Princess Sarah (yes, that is redundant)

Once again I have had a very exciting week and therefore have a lot to blog about. My flatmate tells me my blog posts are too long and don’t include pictures which to me sounds like the perfect recipe for blog boredom. So in an effort to maintain reader interest I am taking suggestions on how to vamp up my blog. Unfortunately, I can’t do anything about the pictures because blogger won’t let me upload them for some reason. So I welcome suggestions on how to add flair to my blog without pictures!

Alright, onto the post. I will start with the major events from the past week and fill it in with little details later.

A trip to parliament:

Last week I had the opportunity to visit a parliament sessions with my South African Politics class. It is now a memory that I will forever cherish. What an incredible experience! The session was held for the first set of debates on President Zuma’s “State of the Nation” address. President Zuma was in attendance and despite the fact that opposition parties were criticizing his presidential agenda he seemed to be in good spirits. I won’t go into too much detail about the debates because I am trying to maintain reader interest here. All you need to know is that the debaters displayed a great deal of showmanship and were highly entertaining. I have a feeling that when people think of parliament sessions they start thinking of other boring things to relate it to: waiting in line at the DMV, watching re-runs of the Three Stooges, and/or reading any book written by Nicholas Sparks, just to name a few. Well, I am here to dispel this rumor! Parliament is fun because I, one of the most fun people you know, was thoroughly entertained during my short visit.

After we watched a few key speakers we were brought to the restaurant where the parliamentary members eat during break. Our guide, a member of parliament himself, treated everyone to coffee and cake while enlightening us on the game of politics. He then proceeded to give us a tour of the building, which included a visit to the old session room (not sure what it’s called) where National Party (apartheid government) used to meet. Our next stop was the library. Ok, this library was amazing! Remember the library that Belle gets as a present from the Beast in the Disney classic? Well, this library looked like that only on a slightly smaller scale. It had library ladders, a spiral staircase, and books galore! So much knowledge!

The whole day was a perfect combination of new experiences and learning. It’s definitely going to be remembered.

A trip to Cape Town:

That weekend I went to Cape Town with some friends. We met Saturday morning and took the train to town (no train drama this time). Shortly after arriving we swapped our travel clothes for our swimming costumes (that’s what they call a swimsuit here) and headed to the beach. Clifton beach is my new favorite beach because the sand is perfect, there are boulders to climb around on, and the view is breathtaking. The only flaw with the Western Cape beaches is that the water is FREEZING! I like to compare it to glacier water because I am certain there are local underwater glaciers making the water ice cold. There is no other plausible explanation. After about three hours of the swim, layout, swim exchange I decided to take a walk around. As I walking down the beach I realized that these South Africans have some odd beach behavior. I spotted a man standing on his head, a dirty hippie rock climbing without any gear, and some kids playing this strange beach paddle game. It was a good walk.

After beach time we headed back to the hostel to quickly freshen up and head to Mama Africa to meet some friends we had met on our trip to Cape of Good Hope. We had a delicious dinner while becoming more acquainted with our newfound friends. We made some loose plans to join our friends back at their apartment to check out this awesome roof they kept talking about. The roof is amazing. It has a gym, a pool, Jacuzzi, and not to mention a spectacular view of Cape Town. Unfortunately we didn’t our rooftop access was cut short due to something close to 30 knot winds. It was crazy! So we joined them for some small talk and drinks in their really nice apartment and then later back to Long Street for more shenanigans. I cannot include myself in the Long Street shenanigans though. I stayed behind and went to bed like the grandma that I am. I was the oldest one there and I am not used to that. Let me tell you that I did not like that! Now I know what it feels like to be the oldest and I don’t ever want to experience that again! EVER!

Loose ends:

So I realized later after I posted my blog entry titled “Mullet Madness” that I never actually explained what this means. Although it is pretty much self-explanatory I will give you a brief description of what Mullet Madness is referring to.

For some unknown reason Stellenbosch, South Africa’s Mullet Per Capita (MPC) rate is MUCH higher than all the Midwest and Southern American states combined. Nearly every young chap has been severely misinformed about how cool it is to sport a disgustingly designed mullet. Yeah, they come in a variety of shapes, colors, and sizes and they are all just awful. No one understands this phenomenon and I’m sure the university is employing bright young students to conduct research to find the root of this evil.

Also, I need to make mention of what this blog post is referring to as well. It’s just that lately I have been feeling like I am living a lifestyle similar to that of a princess. Despite the obvious and unfortunate lack of people waiting on me hand and foot I feel I lead a vey privileged life. I am so fortunate to be here in South Africa and yet I feel that this fact is too often lost on me. I, of course, love it here and am extremely grateful to be here but I feel like I need some sort of daily ritual to make sure I don’t forget how blessed this life of mine really is. I also sleep as much as I think the average princess does. I have never slept so much in my life (if I don’t count holidays)! I am working on being more active in my daily life and more proactive with my academic life to help cut a few of my sleeping hours out. It’s working so far. This weekend will hopefully help too because I will be spending the whole weekend at an arts festival as a volunteer for an NGO. But I will save the details of that for the next post.

Until next time my lovelies….

Big Chicken..

Before I head out the door everyday I have to mentally prepare myself for the risk I’m about to take and eventually come to terms with the fact that I actually might die today. Ok maybe I’m being a little melodramatic but after several times of almost getting hit by a car I feel I reserve the right to sensationalize my everyday walk to AND from campus (I typically make 2-3 trips a day).

Let me explain. The game of chicken isn’t limited to motor vehicles vs. pedestrians. It’s more a game of any mode of transportation vs. the other all holds barred. Now I am confident that there are some historical root causes as to why the Stellenbosch culture has adopted such a lifestyle of everyday reckless endangerment and I am determined to identify them. Here are some factors I am currently investigating. Is it because the sidewalks are too small? If I wasn’t clear before, the game is also played human vs. human. The sidewalks are actually pretty small (by American standards) with space enough for about two people side-by-side. Also, there is no directional system of right or left side of the walk going in opposite directions as there is in the states. For example, you may be walking on the right side of the walk and someone else walking in the opposite direction also on the right side. Now what?! Who is obligated to move? There is no one else on the sidewalk so there is room for only one of you to move. Well, typically the other person is oblivious to the fact there is exists such a concept as shared sidewalks and by this point you are so annoyed by people just shoving you out of the way that you are determined to not move. You hold your position but the other person is getting closer and closer. Now you both feel the tension caused by the awkwardness as the gap between you is quickly closing. Who is going to bail first? Me. I ALWAYS bail first. Yes, I am aware that my cowardice only perpetuates this terrible sidewalk system.

Cars are a completely different story. Playing chicken with humans doesn’t typically end in injury or death but playing with cars can lead to such consequences. There is a four-way stop on the way to campus (the one where my longboard got ran over) and it is the most treacherous obstacle to pass. First of all, no one and I mean NO ONE stops. As a side note, their actions appear to be symptomatic of a disease called “human blindness.” This is a very serious disease in which a person cannot distinguish between humans and air immediately upon entering his/her car. When you get to the point of the four-way stop in your journey to campus it’s suddenly “every man for himself” to get across. A few of my friends have become so frustrated that they have taken to playing the game of chicken by daring the cars to run over them by refusing to stop or hesitate before crossing the road. It’s a very dangerous game because the cars WILL run you over. Fortunately, I have not lost any friends in this battle and I hope it stays that way. The other day I attempted to play this game and was nearly run over by a blonde in a BMW. She was clearly in such a hurry that justified her risking a human life to get to her destination that much faster by not stopping for half a second.

So clearly I am a little frustrated and I will stop ranting for those of you who have made it this far into the post. I realize now that I abandoned my ideas of root causes of how this phenomenon came to be in the first place. Well, other factors other than small sidewalks include: lack of full-stop enforcement at stop signs, lack of respect for personal space, a new breed of brazen selfishness, a mental state of UNawareness shared by all, no sense of responsibility, etc… Those are just some of the many that I am considering as possible factors. The one thing I know for sure is that there has to be another solution to this problem other than the everyday game of chicken.

That’s all.

Mullet Madness...

So it’s been awhile since I updated my blog. Don’t worry though; the length of this blog post won’t reflect the amount of time that has lapsed since my last novella. Of course A LOT has happened in the last two weeks, classes started, I went to my first rugby match, I met MORE Norwegians, and I was selected to be on the ISOS committee! I would love to blog everyday because everyday is packed full of weird, crazy, or interesting experiences that, I feel, are worth sharing. But I will save whoever is reading this the feelings of guilt that would surely come from not being able to keep up with the would be incessant blogging.

It is currently Friday and I am now two weeks into classes. I love all my classes! I am taking South African Politics, Political Risk Analysis, and Comparative Political Economy. I know they don’t sound as fun as the Wine Tasting class or even the isiXhosa language class that I really wanted to take but they are interesting to me. Tonight I am staying in to write a paper for next week so I can go hiking aallll day tomorrow! The International Student Organization of Stellenbosch (ISOS) plans activities for the international students and tomorrow is a 17km hike that has waterfall breaks! I have had a hankering for a hike so I am pretty excited to finally go hiking in South Africa!

Around day 4 of my being here I decided I wanted a longboard. I actually decided before coming here that I would try and relive the glory days of Hawaii when I would just cruise around on my skateboard by getting a longboard for transportation. The problem with a skateboard is that the wheels are too small so if I hit the smallest of rocks it would throw me off and suddenly I would find myself sprawled out on the ground with fresh patches of road rash on my knees and elbows. The longboard is soooo much better! I can hang tight while running over a soda can or a coconut! The only problem is that it is so crowded here and I am still trying to get reacquainted with skating so I am a little shy about riding in front of people. I decided that I am going to have to get over this because I just dropped a decent amount of cash money on my awesome new board so I HAVE to ride it. Well, the guy who sold me the board told me about this group called, Longboard Stellenbosch, and that they meet every Tuesday night for skating. So Tuesday came and almost an hour of internal debate I basically forced myself out the door and down the road to the “spot.” The spot was a local grocery store parking lot and I was the first to arrive. I was overcome with anxiety and I was certain I was going to fall and make a fool of myself. Luckily, the group of guys was extremely nice and soon enough the anxiety was gone; I took my shoes off, and started to skate. According to these South African sk8ter boyz it’s really “kiff” for a girl to try skating even if she holds a below amateur status. A week later I was riding my longboard to my first ISOS committee meeting and came up to the four-way stop (people only stop if something is in their way, if you’re lucky) and I hopped off my board to cross the street. As I hopped off I kicked my board and it rolled right into the traffic. Everything was suddenly in slow motion as I watched my new longboard roll through the first set of cars. Someone slammed to a stop and just barely missed my board and it just kept going! It made it to the next set of cars and by that time I had almost caught up to it. I wasn’t even aware that I was running after it as if it were a runaway stroller! That’s when it happened. A mini truck filled with at least 10 people ran over my beautiful new board. I let out a screech as I watched it happen. I looked for it to come out in shards of wood and a wheel or two to bounce out of sight. Nothing. The mini truck stopped and I ran over to it. The driver got out and asked me what he had hit! Apparently he thought he had run over a puppy! I was too busy looking under his truck for my board to pay any attention to his inability to differentiate between a puppy and a longboard. Because the truck was filled with probably 8 more people than it was ever intended to hold it was riding so low that my board got stuck under a pipe! That jam packed little truck saved my board from turning into sawdust! I hugged my board and told the gentlemen that I was sorry for the inconvenience. The driver pointed to me and said, “Look at all the people back there!” and then hopped back in his truck to continue on to wherever he was taking all those people. My board survived with just some minor scratches and I am much more careful about dismounting now. Wow, I really did not mean for that story to be so long!

The most exciting thing that has happened in the last two weeks is getting a volunteer position with a local NGO, RUDNET. I went to the interview on Monday to get more information on their projects and the more the director said the more excited I got. The organization focuses on human rights issues and the primary beneficiaries of their initiatives are farm workers. I should be starting next week and I can’t wait to get started!

Everyday I meet more incredibly interesting people from everywhere and I love it. I am taking mainstream classes so I get a chance to mingle with local South Africans. They are quite an amiable group and I hope to make friends out of some of them. I have also been conducting interviews with some students for some personal and work-related research. Conducting these interviews have been some of the most rewarding experiences since I arrived here in Stellenbosch. I love learning about other people’s thoughts and ideas.

Well, I made an effort to make this a short and sweet blog post but alas I am just long-winded and enjoy sharing my experiences too much! I will end it now before I remember something else to share! I absolutely love and miss my family and friends! I hope everyone is staying safe in their igloos while I enjoy the 90 degree weather muahahaha!