Sunday, July 05, 2009

This weekend was awesome!!!!!!!!!! So Friday Sarah, Liese, and I met up with the Duke and UNC students from my work for a night of Bar Golf. Jessica also decided to hang out with us that night. This was my first time playing and it ended up be a crazzzzzzzzzzy night. So there were 9 holes and the object of the game was to have the least amount of points at the end of the game. Therefore if you were playing to win, which I was, you had to drink mostly eagles, which were -2 points. Each bar had designated drinks and as the night went on the drinks got worse and worse. We had 40 minutes at each bar with 5 minutes walking time to the next bar. A girl named Ainslie at my work was the official timer. And if you went to the bathroom, were late to the next bar, didn’t finish a drink or ordered water you had to add points to the score. Whisky and water had to be the worst drink I ever had in my life. I couldn’t even drink it. I just gave it to someone else in the bar it was so bad. By the third bar, the game had really brought out some personalities….. Me and Jessica snuck into a club through the kitchen because we did not want to pay the cover fee. It had the best music of all the clubs but it was very segregated. All the people in the club were Indians so we obviously were sticking out being the only white and black girl in the club. We danced for a little bit and then ran out the back door again. As we ran out Jessica handed the workers tips for letting us come in.Jessica has by far been my favorite person in Cape Town. She is just really fun and gives a lot of great advice. She also has a really big heart. She is always giving selflessly and you can just tell by the small thing she does. She loves people and she doesn’t judge. She can find a way to feel comfortable in any setting and she is a great people person. It sad to think that it took a flight 20+ hours away from my campus to find the Stanford students I can most relate to. It makes me wonder how many others I have not met.

After a long night out on the row of bars in Observatory we managed to wake up at 8am the next morning. I honestly was not trying to move. I wouldn’t have made it if it wasn’t for my roommate Liese, who has shown to be the most responsible out of all of us. She woke me up with 20 minutes to eat and shower before the cab arrived at our house. Headache and all I was off to Table Mountain, which according to our cab driver is in the running for 7th place to become one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Table Mountain has 300 routes up and down. It is also over 1000 meters high. It takes 2 ½ hours to hike up to the top. Hikers have died every year on the trail; therefore, we were warned to stay on the trail at all times. We went on the hike with people from that Sarah’s work, the Gender Health and Research Unit at the University of Cape Town. Amad was the expert hiker and our guide up the mountain. He made sure we had plenty as breaks as we were hiking. It was really difficult to hike. And for me it was more difficult than it had to be because of several reasons: lack of sleep, hangover, lack of water and food. I had rushed out of the house so fast that morning that I had forgotten water which was the most important thing. The hangover gave me a throbbing headache which was made worse by the fact that I had just gotten my braids in a couple days before and my scalp still felt like it was being ripped from my forehead. It was all good though, I made it up that mountain like none of that was bothering me. I brought my ipod and listened to Beyoncé all the way up the mountain. Comparatively to other hikers we were really really slow. One guy had gone down and up the mountain twice on the path we were taking before we made it to the top. When we got to the top, you could see all of Cape Town on one side and the other was a beautiful view of the Atlantic Ocean. There was a restaurant and a bunch of gift shops at the top. It was a perfect day to hike up the mountain and probably one of the few days while we are here that we will miss the rain so it is good we got ourselves out of bed. We did not end up walking down the mountain. We instead, took a revolving cable car that took about 4 minutes to get down the mountain compared to our 2 ½ hours up. At the end of the hike we were all happy we made the trip up the mountain because we were able to appreciate the scenery and feel a since of an accomplishment after hiking up the mountain.

After our long hike up the mountain we went to eat at a café and the rested up for the night. I had to go to sleep if I was going to go out on the 4th of July. So for the 4th of July we celebrated with a group of Yale students that live in Sea Point. They had a barbecue with 4th of July balloons and drinks to top it off. We ate hot dogs and some other American style food on behalf of the holiday. Most of the Yale students work with me at SAEP (Austin, Adanna, and Ellie). There are also some other Yale students that are staying with them that are working with other organizations. The Yale students live in luxury. They live in one the nicest places in Cape Town in an apartment that faces the ocean. They have personal drivers to take them to and from work and have organized trips designed by their school for some weekends while they are in Cape Town. It must be nice…. After this party we went to another party with people from Sarah’s work..... I just could not hang. By the time we got to this spot I was so out of it…. I tried to be social…. They had fireworks and everything for the party…But I had to turn in early and I just caught a cab home along and went to sleep…

The next morning we all went to church with Jessica in Guguletu. I am starting to understand the organization of the service. They always start with a little AIDS education and then they go into empowering the people, introducing visitors, etc. Nosi, Luzuko, and Knesa, the kids I had gone with my first weekend did not join us this time because their mother had forbidden them to go to their church again. It was sad because I was excited to tell them about R Kelley, since they were really into celebrities. We ended ups topping by their house to say “hi” afterwords. I told them I have been learning some Xhosa, and they laughed when I told them the words I knew because it made no sense. After our visit to the township for church we went home and just rested…. It was a long weekend…