Last Rowing Trip...

So this weekend i went on my last rowing trip to Pretoria for my last races of the year. Good and bad things, i am excited not to have to wake up at 4am anymore, i am bummed i am not going to get to hang out with my friends as much and the trips are a lot of fun.

We drove on Friday to the Damn, right outside of Pretoria, which is the capital of South Africa, right next to Johannesburg. It took like 6 hours. But i am getting a lot better at car trips, it seemed really quick. When we got there we set up a bunch of tents on our campsite and started making dinner. It gets dark so early here because there is no daylight savings time. We BBQed and then went to sleep because we had races early in the morning.

The next day we raced our Girls 8, and since none of the older girls came we were the A team. We didn't do too well, our timing was a little off, but it was still a fun race. The competition was really high because this race was called SA (South Africa) champs and was for all rowing clubs, including masters teams and prep schools, along with universities.

The part that is fun about races is that after you are done with your race all you really do is hang out on the grass all day and sit in the sun. I love that part. That night we cooked some pasta and taught all the South Africans about s'mores. WHICH THEY HAD NEVER HAD! it was delicious although we had to substitute tennis crackers for graham crackers. It was a lot of fun because what would camping be without s'mores.

The next day i had my last race, a boat of four, and we did really well, coming in second. We hung around all day, tore down the camp and then drove to a backpackers in Johannesburg where we were going to spend the last night because Monday was a public holiday and we didn't have school. There was an after party with all of the teams at a sports club that was really fun. What else? i am really glad i did rowing a met a lot of people i never would have met and did a lot of fun things i never would have done. It was a good sport but i am excited to go back to triathlons.

Ubuntu...

Quick post. I had an amazing day volunteering today. Only a few of us went and most of them just played soccer. Me and like 8 little girls (the youngest, all around 5-7) played all afternoon. They taught me some dances, and i taught them the macarena. They have no English skills at all so i was really rattling my zulu Brian. We played a lot of games in circles and dances and then i taught them the airplane ride with your legs. I had the entire place lined up waiting for airplane rides. I think i did like 300 leg presses.

Leaving there sucks because i think they are all so adorable. And i know i don't do much more than play when i am there, but i know that none of these girls get any individual attention usually so i guess that is all i can do. They talk to me in Zulu like i know what they are saying, and i just mumble along to their songs, but it is the highlight of my week. I think i decided i am definitely working with kids.

Election day and other volunteering adventures...

So the past two days has been somewhat of a marathon of volunteering. I have to complete 60 hours for my political science class and i wasn't doing to well, until now. Yesterday it started by attending a political violence briefing Wait, i guess i should back up a little bit...

My class were recruited to be international election poll observers to ensure a free and peaceful election. I went to a training the other day (mostly in zulu) and from there they offered to brief us on the recent political violence and events with the other international observers from uganda, canada and zimbabwe. So, deciding i needed hours and it sounded semi interesting i went to this meeting, in the middle of no where. Only two other people came because of logistical issues and a couple of us from the university. It was really interesting and they talked about all of the different specific incidents of political violence in the area and why, also which areas were more expected to have issues on election day and why. I learned that this country is uber messed up politically since the majority of the population will only vote the ANC because that was the party that liberating them from the apartheid and there is a belief that any other party would force people back into apartheid. So overall, the party is very corrupt, it's leader (who is bound to win) only has graduated to grade 3 and has many charges against him, including rape. we will see how it goes. But anyway, i learned a lot about past violence. I am lucky to live in the United States.

So that was the first part of the election volunteering saga. Part two included waking up at 5 this morning to go downtown to be transferred to a township to oversee a polling station. It all sounds good and fun, but i was all by myself in this very very poor governmental housing township. I sat in the corner of the room alone and watched over 1000 people vote over 7 hours. When the lady came to bring me my (KFC) lunch i begged to leave and told her i didn't feel well. We weren't aloud to talk to anyone and just had to observe things, i counted everything in the room. Anywho, i realized that i would not be a good person to do a job that involved being alone.

Seeing the voting was actually kind of cool. the ballots were really really simple. Party name, their symbol, pictures of the person running and check box. And then they put it into this big box. A funny part about voting was before you voted they painted your thumb nail with paint so that you can't vote in more than one location. The people however in my location were very unfriendly and everyone was really tired and grumpy from standing in rediculously long lines and such. I normally really like helping out, but i didn't belong in the township, they were all giving me really weird looks, and i hadn't heard a word of english all day. It would have been ok if i wasn't completely alone, or alowed to talk. oh well, so is the nature of volunteering.

The other volunteering was a lot of fun. Last night there was a fundraiser for the Ubuntu Crisis center where we work with the kids at the orphanage. There wasn't as big of turn out as there should of been, but it was a cool dinner at city hall and all the girls came. There were speakers (mostly in zulu) and some singers, all very churchy. Even some dancing. The dinner was very south african, meaty, with a lot of potatoe salads and things like that. Actually, really good. The event started really late and lasted for a long time, one of the little girls, fell asleep on my lap at the table, but we had a good time making funny faces at each other when we were supposed to be quiet. I was the hit of the kids table for sure.

Durban Weekend...

So this weekend after a fun night out with dorm friends i went to Durban with two study abroad students from California. We left Saturday afternoon on our Kombi adventure (i still have to take a picture of them for you) crammed in and took the hour drive to Durban for a Rugby game.

When we got there we walked around to find the stadium, which coincidentally is next to the new World Cup Stadium which you can see from all over the city. We got there just as the game was starting, bought tickets and went in to see South Africa play New Zealand. Unfortunately we lost 10-13, but let me tell you it is way more exciting that football, and a lot quicker. They rarely stop the play so the whole game was over in under 2 hours and they do crazy plays where they left people up cheerleader style. The whole atmosphere of the game was really fun, friendly people. Afterwards in the parking lot it seemed like a fair. Loud music and huts that sold food. People barbequeing outside of their cars and tailgating. It was a party. We hung around for a while and then went off to a famous road called Florida road.

Florida road is a road that has tons of restaurants and clubs on it and we heard really good things about this restaurant called Taco Zulu. Funny thing is that there is no Mexican food in south Africa, so being Americans, we were all about the Mexican food. After going into a burrito coma we walked around, but realized we were under dressed to go into any of the clubs. Damn no sandals rule! oh well.

We took a cab back to our hostel (sweet hostel by the way) called the Happy Hippo and were asleep before midnight.

The next day was so much fun. We went to this place called UShaka Marine World which is a combination of a wet n' wild water park, sea world, aquarium, shopping mall, beach and surf zone. We walked through the mall and then went to the water park. The water park was actually really sweet but all normal water rules were broken. You could go down any of the slides head first and ten at a time. Things were a little crazy. Coming from a lifeguard i was a little overwhelmed by all the rules being broken but it was so much fun. There was the tallest waterslide in Africa (i guess not very hard to do) which went straight down and gave you the BIGGEST wedgie of your life. There were tube racing slides and then big raft rides. There was even a sweet lazy river that passed you by the aquarium where you could see the sharks and passed Shamu's tank. It was pretty cool. After lunch on the beach listening to a rastafarian band (think Bob Marley zulu style) we jumped some waves and rented sea kayaks. We sea kayaked for a while and saw some pretty fish. The water was so warm it was awesome. I am going to go back for sure for surfing, but all of the boards were booked for the day.

After a few more waterslides we came to reality as the park was closing and we realized we had a 2 hour kombi adventure back to Pietermaritzburg. Everyday seems like a vacation. Coming back to reality is gong to be rough.

Disclaimer...

So i realized that after i wrote that blog last night how much it all kind of sucked. Although it is not very detailed and all seems kind of jumbled up things have been crazy since i got back and i just wanted to get it done. if it doesn't make sense or you want more details shoot me an email and i will explain. Overall, i guess all you need to know is that i had a great time and we packed a thousand thing into 10 days. Cape Town is beautiful and you would all love it.

In other life it was immediately back to reality in pietermaritzburg. I have two tests and two papers due this week. No time for naps.

I guess that is it, blogs to come in the future i will try to make a little better, less scatterbrained and written with more than 2 hours of sleep the night before.

Spring Break Part 4...Wine Tour and Beaches and Cape Point

So the last days of my trip were definitely the best. Thursday we went on a wine tour in the vineyards of Stellonbosh. An area that rivals Northern California and France the world's best wines. We started off the day at a vineyard where we learned HOW to taste wine, how to smell wine and how to tell how old wine is. I acted very grown up but pretty much giggled the whole time. It is great to be able to drink legally. At the first vineyard we tasted wine and some really good soft cheeses made right there. Everything was delicious, i was tipsy by 10am. We went from vineyard to vineyard (4 in all) all very modern and learned how to make red wine and white wine. We even went down below and saw where they store everything. We tasted chocolate and laughed a lot. The day was fantastic, including the well deserved nap on the way home. P.S. Wine descriptions are very silly.













That night since we were definitely too tired to go out we met some people in our backpackers who were in Cape Town to run the Two Oceans Marathon on Saturday. Of course we hit it off right away and hung out with them all night talking about running. The next day we all went to this beautiful beach together and played Frisbee and took sprints into the FREEZING Atlantic ocean.









The next day we hiked to the most Southern tip of Africa called Cape Point. The cool part about this place is that it is where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Indian Ocean and since they are such drastic temperature differences. The craziest part is that when we got there a baboon jumped into a car and read some of our Cosmo magazine before running away with a cookie wrapper.

Ok so the next day was my favorite. Did you know that South Africa has a huge colony of African penguins? I didn't! But they are friggen adorable. We drove to see the penguins in a little beach town called Simon's Town were colonies of African penguins were nesting. The cute thing about all the penguins is that they are monogamous so they were all in pairs. We even saw some awesome penguin sex. One of the cool parts is that they weren't like roped off really or anything and you could get really close to them, but you couldn't touch. The best part was the beach that most of them lived on called Boulder Beach. I swear, it should be one of the wonders of the world, it was beautiful. The beach was covered with huge boulders, but in between was really soft sand. If you hiked past some of them you got into the most beautiful area with penguins in the water right next to where you were walking. You can see below my awesome Ariel from the little mermaid interpretation. What do you think?
The next day was our last in Cape Town and we went to visit Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela spent most of his life with the rest of the political prisoners during Apartheid. I had read his autobiography prior to coming and it was really cool to see the place in real life. We took a ferry over to the island and they explained a lot of it's history. Before it was a maximum security prison it was a place where they sent people with leprosy. We saw the graves and then we went into the prison where we got a tour from an ex-political prisoner. He was there for seven years in the communal cell area. And then we got to see Nelson Mandela's cell. It was all very overwhelming as i realized how most of the events that they were talking about did not happen very long ago. It was surreal, but i am glad i went. Visiting the island really showed how far South Africa has come in such a short amount of time.


After that it was about time for our trip to end. We went out to celebrate by eating Thai food on the water, my favorite. We drove to the airport and flew out at 6.30 this morning. Haven't slept in two days i think i should stop rambling and go to bed. Overall, super successfull Spring Break 09.

Spring Break Part 3. The Waterfront and Table Mountain...

We finally arrived in Cape Town after many days and hours of getting lost. We headed down to this area called the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront where there are tons of ritzy shops to window shop in and millions of restaurants. I touched everything until it started to blur and watched street performers sing and dance and play the bongos. We ate lunch at a picnic table on the water and watched the boats come in. The sky was blue and it was relaxing (comparatively to jumping of bridges it least).



The next day after getting significantly lost again we head to this big mountain in Cape Town called Table Mountain. Thinking it was the normal thing to do to hike up it we started on the trail around noon. Ok, bad idea. Our waterbottles were not full and after reading a few signs we were warned that this hike was NOT FOR BEGINNERS. Oh well, after feeling delirous after climbing what seemed like endless rock stairs-ish for 3 hours we made it to the top only a little bit dehydrated. The view was awesome of the ocean and we took the cable car down. A well spent $5 if i say so. If you are going to hike table mountiain remember more than a half bottle of water and pleast do it before noon. There is no shade. The adventure continues...

Spring Break Part 2... The Bungee Jump

Ok... so i think the pictures say it all, but i case they don't i will describe you the world's LARGEST bungee jump that i did. On the way to Cape Town we stopped at Blokrans Bridge under the highway where i pretty much jumped to my death. The good thing was i was the last one of our group of 8 so by the time, i went i would like to say i was ok with it. It was crazy dangling there upside-down and then you hang waiting for a guy to come down and flip you right-side up. It never really got too scary because you never get that close to the ground and you could see the beautiful Indian Ocean from hanging upside-down. Unbelievable. Do you see that smile? that was after the jump...

Spring Break. Part 1 of 4 or 5... The Drive.

If you look on a map you can see how far where i live, Pietermaritzburg, is from where we went on Spring Break, Cape Town. It is a long long 22 hour drive. We left after everyone had finished class on Friday and drove through the night (on the wrong side of the road!!!) until we got to this city called Port Elizabeth. When we got there around 6.30am the sun was just beginning to rise. It was unbelievable. There were a ton of fisherman lined up and it was so nice to get out of the car. I had a peanut butter and jelly breakfast on the beach as we watched people train for Ironman, which was happening the next day. So many bikers! The place was hopping and it was beautiful, but that wasn't our destination so we hopped back in the car for a couple more hours. We stopped at a few beautiful beaches with awesome rocks to climb on and saw some dolphins in the distance. Then we continued to drive until we got to Tsitsikama Backpackers in Storms River.

Storms River was a really peaceful place, it kind of seemed like we were there a little out of season. The backpackers seemed like a big house with a comfy family room and bar, we all felt right at home. When we got there we played a volleyball game and i passed out in a hammock. It is funny how sitting for hours makes you tired.

That next day I woke up early and went for a hike in the nature reserve, of course i got lost and started singing to myself out of boredom. Oh how i miss my ipod! On my way back up i met up with everyone for breakfast before we went on our canopy tour.

The canopy tour was sweet. We went on 10 different zip lines across the top of the Tsitsikama National Forest. It was pretty cool and actually kind of scary. We went pretty fast i almost slammed into a few trees. It was really cool, but i could only look down when we were on the platforms. It felt like a whole different world because all you could see was trees and green. Right when we finished we got caught in the craziest thunderstorm, I don't know what would have happened if we were still up there.

After sprinting full speed back to the hostel, we hung out and i learned how to play some pool. I was awful, but i actually won my first game after about 2 hours. The night was pretty chill and the people who worked there were awesome. We youtubed for a couple hours watching funny south African rugby clips. I miss youtubing. You can't do it on campus. Anyway... that was the beginning. Much much more to come...

KY Jelly Obstacle Course: The Spandex Party

So a typical Wednesday night does not involve rolling around in watery lubricant and hurling yourself around cones and over inflated walls, but last Wednesday did. As a fundraiser for the rowing team (might i add, best fundraiser ever) we employed students to make teams of four, clad themselves in as much spandex as possible and roll around in KY Jelly.

It was a competition out on the sports fields where two teams of four would battle against each other in tournament style brackets to drink some delicious drink, wheelbarrow through a kiddy pool of KY Jelly, and try to climb through a blow up obstacle course. By the time it was our turn the course was coated and significantly slippery. I fell on my face and couldn't make it over the last wall. But the goop was definitely a great hair gel. We ended up loosing in the first round, but it didn't mean that we stopped playing the kiddie pool. The night was fun and messy and a shower was definitely in order immediately when i got back to my dorm. Gross.

So i do go to school too...

I know it might seem that i rarely participate in anything school related, but you would be surprised, classes here are harder than a state. A lot more homework also. Zulu class is getting tough, we are learning how to say things negatively and instead of just putting a word in front you have to change the verb entirely- crazy language. But i didn't do as poorly on the first exam as anticipated. yay for having a 75% be an A here. i guess things are just marked very differently.

The only problem is that here all the finals are worth 60% of the grade so i guess i just have to trudge through the motions of the semester and then study really hard at the end. However this method doesn't give much incentive for going to class throughout the semester. Attendance in most of my classes is very low.

What else? History class.... he talks like we all know what is going on but i have never heard of any of this stuff before. i feel like i am a huge disadvantage for not being from South Africa. We talk about all these names of Zulu kings and places like they are every day speech. stressful. The good thing is i had a consultation with my professor today ( he was only two hours late for the appointment, typically south African) about my essay and he said it was awesome. which is surprising since i have absolutely no idea what i wrote about. so i guess things are going better than expected.

Political science volunteering is my third class and volunteering is amazing. writing the research papers that go along with the class, not so great. But yesterday we went to Ubuntu and took a walk with the girls through the neighborhood to the hospital. It was so interesting to see what a hospital looked like here. let met tell you... not as sterile as you would think. We also saw that most of the places in the area do not have any running water and there are pumps outside on the corners kind of like a campground and people filling up buckets for water. can you imagine? it is fun for a couple of days in the summer to live like that, but to have to carry buckets of water every day. i really take a lot of things for granted.

Ok... have to go to class. see life isn't one big vacation. just close...