I’m just going to start with Friday because my weekdays are pretty consistent at this point. Unless I go out on a Thursday, my Monday-Thursday nights are pretty useless due to my 8 am class. The most exciting my day gets is going for a run or out to a nice place to eat. I am going to start making some lists of bars and restaurants though to pass on to future Cape Town-ers.
Friday I got out of Afrikaans early after our quiz (which I aced) so I flew right to PASSOP. The day there was pretty non-eventful, I just read through a proposal and sent some e-mails to figure out how to register an NGO in the US – not easy by the way. Afterwards I had rugby practice and this practice was a lot more helpful. We actually learned the technique from two ladies that play in bigger leagues and played a couple games with some of the boys at the end. Afterwards we made a great dinner and then got ready to go out. We were going to go to Long Street but two boys in my program were going to a basketball party so I went there instead. It was pretty fun; the house that we went to was huge. Overall, it was an okay night that was cut short because I had to go to PASSOP the next morning.
Saturday: Longest mini-bus taxi ride of my life, of course when I actually have to be somewhere at a specific time they decide to spend 20 minutes in a town on the way trying to persuade people into their mini-bus. I was pretty frustrated but I always forget that everyone here runs on “Africa Time” so even though I was 15 minutes late, the director of the organization that was driving us had still not arrived. Safe. So, the plan of this day was to go to a township where a lot of refugees from Zimbabwe are and talk about PASSOP and what we do and to get them to sign up to be members, receive newsletters, and set up workshops. There was also a woman’s group being formed because PASSOP received some funding for that purpose so the next time we go the women there will have a plan for a project that they want to do. They had a ton of ideas and skills so that should be exciting. 8 of us had to cram in a station wagon on the way to the township, which was a very uncomfortable 30-35 minute drive. I told the director that I was used to cramming into cars for pick-ups for socials at Penn State and he was pretty amused with that whole situation. When we got there, the director and me were the only white people since everyone else from PASSOP was black, and so were all the Zimbabweans obviously. (Sorry for throwing the word “black” around. I don’t mean to be offensive but they’re very open with race here so it’s just something I’ve gotten used to) The meeting was pretty uncomfortable because they were not speaking English the entire time – turns out the director speaks this Zimbabwe language, but oddly doesn’t speak Afrikaans or Xhosa which are the bigger languages in Cape Town. People seemed to really care about the meeting but I later found out that the turn-out was a lot lower than expected. There was also this one really drunk, obnoxious guy that kept coming over and yelling nonsense. After the meeting he would not leave me alone and multiple guys from PASSOP had to lead him away from me. Anyway, they gave me this massive camera to film the meeting, which I did the entire time only to find out that there was no microphone attached so I had only recorded picture. I felt like an idiot but was reassured it was not my fault because there would be no way for me to know that. The ride home was not as bad because one guy took a taxi home. Also, the director drove me home, which was great because I didn’t have to get a mini-bus back. He’s a real interesting guy. That night we were going to a rugby game- Cape Town team Stormers against the Sharks. Obviously rooting for the Stormers, we pre-gamed for the game and then painted our bodies with “S-T-O-R-M” letters. The game was so much fun and we somehow snuck into the section really close to the field and managed not to get kicked out the entire game. The Stormers won and so we chanted along the street the entire walk home. It was a long day, but I still decided to go out. We wanted to stay pretty low key so we went to a bar in the next town over, Observatory, to the bar Stones* which is one of my favorites. I actually played some pool for the first time there with some South Africans so that was cool.
Sunday: We woke up really early so that we could get down to the waterfront for breakfast before our tour of Robben Island. The place we had breakfast was great and overlooked the waterfront. Then we took the ferry over to Robben Island. The ride was a lot longer than I expected and took about 30-40 minutes. We stood outside on the back of the boat and took some pictures because it was a really amazing few seeing Table Mountain from that perspective. The first part of the tour there was a guided tour through the prison. Out tour guide was a former prisoner there, which was pretty awesome except for the fact that he was extremely monotone and I hate guided tours. It was pretty powerful being there nonetheless and I got to see Nelson Mandela’s cell. I don’t know what I was expecting it to be, but it was very ordinary and anti-climatic; it looked just like all the other cells. After that we took a bus tour of the island. After, we took the ferry back and had an excellent meal at this sushi place called Beluga that has all half-priced items on Sundays (all sushi, sushi menu items and drinks) and that was great. We came back to the house after and just hung out.
Last night we went out to dinner at a place called Gypsy* in Observatory for someone’s birthday and it was the CUTEST place. It was very rustic and reminded me of the decorations of the store Anthropology. There were only 5 appetizer choices and 6 entre choices that were all written on a chalkboard on the wall – no menus. It was very unique and so, so good. Tonight we also went to a cheap place in Observatory called Hello Sailor*, again such great food. This week I have 2 papers due on Thursday and an exam in Afrikaans so it’s a pretty hectic week. Tomorrow I’m going to have to get a lot of work done because I’ve only done one essay. I would have so much work to do on the week Penn State has spring break. I also went on a great 50-minute run today to a town a couple towns over, and I’m so happy because I’m actually getting back into shape like I wanted to. That’s it for now! Cheers!
No comments:
Post a Comment