Lazy Day for Me

     As the title says, I have been super lazy today.  I still wasn't feeling well all day, but I am starting to feel better.  Tyler has been super helpful today though!  He went to our meeting for us and signed us up for the Robben Island tour while I stayed home in bed.  He even brought home a soda to try to settle my stomach.  Who couldn't love someone like him?  But while he was goneI got to skype Julia and Diesel!!!  He needs a haircut so bad!! 

I miss him so much!

     Last night I made my teryaki marinade for some chicken and while I was layin in bed skyping Julia and Diesel, Tyler was outside grilling the chicken.  Hennie was out there helping him and told him that his wife was going into Somerset west tomorrow and offered to take Jonatan and us there to go to the mall and beach while she ran errands.  We may go depending on how I am feeling in the morning.  He also told us that his wife will be getting the stovetop oven tomorrow.  That's about it for today.  Hopefully I will be feeling up to going tomorrow so y'all have something to read!

    

One week from today...

     Today was a little boring.  I am sorry to have to write two boring blogs in a row, but that's the way it's gonna be.  The most exciting thing that happened today is that we got cell phones!  They are WAY old school, but it's ok because we got them both for $40 and that includes our call time.

     We had to go downtown in order to get it, but it wasn't a bad walk because it was so much cooler today!  It was about 73 degrees with cloud coverage and a breeze.  I have found out why the sun feels so much hotter here.  There is a girl next door who told me that the ozone layer is much thinner over Africa than it is over America.  She said that even when it's cool outside there are times she can feel it burning her skin.  While we were downtown we ate at the Indian place again.  There are some people here who have smaller personal space bubbles than I do.  We were sitting down eating when I man stood up behind me and literally had his butt against the top back of my chair.  It was a little awkward, even for me. 

     When we got home, we layed around for awhile and then Tyler went back out to get groceries.  I would have gone with him, but I think my body is finally starting to react to the different foods here.  I'm not really feeling well and am very grateful it wasn't super hot today, or I would have been a very unhappy camper.

     Now that orientation is over, we are going to have to find things to do on our own.  Tomorrow we will have our meeting with Hubba (she is in charge of all the exchange students), skype Julia and Diesel, and have a brai (this is what they call grilling).  We are going to try to go back to Cape Town on Wednesday, but other than that we have nothing going on the rest of this week.  A week from today we will finally start our classes.  I will go to classes Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday and Tyler will go to classes Monday, Thursday, and Friday.  It will be nice to get on a schedule since ours is so inconsistent right now.

     We met Hennie today.  Hennie is the man who owns the house.  His wife has been helping us with everything because he is out of town.  He is really nice and told us that we should be getting our countertop oven very soon.

First Sunday

     The Bishop drove us to church this morning and it is quite a ways away.  The temperature was much cooler over there than it is here in Stellenbosch.  The ward is a pretty good size.  The Bishop says that on Sundays he can get as much as 115 people in the congregation.  I don't really know what to write about today because everything was very similar to the church services back home.  There are only a few things worth mentioning.  One being the fact that I started crying like Mom when they started singing "Love at Home".  I can only imagine what Julia would say =].  There are four missionaries at this building and they were all very nice.  One of them said that they were going to visit us today, but we don't know for sure if they are or not.  Other than that there really isn't much to write about. 

Cape Town Tour

     Ok, this one is gonna be a big one.  Today was the Cape Town tour and I will try to remember as much as I can about today.  First of all, Tyler accidentally forgot to click the Saturday box for the alarm so we were almost late which freaked me out super bad.  that was kinda a stinky way to start off the day, but then we found out that our buses were air conditioned, so a good for a bad I guess.  The fist thing we drove by was the biggest township in South Africa: Khayelitsha.  Anyone who doesn't like reading about sad things can skip through this part.  This Township is about 1.8 miles long and 1.5 million people live in it.  There will be pictures below at the end of the paragraph.  I have never seen poverty like this before, nor do I think that I truely thought it existed.  There are so many people in these two miles that they can't even build schools in the township big enough for all the children.  It was extremely hard to look at.  Our tour guide was really wonderful, and he was telling us about what it's like in this township.  He said that even though it is so poor and so cramped the people have high spirits because they have hope.  I can't imagine living in a place like that when I can see Cape Town in one direction and the vinyards of Stellenbosch in the other and have hope.  It has been said that the average person living in the townships survived on 1 rand a day which is about 13 cents.  The government is really trying very hard to help them.  They have started building houses for people who make 3,000 rand a month (386.27 a month) or less.  Unfortunately, there are still many people moving into the city trying to find a job that it is impossible for the government to provide for everyone, but at least they are trying.  Not only are the townships insanely poor, but they are very dangerous as well.  I am not even talking about the people.  These houses are so close together that if a fire started the fire trucks would be unable to get to the house to stop the fire.  This means that whenever one house catches on fire, thousands of people are homeless.  As I am looking at this seemingly hopeless place our guide (who was absolutely wonderful) started quoting Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela about hope and freedom and it really touched me.  I don't know what else to say about this place, so I will just post all the pictures.



These are the new houses that the government is building.




Only some of the poeple in the township get electricity.  Those lines at the top of the picture are the lines to the people who get them.  Some people in the townships are doing it illegally which is making the chance of fires go up.



     Our guide was explaining to us about how during apartheid the government used rail roads to seperate where the black people lived from where the colored people live and where the white people lived.  It was really interesting driving through because even now there is a clear difference in quality of housing between the three.  Despite how bleak the township looked, Cape Town (only a few miles away) is absolutely beautiful.  The first place we went in Cape Town was the Company Gardens.  These gardens were originally used to grow vegetables for the markets and such, but now it's just a really beautiful park.



Squirrels at this garden are not afraid of people at all.



Sneak Shot!



I have no idea what this is, but there were quite a few of them walkin around.



Rose garden =]



Oldest Synagogue in South Africa.

     The garden was really cool, but it was really hot.  After the garden we went to this MASSIVE mall.  When I say massive, I mean there is a Farris Wheel at this mall.  We ate there and then went to the beach.  The beach was actually not very hot, but the sun was very bright so we both got burnt.  The water was freezing.


That's Jonatan in the corner.

Another sneak shot =]

     After getting burned we went back home and ate.  Of course Tyler had a sandwich, but I had curry top ramen.  It was so good!!  We need it in the States.  The bishop is picking us up for church tomorrow morning so I should be able to tell everyone all about it in my next post.

Moyo and good African food!

     Drivers here are TERRIBLE!!  At orientation they told us that from the middle of December to just recently in January 1,000 people died from car accidents and that they were excited because the number went down.  I saw today why it's so high.  On our way to Moyo we drove in a 12 seated van and as soon as we got on the main road he was going about 90mph. I was shocked and everyone drives like that!!  Anyways, Moyo was so much fun!!  The food was delicious!  I didn't realize they cooked with so much pumpkin.  They had sections for vegetables, meat, chicken, seafood, salads, roasts, and desserts.  The meat was so tender as was the chicken and seafood.  They served calamari and I was very nervous to eat it because I know that it can be extremely chewy if it's not cooked well.  I have also only had it fried, but when I tried it I was so excited.  It was so tender and so good.  I don't know what seasonings they cook with, but all their spice combinations and their sauces were very good.  The SPIER wine farm was so beautiful!!  I really wish my camera had a flash on it, but I found out it didn't as soon as I tried to take pictures in the dark.  Sorry!  There was an African woman painting faces and Tyler accidentally scratched his off, so there is only a picture of mine.

Tyler was nice enough to take this for me right after we got back.

     Dancing here is WAY different from dancing back home.  I did not see a single person grinding on other people.  Apparently dirty dancing is mainly an American problem.  Tyler and I were talking to a couple from Germany and they said that when they visited "The States" that it was one of the things that surprised them about us. 

     The Bishop emailed Tyler and told him that he knows a family who lives closer to us who may be able to take us to church, but if they can't that they would make sure we had a ride to get there.  I am pretty excited to see what the church is like here in South Africa.  I am also really excited about the Cape Town visit tomorrow!  We will leave at 9am and get home around 5:30pm.  I will for sure take a ton of pictures so everyone can see the city. 

     Sorry it's not very long today, but really all we did was go to Moyo so that's it. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q7rl9D3ok0

This is the video of my awesome isiXhosa professor...enjoy!!

     Molweni!!!  That is the greeting for many people in isiXhhosa.  Let's start with last night.  I got to skype with my Sisana (younger sister) Julia last night!!  It was super fun =]  You can tell how happy she was to see and talk to me.

Yay for Julia!

     The only other exciting thing that happened last night was while I was skyping Julia.  The weather was really nice again, so we kept the door open.  There aren't bugs here like there are in North Carolina meaning they aren't all over the place so it normally isn't a big deal.  Unfortunately, this time I felt something crawling up my pants and for some odd reason I completely freaked out and threw my pants off squealing like a lil' girl.  Tyler was just telling me "Put your pants back on, put your pants back on."  But at that point I was pushing it outside with my pants.  It was pretty funny.
     I do believe I am going to take isiXhosa because they don't have any past and future tenses and the professor is awesome.  The would be Pulmani Sibula and he is SO COOL!!!  The language actually isn't as hard as it looks.  When the Afrikaans professor got up and talked to us about that language it was much more difficult for me.  The isiXhosa language is actually one of the languages that clicks which is even cooler.  I will explain why I am not taking Cellular Biology because I know my Mom is wondering.  Cellular Biology conflicts with my Community Service program class which I am not going to trade in for Biology.  The good thing about both these classes thought is that I will be working in townships with children which will pretty much prepare me for anything a low-income school in America can throw at me. 
     The campus here is so beautiful!  I am going to post a few pictures.  On our campus we have the biggest subterraneann library in the Southern Hemisphere.  It is really cool!!


The walk way on our beautiful campus!



These statue guys are all over campus.



This is just a really pretty campus building.  They all look alike.



These are the stairs to our underground library =]



Walking to the library



Library entrance in Afrikaans.

     The library is really nice here and it has very nice computers AND it's one of the few buildings that has air conditioning.  You can kind of see this, but right inside the doors there is a security guy behind a really thick sheet of glass who is essentially guarding the entrance to the library.  In order to get in you have to scan a student card and go through those walk through spin things that you see at the zoo.  The security is HUGE here.  There are cameras all over the campus and walk ways.  There is also a "Green Route" that has security monitoring it all the time. 
     Today was really fun, but the next two days will probably the best days of orientation.  Tomorrow we are registering for our Internet access on the campus and picking up our tickets for Moyo.  Moyo is this massive party they are throwing for the international students.  It's going to be really nice because it will be on the SPIER Wine Farm.  There will be a DJ and traditional African food and everything!  Saturday is our tour of Cape Town which I am really excited about because apparently Cape Town is just a huge deal.  Well, that's about it.  If anyone has questions, just ask on the comment box and I will include them in the next blog.  Hamba Kakuhle! (Go well)

Orientation: Day 1

     Today was the first day of Orientation and I feel like I have information overload!  I am going to start with the end of last night.  The sun is hardley ever down here. 

This is at 7:30 pm.  It didn't even start getting darker until about 8:20.  Not only does it take forever to set, it comes up insanely early.  The past two days I have woken up around 6:20am and it looks exactly the same as 10am.

     Once again, as soon as it started getting later the weather got beautiful, so we ate outside.  We still don't have any kind of oven or anything we cooked hot dogs in the microwave.  We also found some baked beans to eat with them.

The hot dog buns were so good.  Here in Stellenbosch there are no hot dog buns in bags.  To get hot dog buns you have to go to the bakery and ask for them.  They are so good!!  The baked beans tasted like they were almost in Spaghetti-o's juice, but not as bad.

     The juice here is very different from the juice back home.  A lot of the juices back home have almost a tangy taste at the end that most juices here don't have.  Also, Mustard is pretty much a big deal.  The places we have been to eat don't have katchup available at the tables, but I have seen mustard. 

     I am starting to get more used to the currency here.  I kept looking at the rand thinking, "Where is the one rand bill?"  I just now realized that the one rand is a coin and not a bill.  Oops!!



5 cents



One rand



10 cents, 50 cents, 2 rand, and 5 rand



20 rand and 50 rand



     I really like the bills because of the animals on them.  I know that sounds kinda weird, but I think it's cool.  Ok, now I can get back to Orientation.  There is another exchange student who i.  s livin in the same housing development as us.  His name is Jonotan and he is from Stockholm, Sweden and he is really nice.  We saw him at orientation and hung out with him for awhile.  For the first part of the orientation a group of speakers talked to us about stuff we need to know about Stellenbosch.  One of the things that they talked about was Safety.  Apparently I can't go anywhere by myself, but the University is actually a very safe place.  We are going to have to get cell phones obviously, but other than that we are plenty safe. =]

     We got put into different groups for the campus tour so at this point I can only speak for myself.  It got pretty hot today.  It got somewhere around 80 degrees and I got a bit of color from walking around in the sun so much.  The campus here is really spread out so it takes awhile to get around campus.  I discovered that the langugae department is at the very far end of campus closer towards the downtown area, so I am starting to lean towards biology instead of afrikaans.   One of the girls in our group was from Germany and she was burnt pretty bad, but she acted as if she had never been burnt in her life.  She even once asked how long it takes for a sunburn to fade away.  She was pretty interesting though because she could speak German, English, French, Latin,a nd read Hebrew.  There are a lot of really tall and really skinny girls in the exchange program as well. 

     After the Campus tour we watched two videos on HIV/AIDS.  I knew that it was a big deal and a very serious disease, but it's so different than what you would think here.  These videos were so difficult to watch and the statistics are even worse.  For example, 1 in every 3 pregnant women in South Africa has AIDS.  That statistic kinda shook me more than all the others beacuse those could be children with a disease they did nothing to get and it also means that those children will lose their mothers before they should have.  There is a pill here that has amazing results for HIV/AIDS, but it's really difficult for the people in the townships and in poverty.  There are a few places that give this pill for free, but some people have to walk for 4 days and 3 nights to get to it.  It is also tricky because you have to take the pill on a full stomach and for people in the townships here, that's a big thing to ask for.  They pretty much have to chose between food, their children's schooling, their homes, and their lives and the question is what do they give up?  I have never seen poverty like I have seen just looking into the townships.  I haven't been in one yet, but they look like pictures of hoovervilles made of tin.  It's really shocking to walk through Stellenbosch and see how well off so many people are and then see the townships.  There is no inbetween and it's really shocking.

     On a lighter note, we have found out some of the other places that the international student club will take us while we are here.  There is a tour of Robben Island that we really want to go on as well as

Downtown Stellenbosch

     We went to downtown Stellenbosch today in order to get a few things and to see how far everything was.  The closest University building is about five minutes and the center of campus is about ten minutes away.  Downtown is probably about a 20 minute walk, but it's not bad because it's so beautiful and it doesn't feel nearly as humid as it does back home.  These are pictures of the walk and of downtown.



This is the view from the patio outisde the door of our apartment.



While we were walking we saw this house being built.  How cool looking is that house??  You can also notice the gate.  All houses and apartments here have gates in front of their homes, so you have to have two keys to get in.

This is our gate.  We don't have the same kind of gate the other house had, but I am ok with walls. =]

 

I don't know if you can see the words, but they say Aankope, Huis Visser, Huis Marais, and Simonsberg.  This is the first University building we come up on.  What a language...

This is what we believe to be the biology and chemistry building.  It seems like all the buildings look like this, but the concerning thing is all the windows on all the buildings we saw were open.  Our apartment has no air conditioning and I am begining to think the University doesn't either.  Bummer!



Downtown Stellenbosch!!  The buildings aren't very tall.  The whole thing is like one big strip mall.  They also had some outside markets, but I forget to take a picture of one.

This is the last picture of downtown.  I would first like the point out that the car is driving on the opposite side of the road and it's taking  awhile to get used to-especially while we are crossing the streets!  Also, We are very far into the downtown area at this point and can STILL see the mountains.  They are my favorite part of South Africa.

     As you can see in the pictures it is a BEAUTIFUL day.  It is in the upper 70's, but the breeze is so nice that it feels about 70.  While we were downtown we found a food court which is nothing at all like you would think it was like.  A food court doesn't mean that there are a lot of restaurants there, it means there is one.  This particular food court was indian food, so we decided it was time for lunch.  We both ate the chicken curry and it was AMAZING.  It was in a container that had rice on one side and the actual chicken curry on the other.  The chicken in the chicken curry was still on the bone, but was literally falling off of it.  We were able to get all the chicken off with a spoon and a fork.  We got all this food and two sodas for about 54 rand which is about 7 American dollars max.

     We were surprised at how many different nationalities we saw downtown.  Of course there were Indian people in the food court, but we also so a lot of black Africans, Europeans, and Asians as well.  This is a very diverse part of South Africa (I make this comment not knowing what the rest of South Africa looks like).  While there are many people here, not many are friendly at all!  We would be walking down the street and come up on a person and they don't even look at you.  I smiled and nodded at a few people and they just pretend I wasn't there.  When I told Tyler about it his only response was, "Good". 

     We both really like it here.  The only thing I am struggling with is some of the things in the apartment.  We have no stove, oven, toaster, dishwasher, or air conditioning.  The lady who owns the apartments told us that she is going to give us a stovetop oven, but until then I can't cook which really really sucks because the grocery stores here are very cool.  The actual stores are built the same, but the bakery area and the meat areas are what are really cool.  You can tell that everything in the bakery is home made and it looks delicious.  We got some pumpernickel break that was made there and it was delicious.  There are no bagged meats in these stores.  There is a meat area where all the raw meat is shown to you, so I like to think everything is fresh or we would able to smell it.

     Well, that's about it for today.  We are going to the store around 5 to get some groceries.  The sun here doesn't start going down until 7, so we will be safe.  I will try to post in this as much as possible, but no promises. =]