March/April

Work has consumed me in the last month which has been a bummer. I was talking with a friend and concluded that work could be described as “character building.” That is one way to look at it! In the chaos of work, I had to learning how to drive Buster and the first week of driving I thought I was doomed! I stalled at basically every stop light/ stop sign and even trying to get the car to start and move! The thought that I made the worst decision in buying a car I couldn’t even drive crossed my mind, but with the help of my co-workers Varun and Helena, I was independent and driving on my own within 2 weeks. It only took 2 weeks yet felt so much longer! I can now proudly say I am driving on the left hand side, not stalling or rolling on hills, and can impress the guys if I ever go back to the states with my ability to drive stick and look cool in revving and screeching the wheels (that part is thanks to doing all the things you SHOULDN”T be doing before doing it right haha.) While learning, I took my first big trip by driving to Cape of Good Hope which is about 1 ½ hours away. The place was stunning in views, and I finally was able to see wild baboons! There was a huge family that we saw just chillin in the middle of the road and one was even sitting on top of a car that kept driving. As they would say in S. Africa it was “hectic” but amazing experience. It just brought back sweet memories of my time when I volunteered at the zoo in Reno while in high school. I was blessed with the opportunity to work with wild animals that most people don’t get to even after years of working at a large zoo. We had a group of 10-15 baboons at the zoo and a beautiful alpha male named Alphie…he was aggressive yet so sweet. Great memories for sure back at the zoo and on this trip to the point. Next adventure is going to Kruger Park and doing a 4 day/3night safari next week!

Meet Buster

I finally got a car on March 14th. His name is Buster and he is a 2007 Opel Corsa. This is my first manual/stick shift car in addition to the steering wheel being on the right. Here is my story of my first night with Buster. Since I didn't know how to drive stick yet after purchasing the car, the dealer said that he could drive it to my work. He was supposed to have arrived at 6pm and didn't come until 8:30pm. He came with his co-worker and my friend Varun and I were trying to inspect the car in THE DARK. Nice way to purchase the car huh? He then tells me he registered the wrong car under my name with the wrong license plates, presents the doc for the other car that is in the lot, and told me that he will come back the following week with the correct documents. If that isn’t funny enough here is the kicker....ready.....we were testing out everything before taking the car and of course checked the lights. The back right light was blinking at different speeds than the left… they had put in the wrong bulb! The guy then all of a sudden walks to the car he had driven in which luckily was a corsa, opens the trunk, removes the light fixture from the car and replaces it with my broken lights...then looks at me and smiles and says all fixed. HAHAHAHAHA. I am still laughing about it....cause that is MY LIFE in Africa!

Firsts

Wow the last 3 weekends has been pretty crazy! I have gotten to do a lot of firsts in the last few weeks. A couple weeks ago, it was Emily Woo’s 30th birthday and we drove down to Bettys Bay and Hermanus for the weekend. The ocean scenes were absolutely stunning! During that weekend, my firsts included staying at my first hostel, saw the Milky Way stars, saw a red grasshopper, first official hike in Cape Town, tasted my first braai (BBQ,) watched people make Poijke (kinda like a stew cooked on the grill,) and swam in both the Atlantic and Indian Ocean. My favorite parts of the trip included Grotto Beach and clam digging with Emily and the locals. I also had my had my first stick shift driving lesson! I found that shifting gears wasn't too difficult, but the slopes are what got me. I either kept stalling or rolling back, YIKES! I asked the teacher if I could just put a sticker in the back that says Car will roll bc American is driving and then we would be good. She laughed. Last weekend I went to the World Soccer Cup Stadium and got to watch a game which was another first here. The stadium is beautiful and I can't imagine what it would have been like during the World Cup! Last week was also when I got sick for the first time here in Cape Town and got to discover the amazing delight that I had bed bugs in my flat…REALLY?! So this week was by far the longest week of my life so far in Cape Town. I called in sick from work on Monday yet couldn’t rest as I was getting bitten and was extremely uncomfortable. Wednesday, the exterminators came late which also meant I now had to work late and I missed part of my meeting at work. When I got home at 10:30pm, the flat still smelled of pesticides so I had to go out for dinner to try to let it air out. I was so sick, tired, and looked absolutely awful but probably looked good for the bar scene, haha. Thursday night I spent 3 ½ hours bleaching my whole apartment as the exterminators left footprints all over the place and the thought of all the dead bugs on the floor was disgusting. I scrubbed everything including all the baseboards. Hope this was the first and last time I ever have to deal with bedbugs. I am believing that they are gone forever in Jesus name! This weekend, I got to buy my first car in Cape Town and my first stick/manual drive. I bought a 2007 Opel Corsa and will be able to pick it up by the end of the week. I will post pictures once I get it and have a name for it. It is no Jasmine, but I believe this boy will be fantastic for my time here!

More pics on FB

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150583172304183.404792.719764182&type=3&l=9c13f7488c

Robben Island

A trainer from Seattle who is in town this week told me that she was going to Robben Island on Saturday by herself and I told her that I would join her. I have been wanting to go, but wanted to go with someone. I haven’t done a lot of tourist things partly because I rather share the memories with someone and partly because I know that people will be visiting me in the next two years and I don’t want to see all the tourist sites as then it would be repetitive. Maybe that is a lame excuse, but it is what it is. So this morning I got up and headed to the waterfront. I got off the bus further than I thought and a nice gentleman from one of the helicopter booths offered to give me a ride on his go cart which was wonderful. I got there and met up with Claudia and off we went. The boat ride was about 30 minutes as it was an overcast day so the waves were choppier and felt like an amusement ride…which I didn’t mind, makes the adventure more fun! The scenery all around was absolutely beautiful in getting to see the whole cape coast and then driving into Robben Island. We even saw a sea lion claiming a spot between all the seagulls. Claudia was saying that she thought it looked very nice and could live there.


Once we got off the boat, there was an awful stench! We concluded it was all the bird crap on the ramp that was causing it…it was bad! I asked her…if she still wanted to live there, and we laughed. From the boat, we got onto a tour bus and they drove around the island giving the history behind the buildings and areas. One thing that we didn’t realize was that we came on the island today, which is February 11th, and Nelson Mandela was released from prison on February 11, 1990…how CRAZY IS THAT!!! Very interesting is all I can say. Another thing is that this island was used in WW II as a training and defense station and there are many artifacts, cannons, and buildings reflecting this. So our tour guides were Tabo and Surge who were from Khayelitsha and Guguletu townships. Tabo was incredible in describing everything and also making random funny remarks. For example, we passed a church which they have now opened up for people to have their weddings at on Valentine’s Day. He says, “Here on this island, we take weddings seriously and they are a life sentence..As you can look around you and understand why.” Hahahaha. We drove past an area where they housed all the German shepherds who the prisoners believed were trained to be racist as they knew who to attack and who not to. We drove past a cemetery which buried all the lepers who were sent to the island to die. We got to see the limestone quarry where hard labor was given but also the base of where all political discussions occurred. They would hide notes and letters under rocks and every chance they got would stop and talk about politics. In 1995, a year after all the prisoners were released and apartheid ended, all the ex-prisoners were invited back to the island and they laid a mountain of rocks at this place which is a powerful representation of their suffering, that they won’t be forgotten, and a monument for their children, grandchildren, and many more down the line. We got to stop at a beautiful spot on the edge and take pics…Table Mt. was covered in clouds, but still spectacular view. The tour also included many different animals from penguins crossing the road, turtles crossing the road, and a springbok in the field (which apparently is rare.)


The last stop was at the maximum prison where all the prisoners were held including Mandela. It was interesting to see the cells with stories of different prisoners, the different building that they split people in, how they were given 4 thin blankets and a rug basically to sleep on, and so much more. We walked past the kitchen in which as the tour guide said was where all the action happened. Since he worked in the kitchen he was able to give us rare information about how they put notes, newspapers, and anything else they could in the sandwiches and food to the prisoners to try to keep them informed and continuing talks on freedom. How nuts is that! He also talked about food portions and how 1 ounce was given to the Indians and colored, and ½ ounce to the blacks. Something that was such an honor is that our tour guide was an ex-prisoner. All tour guides in the cells are ex-prisoners, but there will be a day where that part of the tour won’t happen anymore…thought it is so cool that I get to experience this now. The tour guide showed us where Mandela hid his first set of transcripts for his book Road to Freedom which the guards found and took away…and no one has seen it since. How they would play soccer and purposely kick the ball over the wall to another building which wasn’t guarded as heavily and the balls contained notes inside them from the prisoners. The last place we saw on our tour was the cell of Mandela of course. The whole experience was amazing and at the same time so sad. How people could be treated that way, how people think they are superior to another, and also just how this history spot is also such a tourist spot where they are trying to make money off of. The guide told us about all these different areas that are being renovated for use. How someone’s pain and suffering is the gain of the country who threw them in that in the first place. Such a mix of emotions and things to process. Claudia and I ended with lunch and ice cream at the waterfront before she had to catch her flight back. I joined Emily later in the afternoon to go to the District Six Museum which is the history about the part of Cape Town that was claimed as “white only” and kicked 60,000+ poor people into other areas which are now the townships you see all around the outsides of the tourist spots. I think the trip to Robben gave me a lot to process and so this was an overload and I couldn’t soak up this museum, will go back again at a later time!

Games

Game Night - When I was packing up my stuff in Seattle for my move, I insisted that I got to bring most my games with me, even though Tracy rolled her eyes. I thought that it would be great way to invite people over and play board games and hang out. So when I invited some co-workers out, they were quite impressed that I had actually packed it in the suitcase. We started to play Jenga which was a wonderful game and played like 4 rounds, and then moved to Uno. Nadja and Rosemary were great company and said I had a nice place even though it feels kind of empty…maybe I need more pics. We all had a blast with great conversations and laughter-I definitely think it has to be a once a month thing.

Saturday I had a full agenda of wanting to get coffee, car shop, and then go to a rugby tournament. On the way to the bus stop, I thought I would get my ticker to the tournament and be on my way. Once I got the ticket, I kind of got sucked into the field, and basically spent the next 7 hours tanning, watching, admiring and eating. It is a wonderful game of violence and strategy and it for sure doesn’t hurt the eyes with all the HOT shirtless men…I had a blast on the stands! I did have a Mayism moment though when I went to grab lunch. It was quite hot on Saturday and while I was standing at the bus stop I was talking to a guy about the weather. After several minutes, his friend comes up and is sweating a storm. I look at him and continue my conversation by saying “see he is hot…I mean he is hot, but he is sweating, which shows how hot the weather is.” I was probably already pink from being hot…but my face was probably a whole new shade of pink…so funny!!

Sunday, I ended up staying at the mall a little too long after church and learned a valuable lesson. I got to the mini bus station at 8pm and it was basically a ghost town. I asked a couple people that were waiting how long they had been there and they said 30 minutes. I went to the gate keeper and he said the next one wouldn’t be for 75 minutes…which would mean that it would after 9pm before I even got downtown and still would have to catch another bus to get home. Knowing that the main station is pretty dodgy I had to find another solution. I am not kin on taking regular taxis as they are expensive (relatively, as I typically think about how much sushi or chocolate I can get) but knowing the risk I would be putting myself in wouldn’t be worth it. So I forked over R100 and got a taxi at a hotel. The attendant at the hotel, named Damian was extremely sweet and bargained with the cab driver so keep it at R100 and take me completely home and not just downtown. The cab driver was named Eshad and was from Congo. A lot of taxi drivers and car watchers are from that area. We had a fantastic talk about “Living” and defining when you should say I am living in a city and call it home. He said, “if you are in a place for more than 2 days, then it is home. You need to make it home, take it as your own, it is home, so you are in Cape Town, so this is your home.” He was a sweet man, and I am grateful that I got home safely. Lesson learned…May it might be time to get a car!

*Things I could use prayer for- I really do want to get a car and need to decide if I should want until my co-workers have time to take me or to just go to a car lot by myself. I have been waiting for a month, but our schedules keep interfering and we have had to cancel multiple times. I would like to travel a little further than what the buses and my feet can take me. Also, I seem to be having trouble getting my police clearance from the US. They refuse to email it to me, and have sent it to my US address which it never got forwarded and now they have sent it to Cape Town…and who knows how long that can take. I have until the end of March to get it and if I don’t, I might get shipped back to the US…

Pigalle

Saturday night I was invited to an Amazon post holiday party. Our building has two different divisions and this division that was hosting the party isn’t the one I work in, but have had the opportunity to help with over the past year both in Seattle and in Cape Town, so they invited me. They told me that I could invite someone and without hesitation it was Emily Woo of course! We got all dressed up, and we looked hot! When we got to the restaurant, the front doors were closed. For an instance I was thinking “Oh crap! I have the wrong place,” but then some waiters from the balcony was yelling at us and told us to walk around the corner. It was a nice chuckle. When we got inside, it was beautiful. The place was very elegant and then there were these pics of Elvis Presley holding a gun…it seem out of place for me, but randomly fun. I enjoyed having Emily meet some of my co-workers and we devoured our shrimp cocktail, Steak and salmon, and our chocolate fondant with unlimited wine. Emily and I headed onto the dance floor at the end of the night, and danced to some of the songs. When Shakira’s song “This Time For Africa” came on, we just looked at each other like “YES,” and then danced some more. Here is the song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFdZ10rtv2Q&feature=related
Pigalle, thank you for the wonderful evening!