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….