Monday June 29, 2009

Today was a traditional work day. I finished my development plan finally at work… At work my goals are the following: first, to increase flexibility and just go with the flow. Relax and don’t stress. Second, to expand knowledge on the education debate in South Africa. Understand the current education system and how it has evolved since apartheid. Find out what the government objectives and emphasis on education. Interact with students, parents, and teachers. And third, to develop and improve research skills by completing research within the 9 week period. Off the job, my goals are to learn to share, keep a positive attitude, and be respectful of differences. The subset of these goals as a means to accomplish them are to stop cursing, stop complaining, spend more time listening and observing, at home learn to share space with roommates, engage with different people, learn and reflect on experiences by talking to others and writing down thoughts. Another priority/goal is to get to know Cape Town: I plan to accomplish this by having new experiences: be adventurous while being street smart (safety!), developing relationships (get to know the natives, listen and talk to people), and document interesting points in blog. I had to turn this development plan into my supervisor with more detailed description on how I am going to accomplish and monitor my goals.

The highlight of the day was my night at the R Kelley concert. Well at first I had the battle of trying to figure out who was going to go with me because it is not safe to travel alone, and no one wanted to go… not even my roommates… So I was talking to some people at work about what my plans were for the day and they happened to be going!!! Unfortunately the tickets in their section were sold out. So I had to buy floor tickets…. Bummer right… The concert was supposed to be sold out but it was nowhere near being sold out even though that was what the sponsors published in the media the day of the concert. While I was standing in my assigned section which was pretty close for me because my first concert was the Lil Bow Wow Christmas tour in DC where I was in the nose bleed section… I was feeling pretty privileged. I spent about $40 dollars on the ticket. As luck would have it, a bouncer was walking around giving some people in my section red bracelets to be located right in front of the stage. I was one of the lucky ones!!!!!!! I was literally 2 feet away from R Kelley. He even jumped into the crowd where I was standing about 3 times. He came over to my section and was giving out free hugs!!! I rubbed his balled head and I even held his hand for a second. He was crazy though because the men in the audience that were next to me were man-handling his face. He was brave for coming out into the crowd. The people here are some really R Kelley fans. They knew the words to all of his songs, songs that I had never even heard of. One man next to me kept saying “I love you” and “we forgive you” (for his jail time) while he was on stage. R Kelley also threw is towel right on to my head and I almost got my head ripped off. Everyone was fighting over the towel. Finally I just let go because I was like what am I going to do with a towel…… At the end of the night I met a journalist named Myrna from Johannesburg that invited me to the after party with R Kelley. But again no one wanted to go with me  So I called it a night.
I later found out that R Kelley was here for a lawsuit concerning money laundering…..