i was (almost) mugged!

yes, the rumours are true: i was nearly mugged on saturday. it was partially my fault: i was walking on an unfamiliar street in a less than reputable neighbourhood, and i'd just had my phone out to send off an sms. a male teenager came up to me asking for money, which, being in a city within the third world, i am used to. however, he was coming up much closer to my face than i'm accustomed to. i eventually vocalised to him that i didn't have any money to give, at which point he grabbed my arm and tried to swipe my belongings off of me. i was not having any of that, so i yelled at him to get off me. he told me to give him my money, at which point i pulled out my canister of pepperspray (which i'd been holding on to in my pocket upon entering the aforementioned lacklustre neighbourhood), sprayed him in the face, and sprinted away. luckily, i made it out of that situation alive, but more importantly, i retained all of my belongings! ;)

to be honest, i was neither terribly alarmed nor shaken up, and i feel like i walked away from the experience having learned a valuable lesson in self-awareness. i had a long talk with agnes over dinner that night on the subject of “self-imposed boundaries,” and we agreed that it was rather imprudent of me to be walking in such areas. i reasoned that i was used to having been able to walk around and explore on my own in dc, to which she retorted that i subconsciously avoid certain areas that i know are unsafe. i suppose that's true; after all, there are certainly plenty of areas surrounding los angeles that i would avoid, too! ;)

other than that, things have been going well for me. i’m looking forward to roadtripping up to namibia this upcoming saturday with brigid, sara, sean, and liz. i think it will be a lot of fun. :) also, apparently, uct is developing a course of study (i’m not sure if this will be an entire major or just a certificate) in canadian studies. obviously, i find this absolutely fascinating! :)

finally, it looks like unfortunately, going to accra after cape town won’t be in the cards for me (due to financial restraints). :( therefore, i’m flying back to los angeles, as planned, on november 20, and i will be returning to dc soon afterward (most likely within a day or two following thanksgiving). of course, there’s the ongoing dilemma of where i’ll live once i get back there... :(

happy 100th blog entry!

well folks, africa just keeps on getting weirder and weirder. today, while walking down stanley road after lecture, i saw a juvenile gorilla in somebody's front yard. i don't think this is quite normal for cape town, as i saw a few locals standing in front of it in awe. i wonder if somebody's keeping it at a pet. i wish i'd had my camera.

keeping in line with my luck relating to volunteering, i didn't do young in prison yesterday. agnes and i met with the individual in charge of yip's volunteers, and although she does want us to volunteer, there wasn't enough room in the vehicle yesterday to transport us to the prison. she did, however, suggest that we take public transportation to the prison. (agnes and i hastily declined.) the woman did mention a new outreach program that yip is starting up, in which individuals (both volunteers as well as ex-convicts) go into primary schools in less-than-affluent neighborhoods and speak with high-risk students. it sounds like a great opportunity, so i'm looking forward to getting into that.

i met with brigid, liz, sara, and sean for dinner last night to discuss our upcoming spring break plans. our itinerary has changed a bit, and right now it looks like we're spending 2 nights in port nolloth (northern cape, south africa) 2 nights in swakopmund (erongo, namibia), and one final night in either lüderitz (karas, namibia) or sossusvlei (khomas, namibia). obviously, i am most excited about swakopmund, because this is where brangelina's daughter was born!!!

click here to read the super-informative article!!!!

"namibia is one of africa's best kept secrets - until we came of course."
– brad pitt (obviously, my favorite quote ever)

i am also so glad that angelina jolie "discovered" namibia... she's a modern-day christopher columbus!

oh, speaking of amazing quotes, apparently one of my fellow ciee cohorts asked in one of her lectures, "if blacks and coloureds didn't like apartheid so much, why didn't they just vote against it?" facepalm. (i think it's time we leave our little hegemonic bubble, shall we?)

hmm... what else? i went to a lecture today on urban development in africa. it was interesting, although it went on a bit too long. the hors d'oeuvres served afterward were delicious, though. :) i'm also looking to attend an on-campus opera tomorrow evening, as well as a parliamentary debate sometime in the near future. i'm not sure if i'll be able to fit that in before namibia, though. :(

happy 100th blog entry! quite frankly, i'm surprised the number of entries ever got into the double-digits, much less the triple. i know this blog can account for myriad ups and downs in my personal development, but i'm enjoying the tone and style it's taken on in recent months. looking back on my premiere entry, it seems awfully familiar, although i feel very much like a changed man as well. we'll see where it goes from here. ;)

just another day

after spending the entirety of yesterday working on my globalization paper, i turned it in to the sociology dept. today just as the professor was coming to collect the papers. this is because i had to (a) put money on my id card, (b) wait in line for the computer, (c) wait in line for the printer, and (d) find a stapler. it was rather chaotic, and dare i say, africa-esque.

the good news is that my original tutor* (the one who didn't like me because i'm an american) has mysteriously left his post (read: he got fired), and the new one is actually quite lovely. i'm looking forward to future tutorials* with her. she was quite helpful with regard to our upcoming essay.

(* tutor = south african equivalent of teaching assistant, tutorial = equivalent of discussion section)

i have my urban politics lecture in a few minutes, and there's a rainbow alliance meeting tonight that i'm forcing myself to go to. also, my thursday volunteer opp with young in prison has been cancelled (i'm sensing a trend), so now i'm (supposedly) doing it on tuesdays. frankly, i'm not holding my breath.

i'm off to class now. more as it comes.

meh

i am feeling rather apathetic and sarcastic right now, but that isn't stopping me from being a total tool and blogging.

this week came and went rather quickly, at the end of which i realized i'm one-third done with my classes here at uct. which isn't really saying a lot. i haven't really done much, and i'm pretty much all caught up on my readings, which i can rarely say when i'm at gwu. i haven't even had to turn in any assignments yet, given my professor decided to postpone the due date of our globalization paper. i'm done with all the research at this point; i just need to sit down and type it all out. i don't think that will be difficult, though, considering i am going to open my paper with a joke:

"knock, knock."
"who's there?"
"everyone, thanks to globalization."

i rule. anyway, sara, brigid, and i went to the castle of good hope today. the dutch east india company built it in the 17th century, so it looks like your typical european castle, but being that this is africa and everything is weird here, its existence in the present day is not what you'd expect from a historical site. like, for example, historial preservation is clearly not a concern of the south african government, except when it comes to history's more notable toilets. as somebody who spends a lion's share of time on the john, i appreciated this, but then i realized that the 14% vat that i pay every time i purchase something is going to financing this great historical preservation project. ugh, i hate taxes.


centuries ago, generals sat in my place and looked over the bountiful city bowl while conducting their morning business. sigh.

the other notoriously weird part about the castle was that one section of its interior has been converted into a working art studio. the three of us stumbled in and discovered a couple of artists working on some paintings, one of which i was particularly fond of, so i bought it. however, that wasn't until after some skillful bartering on my part.

me: "i'll take that one."
artist: "okay, it's 200 rand."
me: "200 rand!? but i only have 50!"
artist: "okay... 150 rand."
me: "yes, but i only have 50 rand."
artist: "okay, 100 rand."
me: "i only have 50 rand."
artist: "...all right, 50 rand."

my bartering skills are totally fetch. after the transaction, brigid and i got sucked into a 40 or 50-minute conversation with the bloke, the first 35 minutes or so of which were quite lovely (he asked us about university, our experiences thus far in south africa, nothing terribly atypical), then out of no where he asked what kind of cars we drive.

me: "i don't have a car."
brigid: "well, back home, i drive a pick-up."
artist: "a truck!? here in south africa, only men drive trucks."
me: "what!? i've seen plenty of women driving buses and taxis*."
artist: "yes, and the women are taking all the jobs away from men!"
me: "...what?"
artist: "they're taking these jobs away from men, and we need to work too!"
me: "well, wouldn't you agree, though, that jobs ought to go to the most qualified individuals, regardless of gender?"
artist: "30 years ago, when a man came home from work, his wife would have dinner ready and would give him a massage before bed. what's happened to our society!?"

* a "taxi", in south african english, refers to a jitney.

obviously, brigid, being a women's studies major at scripps college, was none too pleased by this, so i hastily moved toward the end of the conversation. by that point, it couldn't come soon enough.

by the way, since i know you're curious, here's the painting i bought.


i totally just realized that photo is backwards because i took it on my macbook which automatically reverses the images. epic fail.

...meh. anyway, afterward, we three meandered over to a flea market, where brigid bought a bag, sara bought a (really beautiful) scarf, and i bought a backpack. we then went out to dinner with sean, liz, and agnes to a sushi buffet, which in its very essence is rather sketchy but it was actually not too bad. we got drinks afterward, and we hit up a used book store on lower main road in observatory, in which i bought a book on namibia's history in the 20th century for R50 (also a haggled-down price). apparently, this book store is open until 10pm every night, which i guess is a convenient way of luring the post-dinner crowd into making purchases. the tattoo parlor on the same block, incidentally, is also open until 10pm nightly, which i guess is a convenient way of luring the intoxicated post-happy hour crowd into making purchases of their own.

i've realized that my ex-boyfriend had a hand in destroying my last 2 relationships, so i've decided that, if he does this a 3rd time, i'm smashing his awkwardly pretentious glass coffeetable.

paul wants me to mention him. so, here it is. paul. the end.

i probably have other things to say, but i don't feel like typing them out.

ocean view

a month has passed since i relocated to this strange new country named south africa, and in that time, i have visited the cape of good hope, gone clubbing on long street, made new friends, and ate a zebra. but none of those experiences have been quite as momentous as this past weekend, which i spent on a homestay in ocean view.

being me, i went in to the experience with a cynical attitude. i'll admit i wasn't too keen on going because (a) agnes, my closest friend here, couldn't go and (b) my work load is heavy this week, so i wanted to spend the weekend doing schoolwork. however, i am so, so, SO glad that the lord brought me to ocean view and met my amazing host family. they are such wonderful people, and i know that i will cherish the memory of having spent a weekend with them for the rest of my life.

for security reasons, i can't post specifics on my blog (such as their names or their pictures), but if you ask me, i can provide you with more details. however, my host family consisted of a woman, her husband, and their 2 children (both boys of junior high school-age). not to sound terribly corny (not to mention out of character), but the stories that they shared with me were phenomenal; the ones that stick out in the mind are the first time they got to watch television (since the national party didn't lift the ban on tv service until 1976) and the first time they got to vote in a presidential election (since coloureds couldn't vote in them until 1994). the woman also took us to a beach in the nearby town of kommetjie, after which she told us (my ciee partner and i), "we used to not be allowed to come to this beach. this beach was for whites." after that, she took us to the former beach for coloureds, which, in this californian's opinion, was a rather shitty beach.

the town of ocean view, if nothing else, can be revered for its strong sense of camaraderie. in the 1970s, when the south african government relocated the region's coloured denizens to ocean view, they struggled to resolve their differences, given their unfamiliarity with each other. nowadays, although ocean view is not without its fair share of social problems, its residents still hang out in the streets and say "howzit" to one another. its setting, within the foothills south of cape town, is absolutely beautiful, ocean view itself struggles with one major issue: litter! the streets, the parks, and the hills are filled with garbage. i don't know what public sanitation services are like, but i saw some official-looking trash cans outside most of the houses, which leads me to believe that they exist, but are under-utilized. (maybe, however, that's merely my american mindset talking, not to mention my high standards for cleanliness.) there were also myriad dogs running around the streets; as the niece of my host mom told me, they're domesticated, but there are some individuals who like to use the dogs for fights. (none of them seemed violent to me, though. not that i condone dogfighting.)

i really enjoyed the fact that my family did not seem to put on any airs around me; that is to say, they felt comfortable enough with me to share details about their lives (both past and present) with me. in turn, not only did i learn about coloureds' role in the apartheid and post-apartheid eras at a micro level, but more broadly speaking, i also learned about the modus operandi of another family. i am happy to say that i feel that i've established a strong bond with my host family, and i hope to see them again in the near future. :)

this week has been flying by rather quickly, it seems. i skipped most of my classes on monday because i was suffering from a rather terrible case of heartburn, and i almost overslept this morning because of my having stayed up really late last night in order to work on my paper for sociology 3029. (it's about varying perspectives on globalization.) tomorrow, i begin my stint as a volunteer with young in prison, an organization that provides "mentors", so to speak, with incarcerated juveniles. i'm a little bit nervous, but i'm trying not to stress about it. (i was supposed to volunteer at an orphanage, but that fell through.) if anything, their attitudes will rival mine in terms of negativity. ;)

this weekend, i'm going with "the gang" to kirstenbosch garden (finally!!!). i might go to robben island as well (although, if the weather doesn't become less shitty, i'll have to nix that one). i got my final exam schedule as well, and like almost every other semester that i've spent in college, it's rather terrible. i have 2 exams at the very end of the exam bloc, with 13 consecutive days of nothing somewhere in there. ergo, i'm contemplating, either during that 13-day period or after my last exam, going to accra to visit denial (who's studying abroad there). i'm curious to see west africa, and i don't know when the next time i'll be in this part of the world will be, so... why not? (i'm having a little bit of trouble figuring out the logistics of such an endeavor, though... traveling throughout africa is quite expensive!)

i live in an anemone

so, apparently, quinton and felicity (the fearless leaders of ciee, my study abroad program) have been reading my blog, which i find to be quite hilarious considering i have no idea how they found it. i guess this is what happens when you put stuff on the internet. ;)

i've been rereading my blog entries, though, and to be quite honest, i really have no qualms about what i've posted online. there have definitely been entries where i am more whiny and angst-ridden, but it's all a part of my history. i like my more recent blog entries, though (from europe to the present).

(pondering of the day: blogging about blogging = metablogging? hmm...)

life has been going pretty well lately, save for the weather, which i'm sorry to report has been miserable. i'm usually the first person to denote how much i love the rain, but it just seems to be more difficult to take on here. i suppose it's better than washington's current heat index of 105º, though.

last weekend, agnes and i hit up the two oceans aquarium at the waterfront. now, it's no secret that i'm actually a 6-year-old trapped within a 20-year-old's body, but this aquarium was legit awesome. even agnes thought so, and god knows she's much classier than i am! ;)


this is a picture of me within the tunnel in the aquarium of adorable nemo-esque fish... it was definitely awesome! so, to all you capetonians out there, it's definitely worth hitting up if you've got the chance. :)

in a change of pace, this weekend, ciee is taking us out of town to spend a weekend in a homestay. however, this isn't a typical homestay... we're going to ocean view, a city of 30,000 denizens that's only 72 kilometers from cape town, but a world apart. during the apartheid era, ocean view became the site of relocation for coloured people being evicted from their homes in communities deemed by the government as "whites only". nowadays, unfortunately, ocean view struggles with its own socioeconomic disadvantage, not to mention the ensuing social problems. i've been to the townships before (in fact, i went to nyanga on sunday), but it's an entirely different experience to be living with a family in such an environment. i'm already discovering that poverty means something completely different here than it does back in the united states, and while the families we'll be living with won't be quite so destitute, i anticipate that i will see and learn a lot during this experience.

so, in conclusion, if you wish to chat with me this weekend, you can't, because i'll be in ocean view. ;) i'll have my phone, but i probably won't be able to spend much time communicating with everyone. i'm sure i'll have a lot to talk about when i get back, though. ;)

always look on the bright side of life

i'm happy to report that life has gotten significantly less shitty since the last time i blogged. i dropped the aforementioned "bad friends" and have made a point of only hanging out with cool people. special shout-outs to agnes, liz, sean, brigid, sara, and my darling suitemate jill on this one.

even though i've got a good group of friends going, i'm enjoying spending time by myself a lot more. i think i've made remarks like this in the past, but now that i'm more informed of the layout of my neighborhood, i feel comfortable going out on my own. that being said, it looks like saturday will be spent exploring the city with agnes, and sunday will be for the kirstenbosch gardens with liz, sean, brigid, and sara.

classes have been going well, save for today. in sociology of globalization, all we did is take a student survey; international political economy was spent listening to the tutor (teaching assistant) recapitulate the entirety of what we've already learned; and as for urban politics, we watched a video. however, this ultimately lame day seems to be an anomaly.

i've also made the wonderful discovery of a computer lab located within my residence hall! this is marvelous, considering how much i pay for internet on my laptop. i've been saying all along that the exorbitant prices that i pay for telecommunications far outweigh the cheapness of everything else here; hopefully, now, the tide has turned. ;)

so, all i can say is this: life has been going pretty swimmingly for me over the past few days. oh, i've spent a good amount of time recently planning the roadtrip that liz, sean, brigid, and sara and i are taking for our week-long break in september. here's the itinerary that i typed up for the group (and yes, given my ocd ways, this level of detail is entirely necessary):

∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙

SEPTEMBER 5
Cape Town to Vanrhynsdorp via N7 (308km)
Vanrhynsdorp to Nieuwoudtville via R27 (49km)
Nieuwoudtville to Brandvlei via R357 (185km)
Brandvlei to Keimoes via R27 (216km)
Keimoes to Upington via N14 (46km)
Spend the night at a hostel (which one is TBD) in Upington.

SEPTEMBER 6
Upington to Alheit via N14 (93km)
Alheit to Augrabies Falls National Park via R359 (29km)
Spend the day exploring around Augrabies Falls National Park.
Augrabies Falls National Park to Alheit via R359 (29km)
Alheit to Upington via N14 (93km)
Spend the night in the same hostel as the previous night.

SEPTEMBER 7
Upington to Twee Rivieren via R360 (265km)
Check in to campsite at, spend day exploring, and spend the night at
Kgalagadi Transfrontier National Park

SEPTEMBER 8
Spend day and night at Kgalagadi Transfrontier National Park.

SEPTEMBER 9
Spend day and night at Kgalagadi Transfrontier National Park.
Twee Rivieren to Mata Mata via R360 (115km)
Note: special provisions may apply with regards to passport control
upon exiting via Mata Mata into Namibia; for details, call (054)
561-2000.

SEPTEMBER 10
Mata Mata to Twee Rivier via C15 (56km)
Twee Rivier to Keetmanshoop via C17 (72km)
Keetmanshoop to Seeheim via B4 (46km)
Seeheim to Al-Ais East via C12 (75km), D601 (26km), and D324 (26km)
Al-Ais East to Al-Ais via C10 (16km)
Check in to and spend night at hostel or campsite at Al-Ais Hot Springs.

SEPTEMBER 11
Spend entire day and night at Al-Ais Hot Springs, Fish River Canyon,
and Richtersveld Transfrontier National Park.
Al-Ais to Richtersveld Transfrontier National Park via Sendellingsdrif
Pass (22km)
Note: special provisions may apply with regards to passport control
upon entering South Africa via Sendellingsdrip Pass; for details, call
(027) 831-1506.

SEPTEMBER 12
Richtersveld Transfrontier National Park to Vioolsdrif via
Eksteenfontein Road (110km)
Vioolsdrif to Springbok via N7 (107km)
Springbok to Fonteinjie via R355 (4km)
Visit the Hester Malan Wildflower Reserve in Fonteinjie, located in
the Namakwa Valley.
Fonteinjie to Springbok via R355 (4km)
Springbok to Cape Town via N7 (570km)

∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙

so, as you can see, the big sites we're hitting up are kgalagadi park and al-ais. it seems to contrast the vacation plans of most, who are mostly interested in either hitting up the beaches or the supposedly out-of-control johannesburg nightlife. given my aversions to the beach as well as to most nightlife spots, i much prefer my adventure into northern cape and namibia. :)

i was just asked for the time. i responded, "two 'til eleven" (as opposed to the preferred american expression of "ten fifty eight"). i'm assimilating. ;)

all right, i think that's it for now. more to come.

fear and loathing in stellenbosch

to be quite frank, i've been growing increasingly depressed with each passing day that i've been here, but i'm proud to say that as of yesterday, i'm "turning a new leaf," as the expression goes, and am entering a new era of contentment with regards to my stay in south africa. unfortunately, however, that means that yesterday, i hit rock bottom.

it was a bad day that just so happened to get so much worse. i went on an excursion with several other american students that was organized by my study abroad program to a wine farm in the town of windmill. as you can guess, everyone made asses of themselves and lived up to american stereotypes by getting totally wasted off the wine samples that were served. unfortunately, though, it gets worse.

this weekend was the stellenbosch wine festival, and ciee (my study abroad program) informed us that we could go into town for the festival, but we'd have to arrange our own transportation home. so, 6 other ciee students and i went in on a shuttle together back to cape town. the shuttle was supposed to leave stellenbosch at 6pm. at 5:45, i received a text from one of the 5 people i wasn't with at the time (i'll hide her name so as not to incriminate her) informing me that the shuttle driver had wanted to leave, and so they were already ON THE ROAD back to cape town.

all of this means, then, that agnes (the friend of mine who i had been exploring the festival with) and i were stranded in a town an hour's drive from home, in a foreign country, at dusk, surrounded by highly intoxicated people. it was miserable. i called his "friend" of mine who was on the shuttle, and she told me that she was "sure" we could find a way home – even though we'd already paid the shuttle service to take us back to cape town. she also said she'd tried to call me, which i'm skeptical of because my phone didn't say i had any missed calls.

in essence, these people, who i thought were my friends, ditched agnes and i in a foreign environment. unbelieveable! to make matters worse, none of the 5 contacted us for the rest of the day to see if we were okay or had made it back to cape town. in all honesty, the whole ordeal proved that these 5 individuals completely lacked any concern for agnes's or my well-being, and as an individual who places an extremely high value on my friendships, i found this absolutely devastating.

agnes and i got fortunate. we somehow found the director of the festival, who got one of her employees to drive us back to cape town. it could have been a lot worse, but we were blessed enough to have been able to take advantage of a safe opportunity. agnes and i were truly lucky to get home.

upon returning home, i had an extended period of self-reflection, during which i pondered the significance of my social connections, not to mention the meaning of friendship in itself. in the end, i've decided that i am too self-respecting and too driven by my own independent inclinations to let this go by. i ran into 2 of the 5 girls today while i was out in rondebosch, and they apologized, but honestly, i don't think they realized the gravity of the effect they had on me (not only leaving agnes and me at the festival, but more significantly, showing a complete lack of concern for our well-being). that all being said, i've decided to make some plans to my way of life while living here in south africa:

- not allow myself to become susceptible to the actions or plans of others, especially when they're not in my own interest. i need to be my own person and realize what's right for me. (i feel like this is a recurring problem in my life.)
- become more confident in my own independence. this study abroad program has, so far, felt like freshman year all over again, in which there is the mad rush to make friends so you're not alone. that, however, is not how true friendships are formulated.
- make a point of only spending time with individuals who i actually want to be around. this includes agnes (of course), jill (my lovely suitemate), liz, sean, brigid, and sara. (i'm sorry to say that i haven't spent nearly enough time with those last 4 individuals; that has got to change.)
- devote more of my time to my studies. in the past week or so, i've felt pretty down, so i've been watching way too much television. this is a trend that must be curtailed immediately; after all, my reason for being here is to study.
- make a point to enjoy myself. after all, i've only got 16 weeks left here. i've got to make each of them count.

today, i woke up a new man. i cut my losses, got dressed, and went to church with liz. afterward, i stopped by pic-n-pay (where i bought really cute notebooks whose covers are written in afrikaans!), came home, and studied. in the evening, i went over to liz's place, where the 5 of us discussed our travel plans for michaelmas break. (right now, we're planning on going to kgalagadi park as well as namibia.)

another week is about to commence, and i'm feeling more hopeful then ever before. like i said, my time here is extremely limited, and it's up to me, and only me, to achieve the most enjoyable experience possible. :)