"Oh, here we call it Megan."

It kind of feels like I’m living a double life here: it feels pretty American. Don’t get me wrong, I still love it, but there’s something weird about making new friends – friends who are very similar to your friends at home – when you know your friends at home will always be the better version. That’s where I am now: friend-flirting with the girls that sit next to me in class and the friends of any African friends I already have. Still, all of my close friends here are American. Two live in my house. Welcome back to sorority land, I guess.

Ever since school started, life here has been less exciting. My schedule is kind of like high school in that Monday through Friday, I have class until about 3 pm, with a few random periods off during the day. Every class is 45 minutes long (they end at the :45 so you can make it to your next class on time). Most of my classes are daily, so I have reading to do every night. Thank goodness the reading here is light. For example, on the first day of my History of Antisemitism class, the professor said there is a required textbook. “Great,” I thought, “there goes $100.” Then he passed out the book, which is about the size of a Dover classic and is paid for by the school because he wrote it. The syllabus literally assigns about 6 pages a week. My politics class has a lot more reading, with required articles that can only be found in the library. We aren’t allowed to check these books out, so we have to sit inside and read them (or in my case, skip them). Anthony Butler, my professor for this course, is a world famous political scientist, and a very boring lecturer. And the class of 100 is half American, and the South Africans seem kind of spiteful that we are invading their department. It turns out that because this is the continent’s best university, everyone here is very career-focused, and therefore uninterested in pursuing an education in the liberal arts. Political Science, one of the largest departments at Berkeley, is on the smaller side here, and has a huge emphasis on government structure and public policy (I assume because most political careers are focused on these).

My sex class (Sex from Sappho to Cyber…seriously), is the best course I have ever taken in my life. The professor is amazing and sunny and dynamic, and I actually look forward to going each day even though it’s my first class of the day. Right now we are learning about the role of sex in ancient Greece, basically learning Greek mythology through how it relates to Eros, God of “love.”

Oh, and I started volunteering with a group of 8th and 9th graders. The on-campus volunteering is monopolized by a program called SHAWCO, which runs on study abroad students looking to help cute African children. Working with the older students, there aren't as many Americans at my site. The school is made of a combination of classes, from townships to middle class. They all wear uniforms, you you can't tell who is from where. Except that it's obvious that the Colored (that word is an actual race name here, it means Brown) students are better off than the black students, and have nice pencil bags full of markers and stuff like that. Frankly, it didn't seem like the kids needed us to be there, but it was still nice to do anyway. I am going again on Thursday, and still need to decide if it's worth the time.

Beyond school, there isn’t really anything new to say. Here are some cultural differences worth knowing about Cape Town:
- Instead of “What’s up?” everyone says “How’s it?” And anytime you say anything, they reply with “Is it?”
- Stores don’t sell red cups or liquid laundry detergent.
- My yard has guinea fowl in it all the time, they keep up a lot of people in my house.
- Smoking is allowed inside, so every night I hang my clothes from my bedroom window to de-smoke them.
- It’s weird for girls to drink beer.
- The cans are a thicker metal, so shot-gunning beer is very difficult. And when you drink soda, you think there’s more left than there actually is. And sodas are called “cool drinks.”
- The fashion magazines here feature affordable clothes rather than the obscenely expensive items in American magazines.
- The big trend is for boys to wear t-shirts with tacky phrases written on them like “I <3 Chicks and beer” or “1 tequila, 2 tequila, 3 tequila, FLOOR!” The girls dress really stylish and it’s hard to keep up.
- There are no water fountains ANYWHERE.
- Fruit is amazingly cheap ($.75 for 5 bananas, $89 for a carton of grapes).
- You get sunburned from walking to class.
- Hookah is called Hubbly Bubbly (hubbly or hub for short).

Sax on Thursdays

02.09

After about 7 straight nights of going out and taking advantage of dollar beers and $3 cover charges, my whole house slowed down this week and started thinking about adding classes. Here, nothing is online. Before arriving, we each submitted a list of 6 classes that we would like to take, and then at orientation we are told the 3 or so that we were actually pre-approved for (mostly based on major). If we are not pre-approved for a class we would like to take, we have to find the head of that department and convince him/her that we are qualified. That said, many people spent this past week on campus trying to get approved for classes (I was lucky enough to finish that stuff in a couple of hours).

 
 
 The first night of this week, we decided to hike this mountain called Lion's Tail to watch the sun set. It was a full moon night, so it was supposed to be AMAZING. I heard that it was an easy 45-minute hike. I was harder than most of half-dome, with parts where you have to climb a 20 foot chain without barely anything to grip. From one side of the top, we could see all of CT, from the other, we faced the Atlantic Ocean and the setting sun. At the top, there was a huge crowd, but we got the best spot! Not only were we in prime sunset-viewing position, we were also next to this near-naked German who had no idea how much entertainment he was giving us. The way down was probably more dangerous that the way up, but it was like a huge migration because everyone left at once and shared flashlight light. I brought a flashlight (thanks Dad!), and probably every 40+ year old man there (which was about 30 of them by the end...the peak got really crowded) had a headpiece flashlight.

This week I also went to a flea market, where I learned how to barter with the sales people. Most of the booths at the market sold the same stuff: paintings on large pieces of canvas, jewelry, and bowls/decorations. All of it starts wayyy overpriced, and I heard that you'red supposed to open with something as little as 10% their original price. I ended up getting 2 pieces of art, each originally R55, for a total of R25. At the beginning of the day, I was giggly, almost flirty, and got nowhere. By the end, I was stonefaced and seemed uninterested, and they just kept throwing lower prices at me.

As part of Orientation Week, I went to the school's a 3-day club day of sorts, where the Societies and sports clubs each have tables on the main plaza and convince students to sign up. Instead of letting the student go to a meeting or two before deciding to become involved, everyone must turn in a form by the end of the week that declared which societies they would like to enter. Everyone pays upfront. Foreign students get 3 clubs for free, and gym membership counts as one. I signed up for 5, and paid for the two cheapest (totaling about $20). So now, I am officially a member of the Mountain and Ski club (hikes and camps), the Wine and Culture club, Habitat for Humanity (builds township houses), and SHAWCO, the big community service program that EVERYONE here does.

Frankly, that’s the only reason I joined SHAWCO. That, and the people seemed a lot more fun than the members of its underdog competitor that’s a quarter of the size. I interviewed to mentor 7-8th grade students, mostly because it was the only project that fir my schedule. During the interview, they scared the heck out of me, describing how difficult the students are to control, and saying not many people can handle it. I pretended it would be no big deal, but am already thinking about dropping out.

O-Week has big events at local bars/clubs each night, and a Sax Appeal fundraiser during one day. This is the only event I attended. This fundraiser, which supports SHAWCO, involves dressing up in a sexy/tacky/funny/raunchy way, and selling Sax Appeal magazine to cars as they pass by your assigned intersection. The magazine is written by professional columnists and humor writers, and is probably the funniest publication I’ve ever read. This is the 76th year of this event, which raises more than R700,000 each year.  
 
So this morning, I woke up at 3:30 AM, dressed up in costume, and met up with hundreds of other students on campus (we do it so early to beat traffic). Then, they bus us to different sites, dropping off about 30 students on main intersections throughout CT. I sold 20 magazines, and made friends with our site leader, who plays rugby for UCT. By 9:30 AM, they drive us all back to school and we nap the rest of the day.

It was really fun, except that this was the first time I was able to see the racial dynamic of CT at work. Our group was about half white and half black: the white students stood on half of the intersection, the black students stood on the other half. It all happened so quickly, so naturally. My Asian friend and I didn’t notice what was happening, and started selling magazines on the “black” side. And even though they were screaming much louder, jumping around, going up to people’s windows, we sold more. Eventually, I figured out that a lot of racist drivers passed our fellow volunteers and bought from us instead. At first I thought that they were being competitive and cliquish, but once they saw that I was colorblind, the whole weird racial divide seemed to break on our side of the street and we spent all day laughing. On the flip side, I finished the project without talking to a single white student at our site.

For the first half of O-Week, 16 of us rented a van and a car and drove to Stellenbosch, a wine country that is about 45 minutes outside Capetown. Unfortunately, the van broke own in between the two cities, and we had to drive home for it to be fixed. The car rental people were jerks, so in protest we called Al, our driver, and asked him to drive us instead of renting. We left at 11AM, and barely made it to our 7 o’clock dinner reservation. We ate at Moyo, this really fancy chain restaurant here that is high-class buffet, costing R35 a person plus drinks (luckily, we received a group discount).  
 Here, I ate antelope, oxtail, 2 kinds of gazelle, and lamb. This was the best meal of my life, hands down. They also painted our faces at the restaurant, and performed African dancing on the stage right next to our table. 3 people from our group were pulled on stage, and Carolyn fell of the stage (it was also her 21st birthday)!. The next day, we had Al drive us around to go wine tasting (it was my first time). We only went to two wineries. The first, Neethlingshof, seemed pretty fancy. The Sommelier (I think that’s the right use of this word) was great, and took us into a big room where she could face all of us and teach us how to taste wine and the differences between each kind of wine. I ended up buying a bottle of Pinotage for R100. The next winery, Skilpadvlei, was not nearly as nice. We all crowded into a family room-sized room, and sat on the floor, steps, counches, stools, whatever, as the bartenderish woman kept filling our drinks. At least there was good cheese. Then we went to lunch at Spier, home to Moyo, and looked at the cheetah farm. Then we went home, satisfied with the trip but already ready to go back again.

Oh, and something interesting I learned today: 911 is used only for medical emergencies. For crime related emergencies, you use a different number so that an operator doesn’t have to field the call.

The Beginning

To see bigger versions of each picture, click the link in the bottom left-hand corner and it will take you to the Picasa website.

Sooo, I've been in Africa since Saturday night (it's Wednesday now), and still can't get over the fact that I'm here. On the surface, Cape Town reminds me of what I imagine Australia would be like: attractive people, beachy, stylish, really relaxed... The school it the most idyllic image imaginable. It's set on Table Mountain, which John Rhodes donated to the city under the condition that it never be sold as housing property. That means that it's pretty much a national park with my school in the middle of it. It also means that my house is the closest residence to the school in all of Cape Town, and my walk to school is a 5-minute stroll through the woods.

There are 11 of us in my house: 4 American girls, 6 American boys, and a South African girl who is far from the dorky RA-type I imagined she would be. She's a trendy fashion designer who goes to UCT and is really fun to hang out with. She also has a car, which is nice (even though we haven't taken advantage yet). Most of our house is doubles, which makes our physical house much smaller than many of the other foreign student houses, in which the residents all have their own rooms. But none of us even mind since it makes our house seem more comfortable and cute. Plus, we have the best backyard, a DVD player, and a washer/dryer. And electricity is included in our rent.

Because school doesn't start for a couple of weeks, this part of the city is pretty much dominated by the 500 international students. We are starting to all become friends with each other because of orientation (explained below), so it's kind of like freshman year with everyone inviting strangers to hang out all of the time. It's nice, but seeing as my main goal is to make friends with Africans, I can't wait for school to start.

The first night, we went out to a bar/dance club, where the cover charge was 10 rand. That's about a dollar. Drinks at the clubs are also much cheaper, so a lot of Americans get trashy drunk here...I am mostly enjoying the fact that a $20 rand bottle of wine is better quality than a $10 bottle at home. It's awkward going out with a 100 rand bill, which equals $10, because paying with it is socially about the same as paying with a fifty. Paying with a 200 rand (which is mostly what I have, since I ordered mixed bills from the bank) is even more awkward.

My first full day here, we took a day-long bus tour throughout a lot of the Cape, driving by a lot of beaches and several vinyards, and stopping to walk around at the Cape of Good Hope. It was all gorgeous and not even worth trying to describe. The pictures don't nearly cut it either.

This week, we've been going through an orientation for international students, much like CalSO but a week long and a large focus on cultural transitions and their antiquated registration system. It's boring, and the registration is frustrating. I spent a couple of hours today exploring campus and finding Department chairs, so that they can approve my enrollment in their classes. But as of now, I think I'll be enrolled in a Public Policy course, Sex: from Sappho to Cyber (on the history of erotica), World Music, and either the History of Antisemitism or Religion and Society. By the way, campus is just as beautiful as everything else. It's by far prettier than any school I've ever seen, and surely prettier than any school in the US. Since it's on a hill, the center of campus overlooks all of Cape Town and the whole this is surrounded by trees.

Yesterday, we skipped half of orientation to go to the beach. We decided to save the 1 rand (10 cents) by taking the third class train instead of first class. This is when the Cape Town I imagined kind of entered my experience. The 10 of us (mostly American and white) loaded into the train boxcar, which was full of black workers going home to their townships. It was really sad. And they all just stared at us as we laughed about going to the beach. The way home was ever worse, because it was rush hour, so there was barely room to breath in the car. The left the train car open so that everyone could fit, and some men were hanging out of the train as it drove. I'd also heard stories of people riding the top of the train since the car was too crowded, or having to jump out of the moving car since it was too crowded to get out in time.

Today, the experience continued when we visited a township to learn more about service learning opportunities. These townships are indescribable. Literally, picture an 8x8 piece of sheet metal. Now picture three of these sheets leaning against each other, jammed together with nails, and a fourth sheet on top. This is the kind of house 1.5 million people live in. In one of the (I think) 4 townships. These townships are the kind of thing you don't want to believe exist anywhere in the world, literally shack after shack for miles and miles. They were built during Apartheid when the government kicked all of the non-whites out of different areas, and moved them into these areas. The one cool thing about the townships is the amount of pride they have, and that a lot of blacks seem able to overcome their horrible hardships.

Anyways, there's nothing really else to describe yet. I've been dancing a few times, and the night scene seems like it will be really great. I still need to go to the town center, because I haven't even seen the main areas of Cape Town yet (the university is in Rondebosch, a suberb that's about 30 minutes away). Tomorrow we have the day off, so I'm going to take a surfing lesson ($8.50 for a 90 minute lesson, including wet-suit and board).

Since the Internet is absolutely horrible here -- I tried calling mom on Skype and it took her 30 seconds to recognize my voice at all -- it seems like this will be my main form of communication this semester. Hopefully I don't get as bored with it as I did with my eurotrip travel journal.