July 13, 2008

FYI (FOR YOUR INFORMATION), every time my friends and I go out here in Cape Town, we are very safe when we go out and drink. We travel in groups and we stay together the entire time. We don’t walk the streets at night even if we are in a group. We always take taxis. We all have cell phones, I never carry a purse, and I always have mace on me. And I honestly think alcohol is among the nastiest drinks on earth. There is something about being in a social setting with people your age that makes not drinking antisocial. I don’t want to be the anti social person. There are some drinks that I can tolerate that taste like juice. One time when we went out on Long’s Street I just had some coffee and the question of the night was why I hadn’t I gotten a drink. In some ways it was annoying for people to keep asking that questions about my drink preferences so I prefer to just go with the flow, order a fruity drink and go along with my peers.

Let me tell you about my roommates… Since I haven’t said much about their personalities….Sooo we are a very interesting dynamic. Sarah is “wild woman.” Liese is “by the book” and me I guess I’ll leave it to them to describe. Sarah is from the suburbs of Seattle, Washington. She is interested in the becoming a doctor in the future and is into Public Policy, specifically concerning health. Sarah has a very interesting background. She was born in Korea, lived in Canada for awhile where she went to a French immersion school, and then her family immigrated to the US. She is very religious which I would say was motivated by her father’s role as a Minister. Sarah likes to party all the time and has let us know that she doesn’t need much sleep to function. Sarah would go out every night if she could. But I can’t hang; so I guess Liese and I both are party poopers. Liese and I would both would rather chill some nights and just curl up in bed and watch movies or do something at home and go out a couple nights a week. Sarah is also the celebrity gossip queen. She likes looking at gossip websites and finding out the scoop. She also loves to read in general (books, news, etc). Sarah is really outgoing and really fun to be around; I do not think there are any dull moments with Sarah.

Liese is also very interesting. Her name is pronounces like “Lisa” except the “s” sounds like a “z.” She is very particular about this. She is also a genius. The girl has a 3.9 at Stanford and is double majoring in Anthropology and Human Biology. When she was younger she used to be a competitive dancer. Now her ankles are really weak and she trips a lot whenever we go out. One day I am going to have to save her life because there are so many times when I think she is going to hit the ground face first. I laugh all the time about this. She is super intense about her work. Something I have also noticed about her is that she is super into following all rules. That is why I mentioned before she is the most responsible out of all of us. I think this quality will make her a really great doctor. She will not miss a beat. She really knows what she wants and she has her academic life all planned out on a spread sheet. Her organization makes me look really messy. I like being around her because she knows so much. She is always telling me a lot of really interesting facts…. She is like a walking and talking dictionary. She tells me I eat too much meat. She says it is going to take a toll on my kidneys…… But I love meat for every meal….

I have not written a blog in awhile because I have been lazy and my internet does not work very well. This is not good as one of the things that I wrote on my development plan is to keep with my journal so that I can assess my goals at the end of the summer. Progress has been limited…. As of last Thursday, I have been in Cape Town for 3 weeks. I had a three-week evaluation with my mentor last Friday. It was very interesting. In her evaluation she told me that she really enjoys my energetic personality and admires my ability to self-direct my research. However…. Yes, there is always a “however.” She feels that I can improve my email etiquette and be more aware of my surroundings. Some examples that were relevant to her concerns was when I accidently shut one of my coworkers in the office when we were all going out to the townships for the day. My only defense to that concern was that I honestly thought she was staying back because she was sitting down for a really long time as if she wasn’t leaving with us and most times everyone doesn’t go because we do not have enough room in the car. I guess I should have asked. As for emails, she said that I should respond to every email with a “thank you” if I request information or when I send emails with attachments I should write a message describing what it is. These are both understandable comments concerning email etiquette. I guess I have somewhat changed my professional posture in this work setting. When I worked for Pricewaterhouse Coopers last summer, I definitely always responded to emails and used proper language because I had to communicate with partners. Like I mentioned in a previous blog, the work setting is very laid-back and somewhat not as professional as many of the work experiences I have usually had. People come and go to the office as they please. There is no monitoring throughout the week. I could go the entire week without reporting anything on the progress of my work.

I decided to do some sightseeing on my own. Ever since my roommates arrived, I have been trying to do everything in a group because it is safer, cheaper, and most of the time more fun. But sometimes I feel like I am not doing the stuff I actually want to do because the entire group doesn’t want to. So I caught the train from work after my eventful work evaluation and went downtown. The train is the sketchiest form of transportation. I was really uneasy the entire time I was riding the train. Most of the time when I travel throughout Cape Town people stare a lot. There are a couple reasons why I think they stare. One they may obviously see that I am American and are just curious. But another reason I believe to be very unsettling is that I hang out with my two roommates most of the time. One is Korean, the other White, and I look colored to the people here. Colored is a type culture that describes people that are mostly mixed race and speak Afrikaans. Colored people can also be white or African descent. Having these races interact in Cape Town is a little unusual because of the racial separation that is still very apparent in Cape Town. When people stare it just makes me feel like they are plotting to do something. The stares aren’t friendly either; they are rarely accompanied by a smile or “hello.” When I finally got to the train station it was a relief. I clung to the guards in the station so I didn’t look like I was a lost foreigner. I simply followed them straight out as if I knew where I was going. When I stepped out the of the train station, there was a market. The market was a little different; the stalls had people running barbershops businesses and woman braiding hair. I headed to Long’s street which has a lot of small boutiques that have African jewelry and furniture shops. I window shopped for a while. I bought my only pairs of clothes for the trip. I got two dresses from a shop that only sales clothes made by South African designers. After, Long’s Street I went to the Two Ocean Aquarium close to the waterfront. I felt like a really BIG KID in the aquarium because everyone that was running around there was under 4ft tall and under 10 years of age. The aquarium was okay. I tried to read all the blurbs about the fish but for the most part I felt like the facts were complicated. I also have very bad memory so I would probably not remember the blurbs anyway. The most interesting part of the aquarium was when they had the turtle and ray feeding. The fish were like 3 times the size of me. When the people in the tank were feeding them they would put their entire hand in the mouth of the ray. But the turtle crushes the food when it eats so they didn’t do that for them. I don’t know why but sharks are the most fascinating to me. In the last 14 years, the size of shark population has been reduced by 80% due to overfishing. We kill over 100 million sharks every year. There are also over 300 species of sharks and only 40 of them are deadly to humans. After I finished at the aquarium, I walked around the waterfront, went to my favorite crepe place in the mall. I also saw some live African performances. Then I headed home.

The next day we rented a car and drove 2 hours to Cape Point and Cape of Good Hope. It is supposed to be the farthest southern point of Africa. Although, some people tell us that is fact is not actually true. Cape Point and Cape of Good Hope is mostly scenery and wildlife. The trip to Cape Point was interesting because this was the first time any of us would be driving on the right side of the road. I thought I was going to die at first because Sarah put the car in neutral when she was trying to reverse…..I was beginning to think she lied to about having a driver’s license… But after a little practice around a nearby parking lot she got the hang of it. We got there and back safely.