Happy Birthday Tyler!

Ooook, I have some catching up to do.  I haven’t been writing very much because nothing much has really been happening.  Tyler played basketball on Tuesday with some guys.  I will let him write about that.  I went to basketball on Tuesday and they said that it was just going to be playing games. When I got there I realized it was actually the University varsity team. I had to run suicides for the first time in like 7 years... There were only 3 South Africans on the team... there were a couple of Americans and quite a few Europeans... The games are on Sunday so it isn’t worth going to it really.  Ummm, I found out that I have a Xhosa test next Thursday and that’s about all that has happened.  Now that I am caught up, I can go on with the exciting events of Today.

It’s Tyler’s 24^th birthday!!!  I sang it to him in Xhosa last night around midnight and he got sang to two more times today in class.  I will start at the beginning.  The train was 10 minutes late today because that’s what the trains do here.  I have discovered that some of the South African’s say TIA whenever things go late or weird or whatever.  TIA=This Is Africa.  We get to class and are checking in, so I had to tell our teacher it was Tyler’s birthday.  The result of this is that halfway through the first chapter we were going over Grant brings a bunch of kids in to sing to him.  It was so cute!  I took a video of the birthday song.  The songs are in Afrikaans, English, and there is a  second video is of them singing the Happy Birthday song in Xhosa (the same one I sang to him last night =]).  Today’s class seemed to drag on FOREVER.  I am sure Tyler felt it even more than I considering it was his day and he had to spend it in our 7 hour class.  Our first break couldn’t come soon enough.  There were scones and muffins waiting for us for our break.  I took a scone and went outside to see the kids and Tyler took a scone and a muffin and went out back to play soccer with some of the boys.  I will try to get those two videos up tomorrow because the Internet is being slow right now.

I love break time because it is during the kid’s interval (recess) and those who choose to go outside get to hang out with all the children until it’s over.  While I was outside I was talking to some of the kids when this bigger kid sprints by me almost knocking me over.  I turn around and there is this young boy in grade 2 (5 or 6 years old) bawling.  Apparently this older boy had slapped the heck out of this little boy.  There were some kids laughing around him which really irritated me, so of course I went over there.  After informing the other kids that it wasn’t funny in a not so nice tone, I took the little boy to the bench and he sat on my lap until he stopped crying.  I felt so bad for him.  I asked him why the boy hit him and he said that he didn’t know.  I know it’s in the culture here, but I can’t believe how much violence I see at the school.  It is unbelievable.  It’s not only the boys because the girls are just as bad.  After the boy calmed down and went back to play some of the boys began talking to me.  I was actually looking for my girls, but they were nowhere to be found.  The boys here have a thing for my eyes.  Since I dyed my hair a child comes up to me and tells me how pretty my eyes are at least once a day.  There is only one white child in the school (he is Autistic-gotta be hard for the kid), so blue eyes aren’t something they see a lot.

After interval I went back to the classroom to find Tyler drenched in sweat.  I couldn’t help but laugh.  We talked for what seemed like the longest time and then it was time for lunch.  Holy cow…I can’t begin to describe how good the food Grant’s mom makes is.  She made chicken pot pie (she didn’t call it that) and it was the best chicken pot pie I have had in a very long time.  The only issue with South African cooking is sometimes you find little bones in the dish, but it tastes so good.  This woman is so kind to make all of our meals.  She even makes vegetarian meals for the people who don’t want to eat the meat.  Grant tells us she really enjoys it, so we always make sure to say thank you and tell her how wonderful it was.  Apparently she has made things for people in the past and there was a white South African who got some cold food and spat on her face.  I think that was a long time ago, but still that’s messed up.

Grant told us that we were going to do something fun after lunch.  The kids get out of class at 1, so normally after lunch the school is empty.  Grant informed us that we were going to clean windows which was fine, but I wouldn’t ever define it as fun.  He told us that we were going to wash the window with newspaper and it works so well!!  Don’t buy anymore Windex!  Get two pieces of newspaper.  Wet one piece of newspaper and keep the other one dry.  As you wipe the window with the wet newspaper, wipe it off with the dry one (just like wax, on wax off).  These windows looked crystal clear, it was amazing.  We hooked Maureen’s laptop up to speakers, listened to music, danced, sang, and just had a lot of fun doing it.  We finished all the windows and went back to lecture after 4 or 5 songs.  The lecture went on forever and then it ended.  This is where things started not going out way.

We got on the train to go back home.  This is usually about a 10 to 11 minutes train ride back to Stellenbosch.  One of the other trains broke at the station between Lynedoch and Stellenbosch station, so we were going to have to wait for over an hour.  TIA.  We, as a class, just decided to walk 8km home.  I know my mom is probably not happy about that, but it was just as safe as standing around hundreds of people who had to get off the trains.  Vanessa and Cori (Cori is an American in our class who lives in Charleston and Vanessa I have mentioned before as my German partner in class) called friends for rides after we walked about 1.5km.  While we were waiting for this ride this random guy pulled over on the road and say, “I saw that the train broke down and I can tell you are tourists.  Would you like a ride?”  Nobody could hear him, so I walked over and told him that we had called for rides, so we were ok.  I don’t know if he was sincere or not, but I wasn’t willing to take that chance and neither were our classmates.  Finally rides got there and picked us up.  Everyone felt so bad that all this was happening on Tyler’s birthday, but he and I were just laughing about it because that’s all we could really do.  There is no point in getting mad over spilt milk, so now it will be a joke for us. =]

When we got home I cooked him dinner.  When I asked him last week what he wanted to eat for his birthday I was expecting some kind of Hispanic food, but he actually just wanted a cheeseburger and bacon cheese fries.  I am not going to lie it is frustrating to cook in our “kitchen”.  It’s not very big and we don’t have a real oven, so timing food is really hard.  I decided to make the cheeseburger a bacon cheese burger with mushrooms.  After I cooked the bacon I sautéed the mushrooms in the bacon grease (I know it’s not healthy at all, but it was either that or butter and bacon grease has better flavor) and added a bit of salt.  They were so good.  I wanted to eat them all by myself, but I knew Tyler was going to put them on his burger. 

We just finished watching Carolina beat Maryland, so now we are just relaxing and enjoying each other’s company.  I think we are going to the market tomorrow, so I should have something to write about again.  Hamba Kukuhle.