well when I finally got into bed.

This morning we got up and went to church. It could not have been more different from St Mary's!  There was a lot of singing and dancing, and talking about walking with Jesus.  The pastor was sick today so instead of a sermon people got up and told the stories of how they were saved and or born again.

After church we went to Mzoli's again.  You may remember me talking about this place before. It's the restaurant that has a bbq rager every Sunday.  Today the party out of control!  We had pap, which is like corn meal/bread/rice, pork, chicken, sausage, and lamb.  It was all fabulous.  I want to learn how to cook like that!

Tomorrow I need to leave the house at 7am in order to get to campus on time for my 8:30 class, but I am so excited!  I love commuting!  In a lot of ways I think it was a blessing to live in an isolated place at first.  I feel so lucky to be here now, and I will definitely be making the most of it!  

Change is Here!

On Monday I did a little aqua jogging in the indoor pool at UWC.  It was SOOOO COLD.  The heat pump was broken, and I knew that, but I decided to give it a go any way and jumped in.  I expected that as I started moving I would get warmer.  I was wrong.  I got out when the last of my fingers and toes went numb.  The pool building doesn't have hot water showers, so I sprinted home to a cup of coffee, a cup of tea, and a long, hot shower.  Then I spent the rest of the day with all of my warm clothes on.  While I stand by my previous statements that winter here is nicer than many summer days I've seen in Oregon, I was so cold!

FOOD PHOTO

Monday night we went to another soccer game, this time with other UWC students.  One kid, originally from Cameroon, was a member of the team before he tore his hamstring and so we got a scathing commentary.  It was entertaining to get the insider's point of view of the players, although I will take most of his comments with a grain of salt.  After the game he talked a girl into giving her hat to Anna.  He's on the good list.

An added bonus of sitting with locals was that they could figure out what the songs and chants were about.  Most of the songs were in support (and organized by) the student political party that is currently in power at UWC.  I am a little unclear on how the politics on campus work, and weather or not the student political parties are a national thing or just at UWC, but I'm working on finding someone who can tell me.
One night weeks ago Anna and I met a man who was a member of the ruling party.  He was waiting to talk to the owner of the connivence store at my building, which is privately owned, for a donation to support a charity event on Mandela day that his party was hosting.  When we asked him why the store would give him money for this project, he told us that his organization had a lot of power and if the store owner did not donate enough he would be forced to leave.  This sounded a little harsh to Anna and I, but maybe this kind of thing happens in Wooster, and we just don't know....  I'll have to investigate when I get back.
Anna witnessed another political moment on a walk after the game.  The dorm behind us was having a meeting and instead of all going to the lounge at 8, their RA stood in the central courtyard with a megaphone, and everyone came to their window to listen and vote.  Kinda cool!

I have been spending a lot of time recently being frustrated with how isolated UWC is from Cape Town and Bellville, but going to the game and learning about different political structures and practices is interesting too.  I have to remember to keep my eyes and ears open!

THIS IS WHERE THE CHANGE BEGINS:

On Tuesday night I got a call telling me that my request to move to Mowbury had been approved!  I was shocked.  So I packed up all of my stuff again, and hired a driver to move me in to my new apartment.  I am so excited, this is definitely a game changer.  Now I can walk to the store, or to book shops or to cafes and interact with people along the way.  For the first time I feel like I am living in Cape Town.  My apartment feels like home.  I am so excited to make the most of the rest of my time here.  I never thought I would actually get approval to move, and I am so grateful!  My program directors went out of their way to make this possible for me, and luckily, all of the pieces of the puzzle fell into place at exactly the right moment.

The only drawback of my new situation is that my internet access is now a bit limited.  I am going to try to continue posting regularly, but most likely this blog will transition to fewer, longer posts.

Lots of Love from Cape Town!