I'm on spring break! wooo! Actually, it's fall here, but you'd never know it because it was perfect beach weather yesterday. I got the fifth harry potter out of the UCT library (they have a copy of all of the books and none were checked out! what is wrong with these people?!) and spent the day lying on the beach and reading. Harry Potter really doesn't seem that popular here, which is most unfortunate.

Anyways, last weekend we went to the Kirstenbosch Gardens for a concert on Saturday and Sunday because it's just so nice there and they were the last two concerts of the season. We saw the Soweto String Quartet on one day, which was amazing but not at all what I expected. They didn't really play any classical music, but had a band with them and played more contemporary stuff, like "In the Jungle." And I finally got to climb up Table Mountain on Sunday! It's quite a steep two hours up, but then we just wandered around on top, which is flat. It was funny because we had no problems navigating our way up and around the mountain, but when we got down to the very end where you are pretty much in the neighborhood of Camps Bay, we got lost and ended up wandering through some backyards. We must have looked pretty funny with big hiking backpacks, pulling out a map and standing looking confused in the middle of a neighborhood. And when we finally figured it out, we went to the best ice cream place in South Africa (or so I've heard) called Sinful and oh my was it delicious. They have crazy flavors that don't tell you anything about what's in it (like "Yummy" and "Very Yummy") so I just went with Very Yummy and it certainly lived up to it's name. They even have a four scoop option, but I made a huge mistake and only got two. Next time it's four for me. Speaking of delicious food, my roommate M.C.'s mom and sister came in to visit and we put in requests for things from the states, so naturally I asked for Reece's Pieces and got a pound bag, which I promptly devoured. They really don't have the chocolate/peanut butter combo around here, so I'm missing it.

Anyways, enough about food...I was supposed to go on a camping trip over the break, but it fell through, so I think me and two of my roommates are going to rent a car and drive along part of the coast called the Garden Route. It's supposed to be a beautiful drive with lots of beaches and nature reserves along the way. I think we're just going to play it by ear and see how far we get up the coast. I have to be back by Friday, because I'm running the Two Oceans half marathon on Saturday! I haven't been training as much as I should (and eating pound bags of reece's pieces...) so I really have no idea what kind of time I'll run, but it'll be fun just to do it. There's apparently a huge hill at the end of the race though, and "hill" around here generally means "mountain" so that should be interesting. I'm definitely looking forward to it though.

wooo it has been a full week! we went to a cricket game and, even though we spent the first half of the game trying to figure out what exactly was going on, it was fun even though it reminded me a lot of baseball. it's a stadium just like baseball but in an oval, so you're pretty much in a good spot no matter where you sit. cricket is unbelievably popular here but there's so many breaks in between the action. maybe i'll grow to appreciate it a little more as i'm here, and it'll probably help to know the rules.

monday night me and my roommate went to a place called the armchair theater, which plays movies that you can watch on big comfy couches. they were playing faris buller's day off, which i hadn't seen in forever, but it sure made me miss chicago.

Wednesday was a public holiday, so no class! I went on a hike with the mountain and ski club to a place called the crystal pools, which is basically a beautiful pool in the middle of the mountains and as you climb up, you get to more and more. people went kloofing but i decided to pass this time. i borrow my roommate's camera, so there are pictures, but i'll have to work on getting some up. we were all set to get back in the car (me and my friend drove with three south african guys) and when we got back down, the guy realized that he'd left his lights on and the car was completely dead. so we tried to jump start it and the battery got a little power, but not enough to start the car, only enough to make the horn start blaring randomly for no apparent reason. so then we tried pushing the car up and down the hill to try to get it started (i don't know exactly how that would work...i didn't ask, i just pushed) and it was straight out of little miss sunshine with four people pushing a car down the hill with the horn going off periodically. in the end we had to call a tow truck (which, in true south african fashion, took two hours to get there) but i really didn't mind because we got to watch a beautiful sunset on the beach and the sooner i got home, the sooner i had to start writing a paper.

tonight we finally tried the restaurant down the street from us and it was quite good. i went on a really long run today, so i was starving and ate a ton of food. it's really nice there because throughout the night all the waiters/waitresses get up and perform, either sing or play any instrument, and one guy sang hallelujah and it was one of the best covers of it i have ever heard, so it made my night.

It's back to business as usual around here. We've all pretty much come to terms with our stuff being gone (thank god for insurance) but I'm not going to replace my laptop while I'm here for fear that it'll get stolen again, so I'm really sorry if I'm much slower to respond to emails. I need to figure out what I'm going to do for a camera though, because it's been hard to function even for a week without one. On Wednesday night my housemates declared a state of "emergency braai" and we all pigged out on chocolate bananas and delicious food, which helped a lot.

I kind of had a quiet weekend but still didn't do any homework...I'll pay for it this week though. There's a beautiful garden not too far from our house that has outdoor concerts every Sunday (I still love Ravinia though!) so we went to that yesterday. It was some reggae/ska-ish band that I was a little bit indifferent towards, but the scenery is absolutely beautiful and we brought a blanket and a picnic. And there are so many cool trees! I just wanted to climb in them and start reading. I really wish I had a camera, but I'm sure we'll go back. There's a string quartet playing there next week, so maybe we'll go to that. Hope all is well at home.

I could use a hug from you guys now...

Well after having three conversations in the last two days about how safe we feel in our neighborhood, we actually got broken into. Thankfully no one was home and no one was hurt, but mine and two of my roommates' laptops, cameras, ipods, backpacks, jewelery, and a few other items are all gone. They even took my stash of postcards, for a reason I can't imagine. They found and opened my glasses case (which is Dolce & Gabana...is that even how you spell that? I have no idea...) and then must have realized that they are definitely not designer glasses and that lens crafters just ran out of other cases, so at least they left those. And I realized this morning when my alarm didn't go off that they took my old running watch with the broken band that I use for an alarm. It was set for 6:45 this morning, so I'll take that as a small revenge and hope it woke them up. Perhaps the most frustrating part of the situation is knowing that there was absolutely nothing we could have done about it. There is a huge gate around the entire property with spikes on top of the fence, two locked front doors, locks and burgler bars on all the windows, and locks on all the bedroom doors, so what do they do...go in through the roof. Seriously. They took a ladder, climbed up, and literally smashed through the boards of the roof to get in. And my bedroom door was locked so they ripped apart the door frame. They must have been watching us and knew that we were international students with things worth stealing. And my goodness were they thourough. They went through all of my clothes, including the pockets of jackets, every drawer, every box, even, for some reason, the freezer. Thankfully they did not seem to be interested in credit cards, travelers checks, passports, or other crucial and hard to replace documents, and for that I am very thankful. And they left my Arrested Dvelopment. Thank god. While we waited for the police I immediately finished all the chocolate in the house and had some wine (I'll let you use your imagination to quantify "some") but I think that moment more than any other was when I really could have used someone from home. The police, campus security, and our landlord have all been helpful and sympathetic, but there is virtually no chance that we'll get it back. It sucks that my stuff is gone (especially all my pictures that I've taken so far) but it can be replaced. It was just so shocking and unnerving to experience first hand. I knew when I came here that there would be an increased risk for something like this happening, but that still doesn't mean that I expected it to happen or that I wasn't upset, but I certainly don't want to come home and it will definitely not ruin my experience...just a setback. I would rather take a risk of this happening than miss out on the amazing adventure I've had so far. After seeing how some people live in this country and then learning about why they live in those conditions and how utterly helpless and trapped they must feel (and with some time passing for me to calm down) I actually feel more sorry for the people who broke in than anything else. Please don't worry though, I'm hanging in there. And sorry for the venting post...love you guys.

Now that I actually have work to do, I am quickly discovering that it is nearly impossible to get anything productive done around here. The weather is almost always perfect and the beach (or anything, really) is always more tempting that homework...but I promise I'm not slacking off too much. It's still hard to gauge how difficult the courses are here because I haven't actually had anything graded and returned to me yet, but it really seems pretty managable. My sociology of poverty and development class is really interesting and I'm starting to think that that might be something I would like to look into for the future, but then again, who knows with me. I change my mind every other day. My history class on liberation movements in southern africa is actually kind of disappointing because the lectures are always really disjointed and you kind of end up feeling like you're not sure how 45 minutes went by of the prof talking but you not actually gaining any knowledge, but we have a lot of guest speakers in the class, so some of them have definitely been worth while. The professor also gave us a HUGE reading list (literally at least 100 books) obviously without intending for us to read them all, but he didn't give any kind of hierarchy and you just never know what he's going to lecture on, so I'm not exactly sure what I'm supposed to be reading for that class, so I'm just picking at random. I just read the autobiography of Albert Luthuli, who was the president of the African National Congress and won the Nobel Peace Prize. He wrote his autobiography much earlier in the struggle than Mandela, so it was really interesting to compare their perspectives, especially since Mandela lead the militant branch of the ANC and Luthuli was fairly opposed to armed resistance. So even if the class isn't that great, the library at UCT has an amazing selection of readings on the topic that you can find on your own.

Tuesday I went to SHAWCO again to actually teach the first lesson. It was a bit tougher than the fun day because now the kids actually had to do work. My four kids all know each other, so there was a lot of typical 13-year-old stuff to deal with, like people kicking each other under the table and teasing each other. It was interesting to observe that they (at least my 4 kids) have no interesting in writing whatsoever. It was painful to try to get them to focus and write a single sentence, but as soon as we started on the math problems, they were much more interested and listened very well. So basically the opposite of me, but I think it'll get easier as the weeks go on.

After class on Friday, me and Zoe and Natasha (housemates) took the train to this really funky hippie town right on the coast called Kalk Bay. It is definitely now in the running for new favorite place that I've been. There were tons of thrift/antique stores, lots of cool clothes, and an endless series of ice cream shops, so basically I was in heaven and spent way too much money. One of the thrift stores actually sold old postcards that people had sent from South Africa and another had old Iowa lisence plates!

This weekend I also climbed Devil's Peak with the Mountain and Ski club (yeah, you can actually ski here in the winter...crazy, I know). Devil's Peak is the mountain that is the backdrop of the UCT campus, and I have to climb a little bit of it every day to get to campus, so I figured I couldn't leave without actually climbing the whole thing. It's about 3000 feet, though, and it was probably about 1 part hiking and 2 parts rock climbing. When we got to the very top, we were completely in the clouds and couldn't actually see the view, which was kind of disappointing, but you didn't have to go very far down to get out of the clouds and the views were amazing. The first picture on this post is Devil's Peak and the UCT campus and the second is the view of Lion's Head from Devil's Peak.

Well I made it through the weekend without jumping off of any really tall objects. I had SHAWCO fun day on Saturday, which went all day at Kensington, the center that I volunteer at. All the volunteers and kids were invited and we basically split everyone into teams and then played a bunch of different games for points. It was really fun! But man was I exhausted afterwards. We had a long jump, obstacle course, team songs (we were the white team...hence I had the chant "white, white, is so bright...w-h-i-t-e" in my head for the rest of the day), dodgeball, musical chairs and that really awkward game where you have to pass an orange using you neck. It's much much harder when someone who is 6 feet tall is trying to pass it to an impossibly tiny 3rd grader. Our team song was the best by far, but we didn't get any points for that and ended up in last (only by a point!) but I think the kids still had a lot of fun. All of the volunteers are super enthusiastic and outgoing and you can tell how dedicated they are.

Saturday night it rained (I don't know how it manages to be sunny and perfect all week and then rain all weekend!) but we went to this huge outdoor festival on Long Street anyway. There was supposed to be live music and DJs in the street, but most of it got moved inside of bars. It was cool to finally see some local bands and I even bought a CD of one of the really famous pop groups here cause I've been hearing their song everywhere. On Sunday me and my roommate Zoe (who also had a long childhood obession with wanting to be a marine biologist) headed to the aquarium on the waterfront. We got to see enormous crabs, seals, a shark feeding, and we found Nemo at least 10 times. And we followed it up with what is becoming the standard Sunday braai.

Running club has also been going really well. They don't actually have an official team like U of I. There's no try-outs or anything, but only the top people gets to represent UCT at meets. There are people that go on social runs every day, but I'm thinking of seeing if they'll let me do some of the other workouts. I signed up for the Two Oceans Half-Marathon on April 7th (without realizing that it's over our spring break, so I'm not exactly positive that I'll run it, just in case I'll be out of town) but I've met a couple other people who are running it too. I really wanted to be able to do a full one here, but the Two Oceans full one is an ultra (34.8 miles...eeep) so I think I'll pass on that...

It's calming to finally be in a routine here and feel like it's becoming some sort of home, and I'm still so excited to see an endless list of sites and adventures, but being away really does remind you how hard it is to be away from people you love. Wishing you all were here.

Second week of school over and done! Classes are actually finally getting underway, so I've got some reading and papers to fit in at some point. It's strange how much being back in the college routine makes you forget that you're somewhere completely different. It's still the same routine of going to class, going to the library, hanging out on campus, eating lunch under a tree, so it kind of just feels like a stranger U of I with a better view. Even though I only have three classes, most classes here meet every day and also have a weekly discussion section, which relates to the class but is also kind of a separate class with it's own readings and assignments, so it's actually a bit more work than it sounds like. I also started my volunteer program with SHAWCO this week. There were about 20 volunteers, most of whom were new, and at least 150 kids in one room so it was a bit of unorganized pandemonium for a while but we ended up playing get-to-know you type games since a lot of the kids come from different schools in the area and don't necessarily know each other. I was assigned my group and I'll be working with six 7th graders for the semester. It's not a tutoring program, but I actually teach them extra things aside from what they're learning in class so it's kind of designed to give them an extra edge. We're having a "fun day" all day Saturday where we're just going to the center and hanging out and playing games with them. Other than that, no major plans for the weekend (happy unofficial to all you U of I folks) but I'm sure we'll come up with something.