Weakends

Monday:

·         Rest day in which we all slept. It was very much needed. Serious zombie mode.

·         Returned to Obz Café with Stuart for my weekly burger and tried the Monkey Gland burger. Thus ending my mission to taste them all. I am complete

Tuesday:

·         Psych class, laundry, shopping spree at Pick N Pay (the grocery store) for lots of veggies. I am going to eat nothing but salad for days.

Wednesday:

·         Ethics test, I felt pretty over prepared, which is somewhat annoying, but I guess it is better than feeling under prepared. Although, I found out that here, a 75% is an A. So that takes a wee bit of stress off. Also, other students in the class were talking about how hard they thought it was, so that makes me feel more confident.

·         More recovery time and sleep from the past week.

Thursday:

·         Work site day. I went to Nyanga township to a school called Hlingisa (my housemate Maggie works there), and saw an African dance class. These kids were sooooooo amazing! Hope, their teacher, barely said a word to them all class, she just played the drums. They did a whole hour of drills and then an hour of combinations that they had learned. And let me talk about the swag! Damn. Some of these girls looked pretty average when they first walked in, but then they started dancing and it was like “’scuze me, who let the fierce out?”

·         There were a couple of people, a girl and a guy, who went to one of the other dance classes that were working on documentaries for a film studies program. The guy grew up in North West Portland and had lived in San Francisco a few blocks from my school! Crazy coincidence.

·         I went with the theater class to see a production of Madea. It is a Greek tale, but this one had a very contemporary spin to it. The three narrators made me think of the muses from Hercules. It was told very non-linear and was a little over-whelming. I’m still not sure how much I liked it. The show was interesting to watch, but I don’t know if I would choose to go watch it again.

Friday:

·         Terrible day. We had a speaker for our first class, but I didn’t pay attention to a single word she was saying about community development because I was having an allergic explosion. So I took four Benedryl. However, the Benedryl and allergies made me super super groggy and tired, so I took three naps in the cafeteria in between studying for my psych test.

·         The psych test was impossible to find, even the other psych students were wandering around lost. And I briefly fell asleep during the test. There was no brain functioning happening this day. However, it was a 50 question multiple choice test, and I only need a 75% for an A, so there is hope for me yet.

·         So for as shitty as my day had been, I definitely made up for it. Steak. Dinner. I had been marinating it since 11AM and it was so damn good. It wasn’t the highest quality, but it made me think of home. We also had rosemary potatoes and grilled green beans. Mmmmmmm.

·         Sam’s workmates also came over, so that was a good time as well. Shitty day turned into a fun night, who would have known?

Saturday:

·         We went to Camps Bay today. It was a beautiful and sunny day, perfect for just napping in the sand. I started the first book of Game of Thrones and worked on my pathetic tan. In the end, I ended up with some cool rocks and beautiful shells.

·         The whole place looked like a tourist advertisement. It was funny because the American guys were throwing around a football and all the South African guys were throwing around a rugby ball. Definitely one of the higher class areas, but it was nice to look at.

Sunday:

·         Today, Mary Claire, Jessica Burkard, and I all went adventuring to hike Table Mountain! We started off in the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, which are located behind the mountain and they are absolutely beautiful. There were a lot of people picnicking and taking photos and the sun was glorious.

·         We went up a trail called Skeleton Gorge. Not ominous at all. The first part was killer, just a ton of stairs. Then we found a waterfall and this old man told us that it was the best he had seen it in three or so years (normally, it is just a little trickle). Scaling the stream (there were even ladders), and basking under the trees, reminded me so much of Oregon. It actually looked like a place you would find along the gorge.

·         Up a little bit higher, we had to stop for a bit because a woman had broken her leg and needed to be helicoptered off the mountain.

·         We finally reached the top of the first section, and low and behold, there is sand. And a beach. And a lake. Apparently, there is a series of reservoirs up on the mountain for the cities drinking water. So we ate lunch by the lake and enjoyed the view of all the Cape Flats. And I found a frog!

·         When we hit sand, the shoes came off. We then hiked around the reservoirs and saw the small museum that was up there. It was all about how they got all the supplies and whatnot on top of this huge mountain.

·         We then continued on for another two hours (gleefully barefoot), through Echo Valley and up on to the very tippy top of Table Mountain itself. We could see all the way to the Cape of Good Hope from there! True to its name, the top was really flat.

·         In the end, we decided to take the cable cars down (we weren’t sure if we could get all the way down before sunset). The cable cars were pretty cool. The platform that you stand on rotates 360 degrees, so everyone gets to see everything.

·         We returned just in time for family dinner. This week, Stuart and Jason made Hawaiian chicken! And our video entertainment was Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I was not among the viewing audience.