Yes, yes, like the title says I am officially SCUBA certified. I finished the certification on Saturday after our last open water dive and our test. We did two open water dives- one on Friday and one on Saturday. We did shore entries for both at a beach right by our flat. There is an old slip way that has tons of sea coral and sea creatures all around it so we dove and looked at all of that. We were supposed to go out into the boat on Saturday, but I guess there were swells and those are definitely NOT fun to scuba in. I actually started to get a little seasick on Friday because the waves were pretty rough. Our instuctor says if you do have to puke, puke in your regulator (breathe tube). Gross. I'm glad I didn't have to puke. Underwater was pretty cool. We saw a flute fish which is the relative to the seahorse. It kinda looked like one, it was just straight instead. I saw some starfish and supposedly we instructor saw a octopus, but we couldn't see where he was pointing. It was fun, but what I'm most excited for is when he's going to take us to see some sharks. He knows where a ton of sharks are and we can get close enough to touch them. We're not going to do that until May though.
I kind of skipped ahead to the weekend, but I really don't have much to say from this week except that I wrote a HUGE 10ish page paper on the politics of South Africa. Yikes! I never knew I'd be able to pop that out. I even finished it ahead of time... it's technically not due until Thursday. Although I really needed it done by Monday because tomorrow we head to Cape Town! We're leaving at 7 am tomorrow to take a 10 hour bus trip to Cape Town. That's gonna be a long one! In Cape Town we're gonna see a bunch of cool stuff- Robben Island (where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned), Table Mountain, a bunch of museums, and we're going to a two day Jazz Festival. Then we'll hopefull leave early Sunday morning because South Africa Ironman is going on in Port Elizabeth. It of course goes on all day until midnight, but I'd still be nice to come back earlier to see more of it. The swim is down the street maybe mile and the run route is right in front of our flat. I am so pumped!
Then we are officially on Spring Break. I'm traveling with a group of five girls up to Lesotho, a country completely surrounded by South Africa. We're flying into Durban, shuttling to our hostel and then taking a three day horseback riding trip into Lesotho. We'll probably spend the rest of the week in the mountains. Then we'll head back to Durban to go to Easter Sunday Mass and fly home to PE that afternoon. I'm really excited!
Well, it's time to go. My roommate Katie traveled this weekend and got a ostrich egg so we're having that for dinner tonight. God Bless and I'll probably update again after break. Have a great Easter!
Monday, March 30, 2009
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Pictures in Durban
The snake squeezing the mouse.
Goggles on ready for jumping!
These are the butts we will be landing on.
Amy and I ready to go!
In the sky, I'm not even sure if that's me or not. :)
The harbor in Durban at the Jazz club.
Weird bones and stuff at the Indian market.
The shark net boat.
Roommate (minus Amina) picture at Taste of India in Durban.
Traditional Indian and Zulu dancing.
Surfing South Africa
Last week classes went really well. We had a guest speaker come in for our Senior Seminar class and talk about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. We had talked about it a bit also in our Politics class the previous week. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established under Nelson Mandela after he became president in 1994. There have been many commissions set up by other governments to bring out the truth such as the Nuremberg trial after the Holocaust. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa was different though. In their case, there was no winner or loser. Instead, both sides had negotiated and come to an agreement. Therefore under this commission the blacks could not just bring the whites to court for all the atrocities they committed under the Apartheid. The commission’s main goal was to bring out the truth of the past and hopefully provide healing through that so in the future the blacks and whites could live together in forgiveness under the new government established. One committee under the commission was the Human Rights Committee. It was under this committee that people could come and tell their story of what had happened to them. Thousands of people came to speak and the testimonies were broadcast on television and radio. Many received healing through this by just being able to tell their story. The Amnesty committee was another committee. This committee looked as gross violations committed for political reasons from 1960 to 1994. If you fit all of those qualifications and gave a full disclosure of the crime you committed you could be granted amnesty on an individual basis. This is where many of the stories came out. I’m reading Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s book on it because he was the co-chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee. In his book he gives some of the testimonies of the gross violations. They were absolutely horrible. I would read one and then have to set the book down before I moved on again. Although remorse was not required to be shown for the crimes they committed, many of the people apologized to their victims. It’s incredible how much forgiveness was shown during this reconciliation period. During class we read through a few of the cases from the report of the commission and those were interesting too. Even though some people would have been granted amnesty if they had given a full disclosure of their crimes, a few still lied and since the holes were recognized in their testimony, amnesty was not granted. Sadly, a lot of high government officials did not come to testify either.
Later on in the week we had speakers from COPE come to talk to us for our Politics class. COPE is another political party down here called the Congress of the People. One of the leading men came and talked to us and many of COPE members used to be ANC members, but through changes that they saw in the party they decided to break off and form COPE. We had a really interesting discussion with them, but I am still definitely learning more about each party, so I don't have a whole lot to tell you here. They are a very small party though and the ANC is projected to win the upcoming election. They did set the date for the election and it will be April 22nd. I think I told you about the man running for the ANC. His name is Jacob Zuma and he has many charges brought against him. Many of them deal with finances, but he was also the one who raped a young HIV infected girl. Then in his trial he said he took a shower because he thought it would help him not get infected. Even though he is a very corrupt leader, many will still vote for him because they like what the ANC stands for, but it is sad that it could be him who might rule the country. We went to a Rugby came on Monday which was a ton of fun, but what was interesting is that some students walked into the stands with ANC t-shirts on and they got booed. We’re assuming this campus does not support the ANC, although we’re not really sure what party majority of them side with.
On Thursday, 13 of us headed out after class for another short weekend trip. We headed up the coast an hour to Jeffery’s Bay. Our hostel is called Island Vibe and is totally a chill out place for surfers. The hostel is right on the Indian Ocean and provides a 270 degree view. The first night we hung out outside and looked at the sky. You can see tons of stars here, maybe a few more than I can see at home in the country in Duluth. Sadly, we can’t recognize any of the constellations here except Orion. I guess Orion is a bi-hemisphere constellation because it’s so low on the horizon. The next day we woke up and had a fabulous breakfast of fruit filled pancakes (which are really crepes down here) and then we ran into down quick to the Billabong Outlet store. We got back about 10am- perfect timing to sign up and get suited up for surfing lessons. Our instructor was this guy named Matt who is from the UK and also works as the bar tender at our hostel. He gave pretty good lesson because I was able to stand up a few times within the two hours. Holy cow though! It was hard work! It’s super hard to get out to the waves with your board when all the waves crash against you. Then it’s super hard just to boost yourself up to standing position. I can see why surfers are so in shape. After that we had lunch and hung out for the afternoon. We caught a taxi back at 6pm because we had to be back for some Human Rights Day activities on Saturday.
On Saturday we headed out to a sort of political rally put on by the ANC for Human Rights Day. One of the speakers was supposed to be Winnie Mandela. Right before we hopped on the bus Gary came downstairs to tell us not to bring anything valuable with us. He said we would pretty much be the only whites there and we would be good targets to be stolen from. I left everything behind, but decided to bring my camera along because I knew it probably be a good thing to document. It was about a 30-40 minute drive to Uitenhage where we started to see people lined up along the streets. Many were wearing COPE and ANC t-shirts. A lot of people cheered as we drove by. Apparently we were in a ANC parade, but as we got closer to the stadium we talked to some police about where to go. We were informed that the ANC and COPE had booked the stadium for the occasion, but at 2 am that morning the courts declared the stadium belonged to COPE. The ANC had to reorganize in a field near by. We ended up heading over there and getting out. We were allowed to get out and roam around to check everything out. It was announced that Winnie Mandela was no longer coming and we weren’t sure what we would get to see speaker-wise because they had to set up new microphones and a stage. We wandered around and ran into a lot of singing and dancing and joined in. The last one that we were watching was kind of in a circle, but one by one they pulled us all in. We were all dancing together and I’m sure it was quite a sight. Gary was right- we were the only white people there except for the reporters, but they all loved us. We were all taking pictures of each other, but they all wanted to take pictures with us too. Eventually, there was a prayer and a few speakers, but we left soon after that because it was nearing lunchtime and it was super hot and we had no food or water. On our way out one woman asked me how I was and then continued to tell our group that she loved us. Something that we noticed is that when they see us they immediately think we are Afrikaners, which is of course a legitimate assumption. We can tell because one guy said “buya donkey” to me which is “thank you” in Afrikaans. I had just been reading the Desmond Tutu book about the Truth and Reconciliation committee and these blacks have every right to still hate any whites after all the oppression they faced for decades. Instead they love us and like this one woman expressed they are fast to tell us they love us too. They are so incredible for the forgiveness they have shown to the people in this country who oppressed them for so many years. Later that night we went to a guitar concert which was kind of jazzy. There was an electric guitar, bass, keyboard, and drums. They have been my favorite music act that I’ve seen so far down here. They were just really chill and relaxed, but they played really good music. It was also good that all the songs didn’t blend together because that’s when I get bored. We even had a little strip tease show…just kidding. The guitar player and keyboard player were just dancing around and at one point took off their shirts. It was pretty funny though-especially the reaction on our director’s face. We left at the break, since we had already been there for two hours and they still had a second set. I had to get to bed early so I could wake up early for Scuba certification on Sunday.
Sunday morning we started Scuba certification bright and early at 8 am. We watched five videos, had lunch, and then headed down to the pool to do all of our confined dives. It was really weird to be able to completely depend on the air tank for breathing. We completed all of our skills though! I can attach all of my own equipment and suit myself up, buddy system breathe, take off my mask, put it back on and clear the whole thing from water, and take off my pack and weight belt under water. Next weekend we’re going to finish up our quizzes and then do our open water dives on Saturday and Sunday. That night we went to Mass on campus again. We once again we were only white students. The music is really good there. There’s no choir or anything-all of us just sing, but there’s a lot of harmony going on.
Monday we had another day of volunteering. It’s been going pretty well lately, but Monday was kind of an off day. We didn’t really do much teaching; instead we made her time tables for the tenth time. I try to remember that we don’t just have to teach to be helping out. At recess I seemed to have developed my own fan club of little boys to like to holds my hands and arms and walk with me around the yard. They’re pretty cute. I did almost get peed on though. One kid I walked passed was just peeing on the ground! What the heck! That night we had a field trip for our music class. We went over into the township to a man named Dudley Tito’s house. He has a small room/shack in the back where he and his band play jazz. We mostly stood outside and listened to the music because only about two of us could fit inside at once. The band played two songs that a well known African woman sings that we know and really like. Then a guy from our group Andrew, who records at home, sang some blues with them. It was really great! Andrew kind of has a voice like Michael Buble and we always try to get him to sing, so we were really happy to finally hear him sing. A lot of little kids were wandering around and we started to play with them, including dancing with the little girls. They were so cute. One of the girls in the house was about our age and a girl on the trip, Shannon, was talking to her. The girl told her that her dream one day is to have a white friend. That was really unique to hear.
This morning volunteering was a little crazy again. I had to copy down class lists that were written in bad cursive and there are names I have never seen before like Sipho and Xhaphase. Yikes! My little boy fan club came back at break time again to hold my hands. They are so cute and I want to play with them, but they’re second or third grade and can’t speak much English yet, so I just hold their hands and we walk around together. I usually get some good smiles out of them though. Currently, I’m using all my time to try and write a Politics paper that I have to turn in before we leave next week for Cape Town. We’re spending about five days in Cape Town and then we have Spring Break. I’m traveling with a group of girls into Losotho, a country completely surrounded by South Africa. It’s supposed to be absolutely beautiful and through our backpackers we’re taking a two day trip on horses into the country. Whoop whoop. Thanks for reading and following along. I do love it down here, but I also can’t wait to be back at home with family and friends. God Bless.
Later on in the week we had speakers from COPE come to talk to us for our Politics class. COPE is another political party down here called the Congress of the People. One of the leading men came and talked to us and many of COPE members used to be ANC members, but through changes that they saw in the party they decided to break off and form COPE. We had a really interesting discussion with them, but I am still definitely learning more about each party, so I don't have a whole lot to tell you here. They are a very small party though and the ANC is projected to win the upcoming election. They did set the date for the election and it will be April 22nd. I think I told you about the man running for the ANC. His name is Jacob Zuma and he has many charges brought against him. Many of them deal with finances, but he was also the one who raped a young HIV infected girl. Then in his trial he said he took a shower because he thought it would help him not get infected. Even though he is a very corrupt leader, many will still vote for him because they like what the ANC stands for, but it is sad that it could be him who might rule the country. We went to a Rugby came on Monday which was a ton of fun, but what was interesting is that some students walked into the stands with ANC t-shirts on and they got booed. We’re assuming this campus does not support the ANC, although we’re not really sure what party majority of them side with.
On Thursday, 13 of us headed out after class for another short weekend trip. We headed up the coast an hour to Jeffery’s Bay. Our hostel is called Island Vibe and is totally a chill out place for surfers. The hostel is right on the Indian Ocean and provides a 270 degree view. The first night we hung out outside and looked at the sky. You can see tons of stars here, maybe a few more than I can see at home in the country in Duluth. Sadly, we can’t recognize any of the constellations here except Orion. I guess Orion is a bi-hemisphere constellation because it’s so low on the horizon. The next day we woke up and had a fabulous breakfast of fruit filled pancakes (which are really crepes down here) and then we ran into down quick to the Billabong Outlet store. We got back about 10am- perfect timing to sign up and get suited up for surfing lessons. Our instructor was this guy named Matt who is from the UK and also works as the bar tender at our hostel. He gave pretty good lesson because I was able to stand up a few times within the two hours. Holy cow though! It was hard work! It’s super hard to get out to the waves with your board when all the waves crash against you. Then it’s super hard just to boost yourself up to standing position. I can see why surfers are so in shape. After that we had lunch and hung out for the afternoon. We caught a taxi back at 6pm because we had to be back for some Human Rights Day activities on Saturday.
On Saturday we headed out to a sort of political rally put on by the ANC for Human Rights Day. One of the speakers was supposed to be Winnie Mandela. Right before we hopped on the bus Gary came downstairs to tell us not to bring anything valuable with us. He said we would pretty much be the only whites there and we would be good targets to be stolen from. I left everything behind, but decided to bring my camera along because I knew it probably be a good thing to document. It was about a 30-40 minute drive to Uitenhage where we started to see people lined up along the streets. Many were wearing COPE and ANC t-shirts. A lot of people cheered as we drove by. Apparently we were in a ANC parade, but as we got closer to the stadium we talked to some police about where to go. We were informed that the ANC and COPE had booked the stadium for the occasion, but at 2 am that morning the courts declared the stadium belonged to COPE. The ANC had to reorganize in a field near by. We ended up heading over there and getting out. We were allowed to get out and roam around to check everything out. It was announced that Winnie Mandela was no longer coming and we weren’t sure what we would get to see speaker-wise because they had to set up new microphones and a stage. We wandered around and ran into a lot of singing and dancing and joined in. The last one that we were watching was kind of in a circle, but one by one they pulled us all in. We were all dancing together and I’m sure it was quite a sight. Gary was right- we were the only white people there except for the reporters, but they all loved us. We were all taking pictures of each other, but they all wanted to take pictures with us too. Eventually, there was a prayer and a few speakers, but we left soon after that because it was nearing lunchtime and it was super hot and we had no food or water. On our way out one woman asked me how I was and then continued to tell our group that she loved us. Something that we noticed is that when they see us they immediately think we are Afrikaners, which is of course a legitimate assumption. We can tell because one guy said “buya donkey” to me which is “thank you” in Afrikaans. I had just been reading the Desmond Tutu book about the Truth and Reconciliation committee and these blacks have every right to still hate any whites after all the oppression they faced for decades. Instead they love us and like this one woman expressed they are fast to tell us they love us too. They are so incredible for the forgiveness they have shown to the people in this country who oppressed them for so many years. Later that night we went to a guitar concert which was kind of jazzy. There was an electric guitar, bass, keyboard, and drums. They have been my favorite music act that I’ve seen so far down here. They were just really chill and relaxed, but they played really good music. It was also good that all the songs didn’t blend together because that’s when I get bored. We even had a little strip tease show…just kidding. The guitar player and keyboard player were just dancing around and at one point took off their shirts. It was pretty funny though-especially the reaction on our director’s face. We left at the break, since we had already been there for two hours and they still had a second set. I had to get to bed early so I could wake up early for Scuba certification on Sunday.
Sunday morning we started Scuba certification bright and early at 8 am. We watched five videos, had lunch, and then headed down to the pool to do all of our confined dives. It was really weird to be able to completely depend on the air tank for breathing. We completed all of our skills though! I can attach all of my own equipment and suit myself up, buddy system breathe, take off my mask, put it back on and clear the whole thing from water, and take off my pack and weight belt under water. Next weekend we’re going to finish up our quizzes and then do our open water dives on Saturday and Sunday. That night we went to Mass on campus again. We once again we were only white students. The music is really good there. There’s no choir or anything-all of us just sing, but there’s a lot of harmony going on.
Monday we had another day of volunteering. It’s been going pretty well lately, but Monday was kind of an off day. We didn’t really do much teaching; instead we made her time tables for the tenth time. I try to remember that we don’t just have to teach to be helping out. At recess I seemed to have developed my own fan club of little boys to like to holds my hands and arms and walk with me around the yard. They’re pretty cute. I did almost get peed on though. One kid I walked passed was just peeing on the ground! What the heck! That night we had a field trip for our music class. We went over into the township to a man named Dudley Tito’s house. He has a small room/shack in the back where he and his band play jazz. We mostly stood outside and listened to the music because only about two of us could fit inside at once. The band played two songs that a well known African woman sings that we know and really like. Then a guy from our group Andrew, who records at home, sang some blues with them. It was really great! Andrew kind of has a voice like Michael Buble and we always try to get him to sing, so we were really happy to finally hear him sing. A lot of little kids were wandering around and we started to play with them, including dancing with the little girls. They were so cute. One of the girls in the house was about our age and a girl on the trip, Shannon, was talking to her. The girl told her that her dream one day is to have a white friend. That was really unique to hear.
This morning volunteering was a little crazy again. I had to copy down class lists that were written in bad cursive and there are names I have never seen before like Sipho and Xhaphase. Yikes! My little boy fan club came back at break time again to hold my hands. They are so cute and I want to play with them, but they’re second or third grade and can’t speak much English yet, so I just hold their hands and we walk around together. I usually get some good smiles out of them though. Currently, I’m using all my time to try and write a Politics paper that I have to turn in before we leave next week for Cape Town. We’re spending about five days in Cape Town and then we have Spring Break. I’m traveling with a group of girls into Losotho, a country completely surrounded by South Africa. It’s supposed to be absolutely beautiful and through our backpackers we’re taking a two day trip on horses into the country. Whoop whoop. Thanks for reading and following along. I do love it down here, but I also can’t wait to be back at home with family and friends. God Bless.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Hogsmeade and Pocahontas
The week of March 9th-15 was a pretty busy one. In music class we have been studying a lot of African musical instruments and music produced under the Apartheid. The music we studying is called Nguni which is a collective term referring to the Zulu, Swazi, and Xhosa tribes. Some of the bows they play on are called Umrhubhe, Uhadi, Umqangi, and Ikatari. I’d had a lot of fun studying for the test this past week because where ever a “q” is found in Xhosa words a click is done while speaking. I’m not exactly sure how good I am at doing the click, but it is a lot of fun! A lot of the music played during that period was jazz and we listen to a lot of that in class.
This week instead of having Senior Seminar we instead went to a town near by and listen to Bradley Lavack speak. Bradley is an activist in the area and we’ve seen quite a bit of him. Our entire group really just loves him. He’s a really great guy! I might have talked about him before, but Bradley’s ancestors are San people or Bush people. He would be classified as colored, but he really doesn’t look like it to us. In the U.S. he would just look like a naturally tan guy. Bradley grew up in a township nearby and that morning he told us a lot of stories of what they did when they were growing up. As a young boy, he often made petrol bombs out of glass bottles. It sounds like he got into a lot of other mischief too. He did tell us some pretty real stories about the violence that was committed under the Apartheid. He told us about some of the torture tactics too. One torture technique they used was called necklacing, which is where they put a rubber tire filled with gas around a person’s neck and then set them on fire. Listening to him was really good. It gave us an opportunity to really hear personal stories and really understand the atrocities that had gone on. Bradley was telling us that a lot of people are really psychologically damaged now though for all that they saw during that time period.
On Friday, our whole group took an excursion to Grahamstown and other various towns. We left about 7 am, hopped in a coach bus with Bradley and headed out. Grahamstown was about an hour away and was originally tribal land. The tribes moved around a bit would let their animals graze the lands and would share the land with each other. When the Dutch and British came through the tribes, as usual, shared their land, until they realized the Dutch and British weren’t moving on. Eventually there was a battle and the Europeans won and took over the land, as was the case in many other places in South Africa. The Europeans continued to hold majority of the land under the Apartheid government. Currently, the land is something the government is still struggling with. The government is trying to return land to the tribes, yet they still face a lot of problems. The government can buy the land, but it can never own the land, so the land needs to be found, bought, negotiated and handed over within a very short period of time. Also, much of the original land can’t be given back because towns and cities are now built on it. Additionally, many of the descendants from these tribes also have now been living in townships for years and many do not have the skill to work the land once they receive it. Those are just a few problems, but there are many many more. We left Grahamstown and on our way up to another tiny little village we stopped at Outreach project funded by Rhodes University for artists to make artwork and sell it. All of these artists made prints where they carve out a scene in wood and then they paint the wood with ink and roll it down onto a piece of paper. Their artwork was beautiful and told a lot of stories of what life was like under Apartheid. We all bought something and that was pretty awesome to support local artists. After that we headed up to the tiny little village where we talked with the mayor, who is also the head of the ANC for their area. They talked to us for a while and then we got to ask the mayor and other chair people questions. Then they made us a really yummy meal including dessert! Then we took off in our bus again and stopped at a small school in another small village. This school has only four teachers, but needed at least five. It was severely needing help and resources, but it wasn’t even registered under the government as a school. The whole day we had been driving through beautiful hilly countryside. The little villages seem so cool to live it because it seems so awesome to live so far anyway from the industrialized cities and work off the land. Sadly, though these villages are very poor. None of them know how to pull themselves out of this poverty because they aren’t educated and the ones who do get educated leave and don’t come back. Our last stop for the day was King Williams Town to see Steve Biko’s childhood family home. Steve Biko is a very important figure in South Africa. He started what is called the Black Consciousness Movement, a movement that encouraged and inspired blacks under the Apartheid that they had dignity, worth, and they need to stand up for their rights. The BCM fought the lie taught which many blacks believed that blacks were inferior to whites. I probably don’t do any justice trying to explain this movement, but it was a very important one in South Africa and Steve Biko’s legacy still lives on through the foundation established in his name. The sad thing is the story of how he died. Steve was imprisoned under the Apartheid just like many other political leaders. The only facts known are that he was transferred from the prison in Port Elizabeth to Pretoria. He was transferred naked and had a head injury, which the officers claimed he received when he hit his head while fighting restraints during the move. He died not long after he arrived in Pretoria. Much of the facts provided by the police are pretty sketchy and sadly none of the truth came out under the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but it is believed by most that he was tortured and beaten in prison by the guards. Looking at his house was the last stop, so we climbing back in our bus for the long ride home. We were driving through pineapple country, so we did pull over to buy pineapples from a woman on the side of the road. Boy, did we make her day. We bought every single one of her pineapples. They were only 6 Rand (60 cents apiece)! A group of us were traveling to Hogsback Mountains for the weekend, so we got dropped off at Grahamstown to stay the night. Our hostel was soooo awesome! It’s called Old Gaol, which means Old Jail. It used to be a jail in the 1800’s! Laura and I had made our reservation separately from the rest of the group. They all slept in rooms with 6-8 beds in them, but we actually slept in an old cell. Crazy! It seemed a little creepy too. It kinda put a good perspective on what Nelson Mandela lived in for half a decade. We went out for dinner that night and stopped at a restaurant with some authentic Xhosa food. I got ostrich and it was really good! The only thing was that it was really fatty and I would chew each piece for long time. I’m sure that was good for my arteries.
I ended up sleeping really well in the jail cell even though Laura and Jenny said their beds were extremely uncomfortable with a huge indent right where your butt was supposed to go. The next morning we headed out around 8:30ish and took a taxi up to Hogsback, which I kept calling Hogsmead (it’s the name of the village in the Harry Potter books). We passed Fort Hare, one of the universities that Nelson Mandela went to. The trip took about two hours and brought us up to the mountains. It was an absolutely beautiful trip. These mountains are said to be the inspiration of the Lord of the Rings books. Our hostel was called Away with the Fairies and was right at the top of a smaller mountain or maybe it was a foothill, I’m a bit confused with how to clarify them. It was bit foggy that first day, so we couldn’t really see the great view, but it was still awesome to experience. Soon as we got there we headed out on a five hour hike. The hike took us past three waterfalls which were amazing, but one was extremely hard to get too. We were basically climbing on our hands and knees up rocks. We did see a huge tree that was eight hundred years old and a monkey too! One of the dogs from the hostel came with us too and guided us along. We decided to name him Frodo, even though a few members of our group insisted that his name was Seamus. That night we had another traditional Xhosa meal, which was basically a meat stew with rice and bread. Then most of us headed off to bed early since we were so exhausted.
Sunday morning we woke up by eight, so we would have enough time to fit in one more hike. We hiked all the way up to the top of another waterfall, which flowed straight off the edge of a cliff. I felt like Pocahontas. That was bit scary up there, but it was an awesome view. We came home around lunch time and I had time to climb up into the “scariest” tree house in South Africa. It was honestly scary. The ladder was the worst part because it’s just tiny. Then when you got to the top you just stand on a wood floor 15 meters above the ground. At about 1:30, our taxi finally came and brought us to this town called Alice, where we switched into another taxi that took us to Grahamstown. From Grahamstown we took a bus, after one girl in our group chased down a bus that took off and we thought was ours, but turns out it wasn’t. Then we endured an hour and a half on a cramped, hot bus to Port Elizabeth where we caught our last taxi to our flats. In all it was a great first weekend traveling and extremely beautiful.
This week instead of having Senior Seminar we instead went to a town near by and listen to Bradley Lavack speak. Bradley is an activist in the area and we’ve seen quite a bit of him. Our entire group really just loves him. He’s a really great guy! I might have talked about him before, but Bradley’s ancestors are San people or Bush people. He would be classified as colored, but he really doesn’t look like it to us. In the U.S. he would just look like a naturally tan guy. Bradley grew up in a township nearby and that morning he told us a lot of stories of what they did when they were growing up. As a young boy, he often made petrol bombs out of glass bottles. It sounds like he got into a lot of other mischief too. He did tell us some pretty real stories about the violence that was committed under the Apartheid. He told us about some of the torture tactics too. One torture technique they used was called necklacing, which is where they put a rubber tire filled with gas around a person’s neck and then set them on fire. Listening to him was really good. It gave us an opportunity to really hear personal stories and really understand the atrocities that had gone on. Bradley was telling us that a lot of people are really psychologically damaged now though for all that they saw during that time period.
On Friday, our whole group took an excursion to Grahamstown and other various towns. We left about 7 am, hopped in a coach bus with Bradley and headed out. Grahamstown was about an hour away and was originally tribal land. The tribes moved around a bit would let their animals graze the lands and would share the land with each other. When the Dutch and British came through the tribes, as usual, shared their land, until they realized the Dutch and British weren’t moving on. Eventually there was a battle and the Europeans won and took over the land, as was the case in many other places in South Africa. The Europeans continued to hold majority of the land under the Apartheid government. Currently, the land is something the government is still struggling with. The government is trying to return land to the tribes, yet they still face a lot of problems. The government can buy the land, but it can never own the land, so the land needs to be found, bought, negotiated and handed over within a very short period of time. Also, much of the original land can’t be given back because towns and cities are now built on it. Additionally, many of the descendants from these tribes also have now been living in townships for years and many do not have the skill to work the land once they receive it. Those are just a few problems, but there are many many more. We left Grahamstown and on our way up to another tiny little village we stopped at Outreach project funded by Rhodes University for artists to make artwork and sell it. All of these artists made prints where they carve out a scene in wood and then they paint the wood with ink and roll it down onto a piece of paper. Their artwork was beautiful and told a lot of stories of what life was like under Apartheid. We all bought something and that was pretty awesome to support local artists. After that we headed up to the tiny little village where we talked with the mayor, who is also the head of the ANC for their area. They talked to us for a while and then we got to ask the mayor and other chair people questions. Then they made us a really yummy meal including dessert! Then we took off in our bus again and stopped at a small school in another small village. This school has only four teachers, but needed at least five. It was severely needing help and resources, but it wasn’t even registered under the government as a school. The whole day we had been driving through beautiful hilly countryside. The little villages seem so cool to live it because it seems so awesome to live so far anyway from the industrialized cities and work off the land. Sadly, though these villages are very poor. None of them know how to pull themselves out of this poverty because they aren’t educated and the ones who do get educated leave and don’t come back. Our last stop for the day was King Williams Town to see Steve Biko’s childhood family home. Steve Biko is a very important figure in South Africa. He started what is called the Black Consciousness Movement, a movement that encouraged and inspired blacks under the Apartheid that they had dignity, worth, and they need to stand up for their rights. The BCM fought the lie taught which many blacks believed that blacks were inferior to whites. I probably don’t do any justice trying to explain this movement, but it was a very important one in South Africa and Steve Biko’s legacy still lives on through the foundation established in his name. The sad thing is the story of how he died. Steve was imprisoned under the Apartheid just like many other political leaders. The only facts known are that he was transferred from the prison in Port Elizabeth to Pretoria. He was transferred naked and had a head injury, which the officers claimed he received when he hit his head while fighting restraints during the move. He died not long after he arrived in Pretoria. Much of the facts provided by the police are pretty sketchy and sadly none of the truth came out under the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but it is believed by most that he was tortured and beaten in prison by the guards. Looking at his house was the last stop, so we climbing back in our bus for the long ride home. We were driving through pineapple country, so we did pull over to buy pineapples from a woman on the side of the road. Boy, did we make her day. We bought every single one of her pineapples. They were only 6 Rand (60 cents apiece)! A group of us were traveling to Hogsback Mountains for the weekend, so we got dropped off at Grahamstown to stay the night. Our hostel was soooo awesome! It’s called Old Gaol, which means Old Jail. It used to be a jail in the 1800’s! Laura and I had made our reservation separately from the rest of the group. They all slept in rooms with 6-8 beds in them, but we actually slept in an old cell. Crazy! It seemed a little creepy too. It kinda put a good perspective on what Nelson Mandela lived in for half a decade. We went out for dinner that night and stopped at a restaurant with some authentic Xhosa food. I got ostrich and it was really good! The only thing was that it was really fatty and I would chew each piece for long time. I’m sure that was good for my arteries.
I ended up sleeping really well in the jail cell even though Laura and Jenny said their beds were extremely uncomfortable with a huge indent right where your butt was supposed to go. The next morning we headed out around 8:30ish and took a taxi up to Hogsback, which I kept calling Hogsmead (it’s the name of the village in the Harry Potter books). We passed Fort Hare, one of the universities that Nelson Mandela went to. The trip took about two hours and brought us up to the mountains. It was an absolutely beautiful trip. These mountains are said to be the inspiration of the Lord of the Rings books. Our hostel was called Away with the Fairies and was right at the top of a smaller mountain or maybe it was a foothill, I’m a bit confused with how to clarify them. It was bit foggy that first day, so we couldn’t really see the great view, but it was still awesome to experience. Soon as we got there we headed out on a five hour hike. The hike took us past three waterfalls which were amazing, but one was extremely hard to get too. We were basically climbing on our hands and knees up rocks. We did see a huge tree that was eight hundred years old and a monkey too! One of the dogs from the hostel came with us too and guided us along. We decided to name him Frodo, even though a few members of our group insisted that his name was Seamus. That night we had another traditional Xhosa meal, which was basically a meat stew with rice and bread. Then most of us headed off to bed early since we were so exhausted.
Sunday morning we woke up by eight, so we would have enough time to fit in one more hike. We hiked all the way up to the top of another waterfall, which flowed straight off the edge of a cliff. I felt like Pocahontas. That was bit scary up there, but it was an awesome view. We came home around lunch time and I had time to climb up into the “scariest” tree house in South Africa. It was honestly scary. The ladder was the worst part because it’s just tiny. Then when you got to the top you just stand on a wood floor 15 meters above the ground. At about 1:30, our taxi finally came and brought us to this town called Alice, where we switched into another taxi that took us to Grahamstown. From Grahamstown we took a bus, after one girl in our group chased down a bus that took off and we thought was ours, but turns out it wasn’t. Then we endured an hour and a half on a cramped, hot bus to Port Elizabeth where we caught our last taxi to our flats. In all it was a great first weekend traveling and extremely beautiful.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Jumping From an Airplane
I have such an awesome weekend to type about, get ready for some excitement!
March 5-9th our whole group took a scheduled excursion to Durban, a city on the eastern side of South Africa in the Kwazulu Natal. Luckily, the Rand has been in our favor so plane tickets were cheap enough to fly all thirty of us. We left Thursday morning at 11 am for the airport and checked all thirty of us in. It actually was extremely easy- not much hassle. We were flying Kalula, a small airline that flies mostly between the main cities in South Africa. What a fun airline too! The plane was painted a really bright lime green color. The inside had a lot of lime green in it too and holy cow, the safety “speech” was sooo funny. Some good quotes were “please turn off all blackberries, blueberries, and strawberries,” “in the case of an emergency and the aircraft must land in water, life vest are under your seats, but don’t worry, we are not going anywhere near the Hudson River today,” and “there are many ways to leave your lover, but only eight ways to leave this aircraft.” They sure know how to capture everyone’s attention. In the airport I also recognized a few swimmers that had won awards at the Redhouse River Race that I swam last weekend. I did get a chance to talk to a few of them at the luggage claim, which was kinda fun. Lucky them too- flying to their big swim meets!
That afternoon after we had arrived we got settled at our backpackers called Surf N’ Dreams and then headed out to check out the largest “Hindu” temple in the Southern Hemisphere called the Temple of Understanding. I say “Hindu” because it sounds like it’s more of a non-denominational Hindu temple. We learned a bit about the religion, which I didn’t retain much of because his accent was really hard to understand. After that we headed downstairs to watch some traditional Indian dancers. That was pretty sweet. I guess I didn’t really explain the dynamics of Durban. Durban has a huge Indian population. The main industry here used to be the sugar cane industry and many Indians were brought over here long ago for cheap labor in the factories. After watching that really awesome performance, we preceded over to Taste of India, an authentic Indian restaurant that set out a buffet for us, paid for by the program! Nothing better than free food! I was completely stuffed and ate a lot of food that I have no idea what is was called. I figure though I can just refer to Kari for the names of those. That’s right; I studied abroad in South Africa and still got a taste of India.
Friday I woke up bright and early at 5 am to get ready for the Shark Boat ride. We took a bus down to the harbor at 5:45 am and started our boat tour at 6:30. The boat took nine of us out to watch the crew check the shark nets put out to keep the sharks from the beach. If a shark had been caught in the nets, then the crew would have killed it and brought it back to be dissected. Sadly, we did not see any sharks that day. We did have a pretty chill morning just hanging out on the boat though. There were HUGE swells and a few of us got sick. I luckily did not, but I’d get close when people would start talking about it. We decided that sea sickness is mental and biological. After we came in we got picked up in the bus with everyone else and told them a huge story about seeing a shark. They believed it for about 2 minutes. Then we headed downtown for a tour of the city. Our tour wasn’t super great, but we really did get to see what the city was like. We saw a couple of cool markets, an Indian one, a medicinal one, and a normal city market. There were stands selling stuff on the sides of streets everywhere too. At one point we walked through a small passage way with stands on both sides and it was slightly covered too. It totally reminded me of Old Jerusalem. The medicinal market was really interesting. All the stands were selling powdered stuff, which were different plants that had been ground up. They were for all different things such as attraction, enemies, love, etc. We did get to see a Mosque too, which at one time had been the largest mosque in the Southern Hemisphere. A man talked to us a bit about Islam and it was super interesting. He used to be Baptist and had converted. He was saying that he used to engage in debates against Muslims. He showed us the Quran and told us that Muslims believe Jesus lived, but that he was only a prophet. Their worship space is very plain and mostly used for prayer. There main objective is to follow the will of God and live a good life following the example and words of the prophets. I could kinda see how he could have converted coming for a Baptist background. Coming from a Catholic background with the Eucharist would be a bit harder. I just kept thinking about John 6 where Jesus talks about “eat my flesh and drink my blood.” That is something that would be too hard to overlook. I really enjoyed hearing all of it though. After that we headed over to the Cathedral in the city, just a couple of blocks down and checked that out. That was really pretty. Our tour was pretty much done after that, so a bunch of us stayed to go shopping. We had lunch and then looked around at the outdoor market. Things down here are very cheap. I got a Roxy t-shirt for 6 bucks. Yeah! We headed back to our hostel from there and got ready for the night. Many of the girls bought new dresses at the market, so we all got dressed up and ready to go out. That night we were scheduled to go to a Jazz club. The club was beautiful and right on the harbor. The sun was setting when we got there and the sky was beautiful and pink. We all got food and drinks and just kinda hung out.
Saturday morning we headed to the Kwamule museum at 9:30. This museum had three different rooms that we checked out. The first one was really dedicated to the history of Durban. It talked about the Indian population and the markets. The second room was mostly dedicated to the oppression of the coloureds under Apartheid. There was a huge replica of a passbook. All non-whites were required to carry these around with them during the Apartheid and could be asked for them at any moment. If they didn’t have them or they had not been stamped by their employer they could be fined or even imprisoned. The third room had the story of a young black man who was involved in the MK. The MK was basically formed by the ANC (Mandela’s party) and known as their armed wing during Apartheid. After the ANC used many non-violent tactics they felt after the Sharpville Massacre in 1960 that it was time to take a different route. So they started the MK, which would start using acts of sabotage against military structures and transportation and communication systems of the government. The museum told the story of this young man who had planted a bomb near a mall and as a by product some innocent people were killed. He was tried by the government and executed. After the Apartheid government fell, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was formed to try to bring out the truth from the violent past and heal some past hurts. This case was brought up and the family of a young child who was killed in the bomb made a statement. The father forgave the young man because he was fighting for a just cause against the oppression of the state. The father’s statement was remarkable to hear. This white man chose to forgive a black man who killed his innocent child. We’re learning bit by bit about the remarkable forgiveness that has taken place in this country. After the museum a group of eleven of us took a taxi out to an airport about an hour away to go SKYDIVING!!!! WHOOOO HOOOO! Yes, that’s right. I jumped out of a plane! It took us a while to get there and it took all day for all of us to skydive, but it was so worth it!! We all went in pairs and my partner was Amy. When it was our turn we suited up in this awesome red jumpsuit with a huge black spot on the bum. I’m assuming it’s for our landing since we totally land on our butts. We put on our harness and then headed out to wait for the plane to come down after dropping the last two. We tandem dived with our two certified divers, Vernon and Martin. I was with Martin. We hopped into this tiny little plane that seriously only fit the four of us and then our pilot, who looked like a taller version of Nick Davidson from home who is also a pilot! The view flying up was gorgeous. As we left Durban we had gone through a really hilly landscape. It wasn’t mountains, but I would maybe call it foothills. They were all green and covered with trees. As we flew up we were able to see all of that gorgeous countryside. It was getting later in the evening so the sun was getting a bit lower on the horizon. We were trying to reach 10,000 feet and it left like it took forever to get up there. Martin told us when we were at 3,000 and it seemed like we had already taken a long time to get that high! At about 6,000, we started to get ready though. I had to sit on Martins knees and he buckled us together. Amy was the first to go so I watched her slide one leg at a time out the door of the plane and then it was my turn. One by one I put each of my feet out the door and then we rocked twice and jumped out! We did a flip in the air right away and I saw the bottom of the plane upside down. Then we just free fell on our stomachs for about 30 seconds. It was sooo AWESOME!! Then Martin pulled the parachute. Usually he taps us on the hip, so we can pulled it, but I was so thrilled with falling that I didn’t even feel it. From there we just floated down. There are two lines that you can pull too that steer the parachute and my instructor kept pulling me in spins. The view was absolutely beautiful too. I held Amy’s camera on the way down, so I have a lot of really fun pictures. At the bottom we landed on our butts and the whole adventure was over. All of us finally got done about 6pm, so we loaded up and booked it back to the hostel to change and then hopped back in the car to head to the ballet. We saw the Bolshoy ballet, which was a mix of a bunch of different pieces of ballet from all over the world. It was my first time seeing ballet and it was amazing!
Sunday morning a few of us got up nice and early to walk to Mass just down the street at 7:30am. Mass was good. Something that we’ve noticed a lot here- they generally do not sing much during Mass, at least at the mainly white churches. They do use the antiphons that we don’t usually use, that are usual printed in the books that have the readings in them. They read those in the beginning, end and before communion. If they do sing they use this book that has the lyrics, but no music is printed in it. If you know the melody of the song then that’s great, but we never do. I’m guessing not many other parishioners know the songs either because no one ever sings super loud or super well- maybe that’s why they don’t sing much. After Mass we got back to the hostel and found out that some of the boys got stolen from in the night. Five of them had money stolen from them while they were sleeping. In addition to money, a camera and cell phone were stolen too. It was weird too because some of the boys who had money stolen from them had their cameras moved over and then the robber took from their wallet underneath. They were stolen from while they were sleeping too. It was kinda odd. In all they got about 1,000 bucks taken from them. Funny thing is too, the robber left his hat! I’m not sure if we ever determined how they got stolen from, if the robber came in through the door or jump a fence. The owners of the hostel were partially at fault because we were not given any real security rules. Police came and they had to talk to them, but after that was done we headed out for a nature walk. Our bus took us to a nature reserve on the top of the hill probably still within city limits, but a bit more in the country. We walked for about an hour on a trail and then looked at birds in the Aviary. Before leaving we checked out some snakes in cages at the entrance. After looking at them for a while Amy asked the woman in charge when they fed them and the woman looked around and said, “Well, usually on Fridays, but there’s no small children around now, so I could feed them now if you like.” We said, “Yeah!” She then led us out back where there is a cage of mice and picked two of those out. Then she brought us back in and started taking some snakes out of their cage and showing us them. The last one was a pretty good sized constrictor snake that a few of us got to hold. Then to feed it she picked up the mouse with this pliers thing, but it was too wild and she thought it would bite the snake, so she proceeded to take it outside and hit its head on the wall to “knock it out a bit.” Then she put it in the cage with the snake and we got to see the snake constrict on the mouse and kill it and then eat it. Something that I’ve never seen before! After that we headed back to the hostel to hang out for a while. That night we went to a one-man play called The Chilli Boy, which was a bit of a comedy about old Indian woman who reincarnated into a gang boy when he walked through her ashes. It was pretty good and the man was a really good actor! There were a few culture jokes though that we definitely did not get.
Monday morning we flew out at 8am back to Port Elizabeth. That night we had “Johnnie Aid.” If you’ve ever seen the show The Office, it was modeled after the episode where the office gets stolen from and Michael has an auction where he says he is going to auction off Bruce Springsteen tickets. We wanted to raise some money to give back to the boys after they got robbed. We all put up something to bid on including breakfast in bed, a workout buddy, a hug, back massages, dinners, and star gazing. We raised a total of 4,900 Rand, which is about 490 dollars. It was a really funny night.
I still have last weekend and this week to catch up on, but I’ll try to update soon.
March 5-9th our whole group took a scheduled excursion to Durban, a city on the eastern side of South Africa in the Kwazulu Natal. Luckily, the Rand has been in our favor so plane tickets were cheap enough to fly all thirty of us. We left Thursday morning at 11 am for the airport and checked all thirty of us in. It actually was extremely easy- not much hassle. We were flying Kalula, a small airline that flies mostly between the main cities in South Africa. What a fun airline too! The plane was painted a really bright lime green color. The inside had a lot of lime green in it too and holy cow, the safety “speech” was sooo funny. Some good quotes were “please turn off all blackberries, blueberries, and strawberries,” “in the case of an emergency and the aircraft must land in water, life vest are under your seats, but don’t worry, we are not going anywhere near the Hudson River today,” and “there are many ways to leave your lover, but only eight ways to leave this aircraft.” They sure know how to capture everyone’s attention. In the airport I also recognized a few swimmers that had won awards at the Redhouse River Race that I swam last weekend. I did get a chance to talk to a few of them at the luggage claim, which was kinda fun. Lucky them too- flying to their big swim meets!
That afternoon after we had arrived we got settled at our backpackers called Surf N’ Dreams and then headed out to check out the largest “Hindu” temple in the Southern Hemisphere called the Temple of Understanding. I say “Hindu” because it sounds like it’s more of a non-denominational Hindu temple. We learned a bit about the religion, which I didn’t retain much of because his accent was really hard to understand. After that we headed downstairs to watch some traditional Indian dancers. That was pretty sweet. I guess I didn’t really explain the dynamics of Durban. Durban has a huge Indian population. The main industry here used to be the sugar cane industry and many Indians were brought over here long ago for cheap labor in the factories. After watching that really awesome performance, we preceded over to Taste of India, an authentic Indian restaurant that set out a buffet for us, paid for by the program! Nothing better than free food! I was completely stuffed and ate a lot of food that I have no idea what is was called. I figure though I can just refer to Kari for the names of those. That’s right; I studied abroad in South Africa and still got a taste of India.
Friday I woke up bright and early at 5 am to get ready for the Shark Boat ride. We took a bus down to the harbor at 5:45 am and started our boat tour at 6:30. The boat took nine of us out to watch the crew check the shark nets put out to keep the sharks from the beach. If a shark had been caught in the nets, then the crew would have killed it and brought it back to be dissected. Sadly, we did not see any sharks that day. We did have a pretty chill morning just hanging out on the boat though. There were HUGE swells and a few of us got sick. I luckily did not, but I’d get close when people would start talking about it. We decided that sea sickness is mental and biological. After we came in we got picked up in the bus with everyone else and told them a huge story about seeing a shark. They believed it for about 2 minutes. Then we headed downtown for a tour of the city. Our tour wasn’t super great, but we really did get to see what the city was like. We saw a couple of cool markets, an Indian one, a medicinal one, and a normal city market. There were stands selling stuff on the sides of streets everywhere too. At one point we walked through a small passage way with stands on both sides and it was slightly covered too. It totally reminded me of Old Jerusalem. The medicinal market was really interesting. All the stands were selling powdered stuff, which were different plants that had been ground up. They were for all different things such as attraction, enemies, love, etc. We did get to see a Mosque too, which at one time had been the largest mosque in the Southern Hemisphere. A man talked to us a bit about Islam and it was super interesting. He used to be Baptist and had converted. He was saying that he used to engage in debates against Muslims. He showed us the Quran and told us that Muslims believe Jesus lived, but that he was only a prophet. Their worship space is very plain and mostly used for prayer. There main objective is to follow the will of God and live a good life following the example and words of the prophets. I could kinda see how he could have converted coming for a Baptist background. Coming from a Catholic background with the Eucharist would be a bit harder. I just kept thinking about John 6 where Jesus talks about “eat my flesh and drink my blood.” That is something that would be too hard to overlook. I really enjoyed hearing all of it though. After that we headed over to the Cathedral in the city, just a couple of blocks down and checked that out. That was really pretty. Our tour was pretty much done after that, so a bunch of us stayed to go shopping. We had lunch and then looked around at the outdoor market. Things down here are very cheap. I got a Roxy t-shirt for 6 bucks. Yeah! We headed back to our hostel from there and got ready for the night. Many of the girls bought new dresses at the market, so we all got dressed up and ready to go out. That night we were scheduled to go to a Jazz club. The club was beautiful and right on the harbor. The sun was setting when we got there and the sky was beautiful and pink. We all got food and drinks and just kinda hung out.
Saturday morning we headed to the Kwamule museum at 9:30. This museum had three different rooms that we checked out. The first one was really dedicated to the history of Durban. It talked about the Indian population and the markets. The second room was mostly dedicated to the oppression of the coloureds under Apartheid. There was a huge replica of a passbook. All non-whites were required to carry these around with them during the Apartheid and could be asked for them at any moment. If they didn’t have them or they had not been stamped by their employer they could be fined or even imprisoned. The third room had the story of a young black man who was involved in the MK. The MK was basically formed by the ANC (Mandela’s party) and known as their armed wing during Apartheid. After the ANC used many non-violent tactics they felt after the Sharpville Massacre in 1960 that it was time to take a different route. So they started the MK, which would start using acts of sabotage against military structures and transportation and communication systems of the government. The museum told the story of this young man who had planted a bomb near a mall and as a by product some innocent people were killed. He was tried by the government and executed. After the Apartheid government fell, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was formed to try to bring out the truth from the violent past and heal some past hurts. This case was brought up and the family of a young child who was killed in the bomb made a statement. The father forgave the young man because he was fighting for a just cause against the oppression of the state. The father’s statement was remarkable to hear. This white man chose to forgive a black man who killed his innocent child. We’re learning bit by bit about the remarkable forgiveness that has taken place in this country. After the museum a group of eleven of us took a taxi out to an airport about an hour away to go SKYDIVING!!!! WHOOOO HOOOO! Yes, that’s right. I jumped out of a plane! It took us a while to get there and it took all day for all of us to skydive, but it was so worth it!! We all went in pairs and my partner was Amy. When it was our turn we suited up in this awesome red jumpsuit with a huge black spot on the bum. I’m assuming it’s for our landing since we totally land on our butts. We put on our harness and then headed out to wait for the plane to come down after dropping the last two. We tandem dived with our two certified divers, Vernon and Martin. I was with Martin. We hopped into this tiny little plane that seriously only fit the four of us and then our pilot, who looked like a taller version of Nick Davidson from home who is also a pilot! The view flying up was gorgeous. As we left Durban we had gone through a really hilly landscape. It wasn’t mountains, but I would maybe call it foothills. They were all green and covered with trees. As we flew up we were able to see all of that gorgeous countryside. It was getting later in the evening so the sun was getting a bit lower on the horizon. We were trying to reach 10,000 feet and it left like it took forever to get up there. Martin told us when we were at 3,000 and it seemed like we had already taken a long time to get that high! At about 6,000, we started to get ready though. I had to sit on Martins knees and he buckled us together. Amy was the first to go so I watched her slide one leg at a time out the door of the plane and then it was my turn. One by one I put each of my feet out the door and then we rocked twice and jumped out! We did a flip in the air right away and I saw the bottom of the plane upside down. Then we just free fell on our stomachs for about 30 seconds. It was sooo AWESOME!! Then Martin pulled the parachute. Usually he taps us on the hip, so we can pulled it, but I was so thrilled with falling that I didn’t even feel it. From there we just floated down. There are two lines that you can pull too that steer the parachute and my instructor kept pulling me in spins. The view was absolutely beautiful too. I held Amy’s camera on the way down, so I have a lot of really fun pictures. At the bottom we landed on our butts and the whole adventure was over. All of us finally got done about 6pm, so we loaded up and booked it back to the hostel to change and then hopped back in the car to head to the ballet. We saw the Bolshoy ballet, which was a mix of a bunch of different pieces of ballet from all over the world. It was my first time seeing ballet and it was amazing!
Sunday morning a few of us got up nice and early to walk to Mass just down the street at 7:30am. Mass was good. Something that we’ve noticed a lot here- they generally do not sing much during Mass, at least at the mainly white churches. They do use the antiphons that we don’t usually use, that are usual printed in the books that have the readings in them. They read those in the beginning, end and before communion. If they do sing they use this book that has the lyrics, but no music is printed in it. If you know the melody of the song then that’s great, but we never do. I’m guessing not many other parishioners know the songs either because no one ever sings super loud or super well- maybe that’s why they don’t sing much. After Mass we got back to the hostel and found out that some of the boys got stolen from in the night. Five of them had money stolen from them while they were sleeping. In addition to money, a camera and cell phone were stolen too. It was weird too because some of the boys who had money stolen from them had their cameras moved over and then the robber took from their wallet underneath. They were stolen from while they were sleeping too. It was kinda odd. In all they got about 1,000 bucks taken from them. Funny thing is too, the robber left his hat! I’m not sure if we ever determined how they got stolen from, if the robber came in through the door or jump a fence. The owners of the hostel were partially at fault because we were not given any real security rules. Police came and they had to talk to them, but after that was done we headed out for a nature walk. Our bus took us to a nature reserve on the top of the hill probably still within city limits, but a bit more in the country. We walked for about an hour on a trail and then looked at birds in the Aviary. Before leaving we checked out some snakes in cages at the entrance. After looking at them for a while Amy asked the woman in charge when they fed them and the woman looked around and said, “Well, usually on Fridays, but there’s no small children around now, so I could feed them now if you like.” We said, “Yeah!” She then led us out back where there is a cage of mice and picked two of those out. Then she brought us back in and started taking some snakes out of their cage and showing us them. The last one was a pretty good sized constrictor snake that a few of us got to hold. Then to feed it she picked up the mouse with this pliers thing, but it was too wild and she thought it would bite the snake, so she proceeded to take it outside and hit its head on the wall to “knock it out a bit.” Then she put it in the cage with the snake and we got to see the snake constrict on the mouse and kill it and then eat it. Something that I’ve never seen before! After that we headed back to the hostel to hang out for a while. That night we went to a one-man play called The Chilli Boy, which was a bit of a comedy about old Indian woman who reincarnated into a gang boy when he walked through her ashes. It was pretty good and the man was a really good actor! There were a few culture jokes though that we definitely did not get.
Monday morning we flew out at 8am back to Port Elizabeth. That night we had “Johnnie Aid.” If you’ve ever seen the show The Office, it was modeled after the episode where the office gets stolen from and Michael has an auction where he says he is going to auction off Bruce Springsteen tickets. We wanted to raise some money to give back to the boys after they got robbed. We all put up something to bid on including breakfast in bed, a workout buddy, a hug, back massages, dinners, and star gazing. We raised a total of 4,900 Rand, which is about 490 dollars. It was a really funny night.
I still have last weekend and this week to catch up on, but I’ll try to update soon.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Emergency Room
I had every intention of updating this blog earlier. I actaully had started to write a new entry on Wednesday, but then things actaully took a different turn which I will explain later. But it's probably the best excuse a girl could use.
I left off more than a week ago, but most of the week consisted of class, which are good and interesting, but not too much to type about here. From what I remember Thursday and Friday weren't too terribly exciting either. Saturday after working on a paper during the day we headed to Victoria Park for a concert. One of the students on the program, Simon, plays bass in the orchestra here, so we wanted to go support him. It was a really nice evening and we sat on the grass in the park and listened to the music. They had two soloists come in too. One was a singer, Samantha, who was in the play Chicago, I believe, but I'm not sure if it was the broadway one. The other, Shannon, was the best saxaphone player in SA and maybe even Africa. They played a lot of music we knew including The Rose by Bette Middler, West Side Story Medley, Chicago Medley, and I Will Survive. All of us had a lot of fun and the park was pretty gorgeous. We are pretty good at finding our own fun, so during the break we were taking fake grad pics around a fountain and Laura and I climbed some trees. Our whole group starting dancing in the back of the crowd to I Will Survive, including doing the Electric Slide, which got us a bit of attention and I'm sure pegged us as Americans. The encore was I'm Walking On Sunshine, which we also all danced too and we had people video taping us and taking pictures. This chubby little girl with face painting on who looked like she was right out of Little Miss Sunshine came back and danced with us too. Oh boy, do we know how to have fun!
Sunday was the day of my swim race. Lauren and I caught a taxi out to the "river". Which in all honestly looks like like a river, but it's connected to the ocean and still gets a tide. We registered and walked around a bit and talked with this old man who was training for the South Africa Ironman that I hope I can see later this semester. He told us that the tide would be coming in when we were swimming, so it would work to our advantage and to put our goggles under our caps because we would probably get kicked and we don't want them to fall off. Sadly they didn't have a bag drop off, so luckily the Lions Club let us put ours in their booth. Then we set off walking. We had to walk a mile up the shore to the start of our race. I wish I had my camera along for that because the trail was really thin and you could see people walking up the trail the whole mile up ahead of you. Pretty sweet. The race went pretty well! The water was a really nice temp and there wasn't many waves. I did catch a few girls, but one caught me right on my way in. I finished in 21 mintues and 6 seconds, with a place of 47th overall and 30th in my age group out of 293 finishers. There were three swim race, and BlueSeventy (wet suit race), the women's race, and the men's race, so when we finished we watched the men. We got to see Chad Ho finish, who is SA's long distance Olympian with a time of 15:36. We ended up staying for results and then caught a ride home with a nice family from P.E. It was a mom (of Afrikaan descent) and dad and their two boys, so that was nice.
Monday we were back at Pendla. Our teacher was finally back, but the other girl's teacher was sick this time, so all four of us taught with our teacher, Mrs. Kadi. She's super nice and is really awesome to work with. We ended up just reading the kids a story in English, then reading with them aloud and then having a discussion and talking about what the story said. We were teaching 6th and 7th grade and it was pretty simple, but English is their second language. Our day wasn't too bad, but our director seemed a bit upset with how disorganized they are. All the teachers changed classrooms and a new timetable/schedule was set over the weekend. I think we've just accepted their disorganizedness by now though.
Tuesday was pretty much the same. We just helped out our teacher, but not as much with classroom stuff. I did get to talk to my teacher at break time and ask her a few questions about the school. This school is public, but you do have to pay for it. So students who can't afford it, can't really go. I think you can tell a bit about which kids don't have much money by their uniforms though. Some are a bit smaller or beat up than others. All the kids here are black, their are no whites students, which I feel like is a bit funny because it's not segregated here. But it just kinda flows down. The reason these kids go to school here is because they live in the area, the reason they live in the township area is because they don't hold very high paying jobs and the reason they don't hold very high paying jobs is because the whites continue to own most of the businesses. Mrs. Kadi was also saying she went to NMMU also for her education, but only for three years. Down here it only takes three years to complete a degree. If that was the case for me I'd be out of there at the end of the semester.
That night when I got home after class I did not feel good, so I went to the "Fat Tuesday" "Pancake" evening at the church and then went straight to bed. The reason I put pancake in quotations is that pancakes down here are really crepes. They call our pancakes flapjacks. They were very good though.
Tuesday I basically had a fever the whole day and broke through it that night, but Wednesday day I still felt pretty terrible, so I stayed home from class. I had a lot of abdominal pain too and a consistantly bad headache for 5 days now, so I called mom to ask her what to do. She was concerned it was my appendix and wanted to have it checked out pronto, so that night I headed into the emergency room. That was a pretty interesting experience! I had to sit down a few times while trying to register because I'd get so lightheaded. It was really hard to because they wanted to know my phone number and I don't have one! I didn't know my director's number either. I finally got to a doctor and got blood tests done and they were also concerned about my appendix, so they admitted me for the night and planned to do a sonar in the morning. Yikes! I slept pretty well, except for the IV in my arm, those things take some getting used too. They also kept taking my blood pressure and telling me it was really low so they tilted my head so it was above my feet. The next morning they asked me to drink six glasses of water for the sonar. I drank six and then vomited it all over the floor. Whoops. The sonar results showed I didn't have appendicitis, but there was inflammation in my abdomen, so they put me on antibiotics and wanted to keep me until Saturday morning. I thought that was forever away. In all, it wasn't too bad though. The hosptial was nice. Like I said before some parts of SA are higher class and this is basically their hosptial. All the patients I saw were white, usually Afrikaan. All the doctors were white also and usually wore casual clothes. The nurses were a nix of both and the cleaner ladies were always black. It was just kinda interesting to see that layout. I was in a room with four other people and they were usually were pretty curious to hear that I was American. I think they felt bad for me cuz I was so far from home and didn't have any visitors either. A few of the other patient's visitors asked if they could get me anything and one of the husbands bought me a candy bar. In all, it was too bad of a stay, but I don't wish to do it ever again.
Luckily, I'm healthy for this week. We're flying to Durban on Thursday until Monday and I'm sure I'll have some good stories to tell when I get back. Thanks for all of the e-mails people have already sent me about being in the hosptial. Love you all!
I left off more than a week ago, but most of the week consisted of class, which are good and interesting, but not too much to type about here. From what I remember Thursday and Friday weren't too terribly exciting either. Saturday after working on a paper during the day we headed to Victoria Park for a concert. One of the students on the program, Simon, plays bass in the orchestra here, so we wanted to go support him. It was a really nice evening and we sat on the grass in the park and listened to the music. They had two soloists come in too. One was a singer, Samantha, who was in the play Chicago, I believe, but I'm not sure if it was the broadway one. The other, Shannon, was the best saxaphone player in SA and maybe even Africa. They played a lot of music we knew including The Rose by Bette Middler, West Side Story Medley, Chicago Medley, and I Will Survive. All of us had a lot of fun and the park was pretty gorgeous. We are pretty good at finding our own fun, so during the break we were taking fake grad pics around a fountain and Laura and I climbed some trees. Our whole group starting dancing in the back of the crowd to I Will Survive, including doing the Electric Slide, which got us a bit of attention and I'm sure pegged us as Americans. The encore was I'm Walking On Sunshine, which we also all danced too and we had people video taping us and taking pictures. This chubby little girl with face painting on who looked like she was right out of Little Miss Sunshine came back and danced with us too. Oh boy, do we know how to have fun!
Sunday was the day of my swim race. Lauren and I caught a taxi out to the "river". Which in all honestly looks like like a river, but it's connected to the ocean and still gets a tide. We registered and walked around a bit and talked with this old man who was training for the South Africa Ironman that I hope I can see later this semester. He told us that the tide would be coming in when we were swimming, so it would work to our advantage and to put our goggles under our caps because we would probably get kicked and we don't want them to fall off. Sadly they didn't have a bag drop off, so luckily the Lions Club let us put ours in their booth. Then we set off walking. We had to walk a mile up the shore to the start of our race. I wish I had my camera along for that because the trail was really thin and you could see people walking up the trail the whole mile up ahead of you. Pretty sweet. The race went pretty well! The water was a really nice temp and there wasn't many waves. I did catch a few girls, but one caught me right on my way in. I finished in 21 mintues and 6 seconds, with a place of 47th overall and 30th in my age group out of 293 finishers. There were three swim race, and BlueSeventy (wet suit race), the women's race, and the men's race, so when we finished we watched the men. We got to see Chad Ho finish, who is SA's long distance Olympian with a time of 15:36. We ended up staying for results and then caught a ride home with a nice family from P.E. It was a mom (of Afrikaan descent) and dad and their two boys, so that was nice.
Monday we were back at Pendla. Our teacher was finally back, but the other girl's teacher was sick this time, so all four of us taught with our teacher, Mrs. Kadi. She's super nice and is really awesome to work with. We ended up just reading the kids a story in English, then reading with them aloud and then having a discussion and talking about what the story said. We were teaching 6th and 7th grade and it was pretty simple, but English is their second language. Our day wasn't too bad, but our director seemed a bit upset with how disorganized they are. All the teachers changed classrooms and a new timetable/schedule was set over the weekend. I think we've just accepted their disorganizedness by now though.
Tuesday was pretty much the same. We just helped out our teacher, but not as much with classroom stuff. I did get to talk to my teacher at break time and ask her a few questions about the school. This school is public, but you do have to pay for it. So students who can't afford it, can't really go. I think you can tell a bit about which kids don't have much money by their uniforms though. Some are a bit smaller or beat up than others. All the kids here are black, their are no whites students, which I feel like is a bit funny because it's not segregated here. But it just kinda flows down. The reason these kids go to school here is because they live in the area, the reason they live in the township area is because they don't hold very high paying jobs and the reason they don't hold very high paying jobs is because the whites continue to own most of the businesses. Mrs. Kadi was also saying she went to NMMU also for her education, but only for three years. Down here it only takes three years to complete a degree. If that was the case for me I'd be out of there at the end of the semester.
That night when I got home after class I did not feel good, so I went to the "Fat Tuesday" "Pancake" evening at the church and then went straight to bed. The reason I put pancake in quotations is that pancakes down here are really crepes. They call our pancakes flapjacks. They were very good though.
Tuesday I basically had a fever the whole day and broke through it that night, but Wednesday day I still felt pretty terrible, so I stayed home from class. I had a lot of abdominal pain too and a consistantly bad headache for 5 days now, so I called mom to ask her what to do. She was concerned it was my appendix and wanted to have it checked out pronto, so that night I headed into the emergency room. That was a pretty interesting experience! I had to sit down a few times while trying to register because I'd get so lightheaded. It was really hard to because they wanted to know my phone number and I don't have one! I didn't know my director's number either. I finally got to a doctor and got blood tests done and they were also concerned about my appendix, so they admitted me for the night and planned to do a sonar in the morning. Yikes! I slept pretty well, except for the IV in my arm, those things take some getting used too. They also kept taking my blood pressure and telling me it was really low so they tilted my head so it was above my feet. The next morning they asked me to drink six glasses of water for the sonar. I drank six and then vomited it all over the floor. Whoops. The sonar results showed I didn't have appendicitis, but there was inflammation in my abdomen, so they put me on antibiotics and wanted to keep me until Saturday morning. I thought that was forever away. In all, it wasn't too bad though. The hosptial was nice. Like I said before some parts of SA are higher class and this is basically their hosptial. All the patients I saw were white, usually Afrikaan. All the doctors were white also and usually wore casual clothes. The nurses were a nix of both and the cleaner ladies were always black. It was just kinda interesting to see that layout. I was in a room with four other people and they were usually were pretty curious to hear that I was American. I think they felt bad for me cuz I was so far from home and didn't have any visitors either. A few of the other patient's visitors asked if they could get me anything and one of the husbands bought me a candy bar. In all, it was too bad of a stay, but I don't wish to do it ever again.
Luckily, I'm healthy for this week. We're flying to Durban on Thursday until Monday and I'm sure I'll have some good stories to tell when I get back. Thanks for all of the e-mails people have already sent me about being in the hosptial. Love you all!
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