Grammar day...ech

     As the title says, we talked about grammar today in Xhosa.  Grammar is the worst part of every language.  The good thing about Xhosa is that the grammar is very straightforward and it never changes.  Tyler was kind enough to drive me to and from class due to the accident last night.  I got home and then fell asleep because for some reason last night Tyler and I were in a talky mood.  I think we ended up finally falling asleep a bit past 1 if not later.  When I woke up, we hung out and then I made dinner.  Tyler brought home the most amazing thing ever.  A while back Grant's mom made us a meal and had a sweet chili sauce that we could use if we wanted to.  It was SO GOOD!  Tyler brought it home today!!!  I made chik-fil-a nuggets (thanks to Dani's recipe) with this sweet chili sauce.  It was so good.  We are just hanging out now until we decide to go to sleep.  Sorry it's such a boring day.  No fun to read.  Hamba Kukuhle.

This is the sauce I was talking about.  We may or may not be bringing one or two bottles home with us. =]

Scooter Fail

     I am not going to start with the scooter incident because I didn't blog yesterday, so I have to catch up.  Yesterday was Stake Conference, but we kind of over slept.  Oops.  We read this awesome talk and had a mini-FHE instead.  This is the link to the talk: http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2008/10/come-what-may-and-love-it?lang=eng&query=come+may+love.
It's a really wonderful talk and it's something I feel everyone can relate to.  I made an almost American-ish dinner.  Stake and potatos.  I know you wouldn't normally put pasta salad with it, but anyone who knows me knows how I feel about carbs. =]

     The only other thing that happened Sunday was me beating Tyler at Scrabble again.  We got to work with the kids again today!  My class was AWESOME.  For the first hour we only had the girls so we talked about nutrition and made a fruit salad and such.  The fruit here is AMAZING.  The only fruit that isn't as good if not better than the states is apples.  Our second class with the boys and the girls was so much fun.  The first thing we did was show them a slide show of our homes and family.  They were so funny.  They saw the pictures of the mountains and the trees in the fall and the snow and were so amazed by them.  The funniest was when they saw Andrew.  I had to pause the slide show because they got so loud when they saw him.  They were like, "he is huge!"  I told them he played American football and they just gawked at how big he was.  It was really cute.  After we did the slide show, we danced.  We did the Cha Cha Slide, the Cupid Shuffle and just normal dancing.  I taught them the Cupid Shuffle because the other American girl, Maureen, didn't know how to do it well.  She said it didn't get big in California like it did here.  As everyone knows, I am not a very good dancer at all.  That being said, these kids FREAKED out when I walked out it.  They all started yellin, "ohhhhh".  It was so much fun.  Tyler's class walked in and tried to join us, but they couldn't.  They were so jealous. =] Tyler is gonna write about his class now.  The kids were crazy today. Here at this school it is not so uncommon that the teacher doesn't show up and there is no real substitute teacher for the kids and that is what happened today. With no real teacher in the classroom with us while we were teaching, they were a little bit too out of control. We talked to them about being physically fit and eating healthy and then we had Olympic games outside. All in all it was good.
     So weird stuff happened to me after class today.  There is a boy named Jeffrey in our class and the whole time I have been there I have not heard his voice.  I had to go ask the Principal for something and when I got in there Jeffrey was in the room with a new boy named Quintin and another kid.  Apparently they got in a fight.  I was so shocked because this boy literally doesn't speak to anybody.  He even had a busted lip.  Principal Jansen gave me directions to get what I needed and then I returned to see what was going on with the two boys because I needed to know if I need to start separating them when we start doing group things.  Jansen told me that Quintin pretty much bullied Jeffrey and that's what started the fight.  He told me that this kid really really struggles.  He is mentally grade 4, but he is in grade 8.  Jansen then looked at me and said, "You are the one who studies education in the states right?"  I said yes and then stuff started getting weird.  He asked if I had done my articles (internships) yet and I told him I had done about 4 and then he asked me what my advice would be for the situation.  I didn't know what to say at first because I don't know these kids like he does.  I told him in the past the teacher and I just focused on sending some more nurture the kids way.  Jansen then told me about all Jeffrey's issues.  I don't want to go on about his personal life, but it's not good.
     Things got even weirder.  He mentioned that his step brother in a grade below who was above average and who stands up for himself and such.  My obvious question was whether the brother normally looked out for him.  He then brought both boys into the class and asked me to talk to them a little bit.  What that actually meant is that he was going to talk and then turn it over to me for a while.  Jeffrey had been crying the whole time which made me feel really bad.  Things get even weirder from there.  After the boys left he asked if I thought I should talked to the parents.  I told him that I certainly wasn't comfortable doing that because in the states student teachers don't address parents.  He then told me that he may talk to them Friday and that he may call me in as well.  He said he wants the parents to know that the international kids working with the students are invested in the children's happiness or something.  I guess I will see how Friday goes on Friday.
     When we got home I passed out.  I slept for like an hour and a half and then Tyler went to teach me how to ride the scooter.  This was bad.  He brought me to a parking lot and then just said ease into it and go.  That's all the direction I got, so I assumed I could just hope on and go.  This worked for about 2 seconds before I tried to turn which is where things went wrong.  I obviously fell, but one of my shoes came off and pretty much pushed all my toes back to my foot.  I think I sprained the big one.  It was really funny after I realised nothing was really wrong.  I will no longer be driving the scooter though.  If I can't even handle a parking lot, then there is no way I could handle the streets of Stellenbosch. 


This is right after it happened.  The reason it looks so different from the other picture is because it's natural light instead of our fluorescent lighting.



This is about 4 hours after.  It looks greenish in the picture due to our terrible lights, but it's more blueish.  The last time I sprained something to the point of it changing colors was when I got a game keepers thumb playing volleyball.  I am not going to lie, this hurts much worse.

     We went to the rugby game after this incident (Tyler drove because there was no way I was walking 20 minutes after I sprained my toe.  Rugby games are so crazy.  I am just going to post a bunch of pictures and try to explain what's going on in them.

This is rugby.  They all just jump on top of each other the whole time.

This guy is kinda like a crowd pumper upper person.  He is like Spaz McGee for the Greensboro Grasshoppers.

I know I was there to watch the game, but the view was so beautiful it distracted me.

I have no idea what this guy is for but he ran around he whole time.

This picture may look normal, but if you look to the far left then you will see a man on the ground.  He is injured and a trainer is with him.  The weird thing is that everyone around him are still playing.  When players get injured they don't stop the music or the game.  It's super different from the states.

This is the butterfly dance thing Napoleon Dynamite did and they do it everytime someone kicks a ball between the goal posts.  It made me giggle.

We won!

     That's about it.  We drove home and are now just hanging out.  Hamba Kukuhle.

=]

     Today has been so nice.  We slept till like noon!  I know my dad would look at me and be like, "really Savannah?"  The temperature today was probably in the mid 70s, so it has been beautiful.  We haven't done a whole lot today.  We went to the Spar and did some grocery shopping and my hair dye.  When we got home the blonde went away very fast.

     For dinner I made chik-fil-a sandwiches and fries.  I was a little worried about how they would work without a deep fryer, but they turned out just fine.

     Just for the record, Tyler made the fries and yes that one is burnt.  Since dinner we have skyped his parents and played scrabble and just hung out.  We may skype my family when they get home from Garrett's basketball game, but if not there is always tomorrow.  Tomorrow is Stake Conference so we will ride the scooter to church and see how it works out.  That's about it.  Hamba Kakuhle.



Exhausted

     First of all, it was really nice today not having to walk to the train station.  Today was kinda a rough day.  It's midnight over here and I am just figuring out how to word everything.  Today we discussed racism in South Africa.  Growing up in the South racism was always something that seemed to occupy people's minds, but I have never seen or heard it very obvious.  If anything I feel like people tip toe around the issue because they are afraid of offending someone if they use the wrong words.  It's not like that here.  Grant gave us a chance to discuss racism in our home countries for a bit and I was surprised to hear some of the people from America say that in their home towns that no white people work.  I didn't really understand that because every job I have had there have been a lot of different kinds of people, but I guess it's different in different parts of the US. 
     He then asked us to share some of the experiences we have had of racism here.  I don't live on campus so I have seen strong structural racism and really strong power differentials, but I am not surrounded by the South African students so I haven't had many experiences with people.  What some of the other people said about their experiences really bothered me though.  One girl shared that at the Rugby game a white South African made the statement, "I think all black and colored people should be our servants."  Another girl said that one of the white South African's who she knows just flat out said, "I hate black people".  Apparently white South Africans have been warning the kids in our class not to take the train because "the black and colored people take the train, so it's dangerous".  I started almost feeling offended and I know I really shouldn't be because they aren't saying anything about me, but it was just so in your face. 
     Some of the other people in the class have told me that if you bring up Apartheid with a white South African, they will literally get mad at you for bringing it up and say, "That's over, they should just get over it."  Honestly, if it had been like 100 or 200 years ago I could sort of understand where they are coming from but it's been about 20 years since it happened.  20 years.  That means the professors who are teaching us (one of my teachers is black and the other is colored) experienced this first hand. 
     Grant tells us stories about people letting dogs out on him and his brother when they were very young and his brother getting huge gashes in his head from the dog. He said wasn't allowed to walk next to all of his siblings because if a colored person walked with more than one person, then it was an unlawful gathering and they would be arrested.  This is what really surprised me: colored people's ancestry has been erased.  They can only trace as far back as is colored.  They have no way of knowing exactly where they come from and they have no way of doing their genealogy because they have all been erased.  Grant says that both white people and black people claim that they never had "relations" with each other, but there are more colored people than any other color of people.  Where do they think they came from?  Apparently they think erasing their history will erase how they got here. 
     There are some other stories, but I really don't want to write them because if I have to write them, then I have to think about them again and I am not game for that.  I really struggled with this lesson to the point that I actually started breaking out in hives.  Grant always tells us to look at things in a non-emotional way, but it's really hard when there are so many traces of it all around.  I sat in class and started thinking about all the times I went to the malls or the market because I was hoping I could think of one store I walked through that had a white worker.  I am wanting to say that I do remember one in Cape Town, but other than that I couldn't think of a single one.
     Even though these issues are still so strong today, the people are so kind.  As I mentioned, I had a wonderful conversation with the Xhosa women at the laundry place the other day.  One of the girls was even from Kayamandi (that massive township I showed pictures of earlier) and she was just happy as she could be.  These people seem to be holding next to no grudge.  Grant says that some of the older people get anxious, but that for the most part they want to move on.  He says it's just very hard to forget something the older people lived with for so long, but that for the most part they are trying to move on towards the "rainbow nation" they want so bad.  I personally believe that this mindset is directly related to the leadership of Nelson Mandela.  He could have so easily come back from prison and cried for revenge, but he didn't.  I feel the South Africans are really following his example and just trying to move on.
     I don't want this to sound like all white South Africans are bad and they are all racists because they certainly aren't.  There were white South Africans who fought the Apartheid along side of the black and the colored South Africans.  I am just struggling with the idea that there are still some/many (I don't know how many) who will say they dislike a certain color and act as if there isn't anything wrong with it or to say a certain colored person is more or less dangerous than another because of the color fo their skin.  I know my mom warned me about how it was going to be here and I did read some stuff about it, but nothing could have prepared me for this.  I don't think I could have been prepared for the actual racism nor could I be prepared for the forgiveness and the strength of the people who treated so bad.  It truely is a bittersweet feeling because I am filled with anger and sadness and rage and every bad feeling I can think of to think about how real and alive these issues are right now, but at the same time I feel very inspired and touched and humbled by how the black and colored people (that I have encountered) are moving forward and are choosing to be happy.
     Today has obviously been a little emotional for me which means I am absolutely exhausted.  I don't know how I would have made it to Xhosa if we did this on a Monday.  I am excited to sleep in and have a nice slow Saturday and SundayI am also looking forward to working with the students on Monday.  We are talking about nutrition with the girls and making a fruit salad.  With the boys and girls we are doing a slide show of our families and our home countries.  After the slide show we are going outside and dancing!  We are going to teach them the Cupid Shuffle and the Cha Cha slide.  It should be super fun.  I am very sorry if I have sounded terribly depressing, but I feel like people should know.  I feel like I should have known.  Tomorrow's post will be much more upbeat I am sure.  Hamba Kukuhle.

Nomfundo!

     Nomfundo is my name!!  Haha, Nomfundo is the Xhosa name that my Professor gave me.  The root word for it is Education.  After Xhosa I met with my group and discussed what we needed to do for Monday.  Tyler did the same thing in reverse.  He met with his group first, then went to class while I did the laundry.  The women in the laundry place speak Xhosa!!  they are really sweet.  The lady who owns the place was there again and I showed her some pictures of back home and of family and such.  The other women came and huddled around because they wanted to see it as well.  They seemed to think all of America are cities, so they really liked the NC pictures (thanks Daddy!).  We finished laundry and went home on our SCOOTER and are now working on a project for LSCE (the course that works with the primary school).  Tyler is going to write a little about his class.  "I have discovered that this class is going to be quite a bit of work. I am going to have to remember a lot of different formulas and know when to use them in each situation. Other than that it should be fine. Now I have to finish my organizational profile for my LSCE class."  He is actually right now drinking this terrible drink that Grant told us about.  He said that his mother boiled water and then put a bunch of lemon juice in it and lost a ton of weight.  He just made some and it is SO GROSS.  Well, that's about it.  Hamba kakuhle.

Awesome day.

     I woke up this morning and almost skipped Xhosa because I was so tired, but I didn't.  At Xhosa class I found out that we have a presentation due on Thursday.  This means that all of Wednesday I will be practicing it to Tyler (sucks for him).  I got home from Xhosa and went to sleep.  As I was sleeping Tyler went out and brought home three really awesome things!!

HE FOUND REESE'S!!!  They were a like R20, but he decided to be super nice today.  The drink next to the reece's is called an Appletiser.  These things are bangin!  They taste like a granny smith apple squeezed into bubbly water.  They also have grapetisers which are delicious as well.



This is what I am REALLY excited about.  My feet have been so terribly lately from all the walking, so when Tyler came home with this I just about wet my pants.  I am going to have to learn to drive it tomorrow, but how hard can it be?

       We went on a ride on the scooter into the more rural part of Stellenbosch.  I felt like I was in a movie because the scenery was so beautiful!  When we got back I made dinner, we ate, and Tyler did the dishes for me.  =]  He is being so nice today!  Well, that's about it.  Hamba Kakuhle.

Robben Island Video

     This is a link to a video that I uploaded onto youtube from our trip to Robben Island.  The man speaking was a prisoner here and is telling about his father visiting him in jail.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATnR-e_8L7I&feature=youtu.be

This is gonna be a big one.

     I have discovered a few things since being in South Africa.  I will mention two.  One, I am allergic to SOMETHING out here.  I don't know what it is, but I am having allergy issues out here which I never had at home.  Two, beetles aren't harmless.  They actually bite.  I have like five or six bites on my left calf proving it.  I am not super happy about it.

     I didn't write last night because was so tired when we got home from Robben Island.  As the title says, this will be a big one because I have all of yesterday to write about and all of today.  Luckily for y'all the Robben Island information will be based mainly around pictures, so it will be less writing.

This is the boat we were on to go to Robben Island.  On the way there we were outside, but it really hurt my ears by the time we got there so we were inside on the ride back.

There was this random pirate ship sailing around.  It made me giggle.



There was this wall around the island with these tall white blocks.



These were the walls of the prison.  I will tell you how they were made later.



This is a picture of the men being shipped to prison.



This building was the building that if you had a visitor you would go.  Visitors would have to apply 6 months in advance in order to be approved (if they got approved) to visit their family.  No physical contact was allowed nor was talk of politics.



These were the first men every to be sent to Robben Island as prisoners.  They actually had to build the prison that they lived in, including the walls that held them in.



This is the fence to the maximum security prison.



I don't know why, but this one keeps uploading sideways.  This is an explanation of the food colored people would be given.  There were different "menus" for whites, coloreds, and blacks.

There are five of these towers that had a security guard in them 24/7.



This is an example of a prisoner's information.



This is the courtyard.  They would either do work in the courtyard or play sports.  The prisoners were allowed to play sports as long as they "behaved".  They were not allowed to talk politics, so one of the ways they communicated political things to others is by playing tennis.  The men would place information in the tennis ball and "accidentally" hit it over the fence.  As the guards were laughing at how "bad" they were, the other prisoners were reading the political note.  Pretty smart right?



This is some of the work they would do in the courtyard.



This is Nelson Mandela's "garden".  They are actually grapes, but they didn't taste good because of the salt water.



Nelson Mandela's cell.  He was actually allowed to study special hours for some reason.  A lot of the men were able to get educations while in prison.

 

Maximum Security.



Before Robben Island was a prison, it was a colony of lepers.  This is one of the many graves for these sick people.



The house on the left actually holds a really interesting story.  There was a man named Robert Sobukwe who was a political leader who founded the Pan Africanist Congress.  Obviously, the Apartheid Regime didn't like him at all.  He was particularly against the Pass Laws which required black people to carry around an almost passport looking thing.  He encouraged his followers to march to police stations with either no Pass book or to burn/tear the pass book in front of the police station.  He was arrested at this point and sent to Robben Island for three years.  While he was in prison, his followers didn't stop following him so the Apartheid Regime got scared and passed a new law which made it legal to arrest him for no reason and whenever they wanted.  This became known as the Sobukwe Clause.  He is the only man who this applied to.  As soon as he got out of prison, they arrested him again.  They eventually put him in solitary confinement in that house.  Because of this fact he developed mental problems, lost his ability to speak, and developed throat cancer.  The Apartheid Regime didn't want him to be considered a martyr, so they "released" him, rearrested him, and put him on house arrest where he stayed until he died of the lung cancer.



The man in the middle is Robert Sobukwe.



Originally the convicts were held in the same prison, but since the political prisoners started to influence the convicts to be politically savvy they separated them.  This is where the convicts would stay



These courts were made by the prisoners, but they weren't allowed to use them.



This is one of the hospitals of the original leper colony.



This used to be the school, but it closed because there were only 12 students.  They now have to take a boat to Cape Town in order to go to school.



Just in case y'all don't know, fire happen here all the time due to how hot and dry it is.  I know it's not very clear, but across the water you can see part of the town on fire.



Table Mountain!



Funny story: This gun was made for battle in war, but it was finished two years after the war ended.  Ironic.



This is the lighthouse.



The Lime Quarry is almost a bittersweet place.  This is a place they would take prisoners just to do work for no reason.  The prisoners would dig tunnels in the lime stone all day long.  The big issue with that is the fact that dust from the lime stone is not healthy.  Nelson Mandela is unable to cry to this day because the limestone dust ruined his tear ducts.



This is one positive thing about this place.  This pile of rocks is a monument.  The political prisoners came to this spot when they were released and pretty much said that they wanted to move on and work together to better South Africa.  Each political prisoner who visited placed a rock on top of this pile of rocks to represent them coming together for the better good.



Another positive thing is this cave.  This cave is where people would eat and poop and rest and such.  They also studied here when they were given breaks.  This was called the "University" and even some of the guards were taught by people like Nelson Mandela who were educated.



After Robben Island, we went to Waterfront mall where I saw this sign and had to have a picture of it for my precious puppy. =]



      When we got home last night I made some pasta salad so I wouldn't have to cook today when I got home.  The kids in my class wanted to push our buttons today.  The first class we taught was the girls only class and we talked about feelings and the proper way to express them.  The girls are normally well behaved, but when you add the boys to them things get a little out of hand.  Our teacher actually stepped in today to discipline a boy, but the way he did it was kinda messed up.  He asked the boy to come to his desk and kneel at his desk.  After the boy was on his knees he started throwing papers off his desk onto the ground.  He then made the boy pick them all up.  I was shocked at how demeaning it was.  He certainly should have been punished, but I didn't feel that was appropriate.  We talked about art and how to express feelings in art.  All the kids got to draw in their work books (that were so kindly donated by Vanessa's boyfriend's family) and some of them were really good!  A lot of the kids asked us to do a slide show to show them our families and such so we will be doing that next week.  I asked Tyler to write something for the blog, and this is what he gave me.

     "Today was a good day.  It was overcast. Train ride was 10 minutes. The train was yellow. The train was loud. I love lamp.  Today we talked about the importance of culture with the chitlins. Throughout the semester we are talking about a different continent every week and so this week we talked about North America. Every week the chitlins are going to draw the flags of some of the countries on that continent in their passport booklet they made today. Good day."

     He thought that he was being funny, but obviously didn't think I would actually post it on the blog.  I hope this wasn't too much information to read all at once.  Tomorrow is just Xhosa class, so it should be pretty short.  Hamba Kukuhle.

Lazy Saturday

     I didn't do a whole lot today.  Tyler went downtown while I stayed at home while people installed a new counter top.  We also got another fridge which is awesome!!  We are also going to switch our two twin beds for a queen bed which will give us a lot more room in the apartment.  Tonight we are staying up to watch the Carolina v Clemson game.  It starts at 11pm which isn't too terribly bad, but we don't have to wake up until around 8am tomorrow.  We won't be going to church because we are going on the Robben Island Tour.  There will be tons of pictures for the blog tomorrow!  Hamba Kakuhle.

Tired

     As the title says, I am very tired.  We woke up at 7am in order to walk two miles to the train station.  Today was our first day on the train, so all the classmates met together to walk to the train.  One girl was late and it ended up making us miss the train and be 30 or 35 minutes late for class.  It wasn't a huge deal though because Grant rearranged this lesson plan in order to not leave anything out.  When we first got to class, Grant asked us to think of our own personal motto.  Tyler couldn't think of one, so she borrowed mine.  Today was the "sad class".  We discussed the poverty in the school and the other challenges the students face.  Some of the stories Grant told us, made my skin crawl.  I will only tell one of them because I don't want people getting nervous to read my blog because of these stories.  Kids here hardly ever miss school.  When they do miss school the teachers and the principal notices big time.  These two children were absent two days in a row and so when they came back to school they were asked why they had missed school.  The children said that their mother didn't wake them up.  All of these kid's parents work, so they asked why she didn't get up.  The kids said that she was just very tired and was unable to get up.  Social services here are very good, so they checked on the woman only to find out that she had been dead for 2 nights.  As I said, I won't tell any of the other stories, but they get a whole lot worse.  There is so much stress on these children, but they are so happy.  They are some of the happiest children I have ever seen.  I wish so badly that some of the kids in the USA could see what I have seen here.  The low income schools struggle, but not like this.  These kids have so little, but seem so much happier and more confident than middle school kids I have worked with in the USA.  Apparently there are really strict child laws here, but because young children working is so ingrained in the culture a lot of kids are asked to stay home to work on the farms.  The parents don't report the farmers because there are times when the kids are the only ones able to work and if they don't work on the farm, then they don't get to live in the houses.  While this is a very common thing, the people who are reported and put in jail are singled out as especially bad by the inmates.  Grant said that there are murderers in jail that see people who broke a child law as really bad and they are not treated well in the jail.

     On a lighter note, Grant's mom made us beef curry!!!  It was so delicious.  She is so hard on herself.  She was talking to me about how she wasn't happy with the curry because the carrots weren't soft enough.  They barely had any crunch to them.  She is such a wonderful cook.  Grant said that she is going to make Chinese stir fry for us soon!  I know it probably won't be the same as the Chinese food in America, but it will be close enough.  She also made us scones for snacks.  After class we got back on the train and began our two miles back home.  On our way home, we saw a woman in the middle of the street and it looked like she had fallen.  Apparently she got hit by a car!!!  Tyler said he saw that she was bleeding on her head and everything.  I didn't see the blood, but I saw that she had a baby with her.  I think the baby was ok  because she wasn't crying, but it was still so scary!  Now we are home, very tired, and just hanging out.  We may go downtown for dinner tomorrow night, but other than that we have no plans.  Sunday will be tons of fun because we are going on a tour of Robben Island!  That's about it.  Hamba kakuhle.

Hamba kakuhle iKindle.

     This means Goodbye Kindle in Xhosa.  Tyler sat on my Kindle and killed it, but luckily Mom gave me Steve Berry's The Jefferson Key to read, so I guess I will let it slide this time. ;]  Today in Xhosa class we learned how to say the months of the year.  Culturally, the Xhosa people named months after starts, trees, flowers, and other things in nature.  Unfortunately, nobody (even Xhosa people) really know all the names of the months.  I think the length of months may be different which would make it very difficult.  Due to this issue, the Xhosa people have created words that sound similar to the English months.  Here they are: uJanyuwari, uFebruwari, uMatshi, uEpreli, uMeyi, uJuni (I will tell you about June in a sec), uJulayi, uAgasti, uSeptemba, uOktobha, uNovemba, and uDisemba.  June is a special month to the Xhosa people.  The Xhosa word for the month of June is iSilimela.  This month is named after a star and is the only real Xhosa month that our professor told us.  This month is special because this is pretty much the "Man month".  This is the month where men walk around asking other men how long they have been men.  The length of time that a person has been a man depends on how long ago he got circumcised.  In the Xhosa culture, boys do not get circumcised until they are like 18 years old.  That has to be pretty painful, but I will stop the explanation there so Mom doesn't get too embarrassed by me. 
     So I have to address this strange hairstyle that is ALL OVER the place.  This hairstyle is the mullet.  I literally see 4-8 mullets every single day.  I don't understand.  Another thing that has been confusing me is that some of the guys here are walking riding around on fake horses.  The kind of fake horses that little kids play with.  Once again, I just don't understand.  I was so tempted the other day because of these two things.  I saw a guy with a mullet riding one of the fake horses and wanted so bad to get a picture with him, but then I decided to be shy and not do that.  I also don't know if this is a normal thing so I don't want to insult anyone by asking. 
     While Tyler was in class today, I was doing laundry.  The lady who owned the laundry place asked me where I was from in the States and we just started talkin.  I believe we talked for about an hour and a half before Tyler came in from class.  She was really nice.  She was telling me about how she had been to Washington D.C. and about how much traffic it was there which was really nice.  I enjoyed talking to someone about something that reminds me of home.  We literally ended up talking about everything.  We talked about religion, Lyndoch (the school I am working at), the weather, her family, everything.  It was kinda crazy, but very fun.  Now I am going to force Tyler to write about his class today.  He isn't having as much fun in his class as I am in mine. =]
     The first thing the teacher said when we walked in was that it was going to be boring... And it was.. We went over a lot of the basic things and I found out that I am going to have to learn about 30 different formula's just in the first two chapters... Doesn't feel too exciting... Oh well that's a business major... And the power went out today as I was watching the Carolina game.
     I forgot about that!  The power went out in the first five minutes of the game!  He was not a happy camper.  One of the articles we had to read for our LSCE course talked about the differences in the poverty schools compared to the wealthier schools.  In the article we read, it says that however much the student pays for school is the same amount that the government puts into that child's education.  I don't know if I mentioned this earlier, but the kids at Lyndoch pay R10 a month to go to school (I originally thought it was 70, but Tyler said it was 10).  If the article is correct, then the government puts about $1.30 per month for each student.  That is terrible.  I was wondering why the students didn't even have paper to write on.  I figured that taxes helped pay for those kind of things, but I guess not.  Tyler did the math, sales tax is about 14%.  I don't know what they are doing with that money, but hopefully they are figuring out a budget so that these kids can get a proper education!  The kids who are richer have such a huge advantage because they actually get supplies. 
     We get to walk to the train station tomorrow.  I am honestly not looking forward to that, but we gotta do what we gotta do.  That's about it.  Hamba kakuhle. =]

I miss Reece's

     I can't find Reeces anywhere!!!  I am craving them so bad and they aren't here! =[  Maybe they are here, but I can't seem to find any.  The only thing we did today was go to the cooler downtown Stellenbosch.  I took some pictures, but they aren't very good pictures because of all the trees.

This is how they sell the fish...they stare at you

Fish!

It's hard to get good pictures of the buildings because of all the trees.

I just thought this phone was really cool.

This is what the buildings pretty much look like.  Very old school dutch looking buildings.

     When we got to the market we went into each mini store and looked at all their things.  Most of the stuff that they sold there was actually from tribes from around Africa including the Zulu and the Xhosa tribes.  Everything in these markets are hand made, even the stone figurines.  It's really amazing.  Today may not seem like it was a lot of fun, but it was!  That's about it.