It's the little things

Hi folks. Just finished our first week of class here! I have a final class schedule thankfully; it only took two weeks… All of the classes are pretty interesting so far. I enjoy having professors who are from all over the world with their own unique accents. The accents are actually helping me comprehend the information a lot more because I have to work harder to understand them, thus making me think about what they said. I have to say though, I do enjoy the system Madison is on and how organized it actually is.

Yesterday after class at noon, I went with people from the house to Muizenburg beach to relax for the afternoon. I decided to rent a surfboard and am in love with surfing! I got up about 5 or 6 times having only really done it once before during surf camp in grade school. I suppose you could say I am a shredder hanging loose in Cape Town now. No big deal. I think we are going to try and go again this weekend because it is just so tubular.

Nothing much else has been happening lately. My 21st birthday was quite the evening I must say. All of my roommates treated me very well throughout the night. I will leave it at that though… Some tidbits about Cape Town thus far:

This city is filled with awkward walkers. I honestly think people try to walk directly at you and make you juke left or right when you are only a few feet from colliding. My hypothesis is that I am used to passing on the right because of how our roads are situated, and since it is opposite here, passing on the left might be more common. Nonetheless, I can’t get used to it and just have to prepare for awkward walking encounters.

If you know me at all, you know that I revive myself with chips and salsa, but this is not the case in South Africa anymore. Tortilla chips don’t exist, and I can’t seem to find my Sam’s Club sized salsa bins. Similarly, I also eat possibly two to three cans of black beans a week at home, but black beans are literally nowhere to be found. I miss my go-to beans and rice with tortilla chips.

Sticking to the subject of chips, or should I say “crisps,” I have yet to see a regular flavored chip here. South Africans are all about the sweet chili pepper, chutney, and barbeque flavored chips here. There also aren’t any gigantic bags of chips like I am used to at home. I suppose this might be a good thing.

They actually call it soccer here and not football. I was quite surprised and pleased to know that I wouldn’t get scolded for calling it soccer. World Cup fever is itching within everyone here. Some people are disappointed about the prices of tickets, but are still awfully excited.

Race is a very open topic and for some reasons more obvious than others, very apparent everywhere. It is normal to have a conversation about race and racism in South Africa at the bar with a person you only just met. It’s actually rather comforting knowing that it isn’t as much of a touchy subject as it is in America. People are realistic about the segregation that still exists and understand that talking about it is much better than avoiding it all together.

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Lady Gaga and stupid Ke$ha have made their way to the clubs in South Africa.

Some random photos that are blog worthy:




Cheers