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First day of school-
Had to wake up super early for an 8 am class at an unknown location. There's a shuttle, the "Jammie", which rides from various stops around town to school. It runs from early in the morning and comes to each stop every 5-15 minutes. Although I don't plan to use it much as I've already gotten used to the walk, I wanted to familiarize myself with the location of the stop near our house. Brit and I left the house early and it was still dark outside and walked less than 10 minutes to the 'forest hill' stop, sort of up the road. I feel that taking the Jammie is almost as time consuming as walking to school, but maybe it was because of early morning traffic. My first class, Project and Operations Management, is for some reason in the Zoology building. It's in a lecture hall of about 200 which I'm not used to but the course seems decent. For each class there are usually 'tutorials', kind of like T.A sessions but are more organized and attendance is required. Tutorials take place at random times in the week and you sign up for whichever session (normally 1.5 hours/week) fits your schedule. For this class we're only gonna meet with our tutorial people a couple of times and it'll be just to present group projects that we'll be working on throughout the semester. One of the girls I sat next to (I really don't think she's any more than 4 feet tall) asked me to be in her group and she was really nice…I hope the rest of my group members aren't douchebags. Anyways after class is over (classes are only 45 minutes, which is great), I explored campus to get my bearings. Even though it's huge I now feel like I can give other people directions if I had to…it's mostly a matter of knowing which building is what, as the campus layout is pretty simple. I gave myself a tour and stopped at the library and IT service center to figure out how to use the internet. There are signs all over the library reminding people to be silent. The library is not extravagant and I have a feeling I'll be spending minimal time there. There are pigeons everywhere on campus along with a post office and s***ty cell phone service. I finally met up with roommates Katrina and Susie after they got out of class to sign up for the Mountain and Ski club and the gym. The way clubs and societies work on campus is allowing students to have membership to 3 things for free, and pay for any additional things you may want to join (fees range from like 4-20 dollars). The gym counts as a society so I used one up for that, and the Mountain and Ski club always organizes random outdoor day trips and you can go whenever you want. My third option is TBA but will probably be SHAWCO, the huge student-organized community service club on campus. My second and last class for the day was Development Economics, which I think will be my favorite although I had to buy an expensive book for it. This class is also a lecture but only about 60 or so people. My professor reminds me a lot of my econ teacher back home; he actually taught at UMass Amherst for a few years. After school Susie and I checked out the gym, which has crazy construction going on around it since it's brand new and not yet finished. The gym is not huge but all the equipment is nice. I find it amusing that they have people walking around in jumpsuits with the logo 'instructor' printed on the back. Must be a work study job for students. At night we went to the nearby mall, about a 10 minute ride in a car, because Nicole needed a swim suit as she wants to use the pool at UWC. We decided it was early enough so that we could take a taxi (which is actually a minibus). Taxis are cheaper than cabs but are usually only safe to take when it's relatively light out…and this is how they work: they fly by on the roads and honk repeatedly, with one person normally hanging out of the window and whistling to the people on the street. Each minibus has at least two people (driver and crazy man) operating it. There's room for maybe 14-16 passengers but they disregard their own signs and stuff as many people as possible in the van. When you hear/see one coming and you need to get on you flag it down with your hand and they stop abruptly and hurry you in...sometimes after moving around people that are already sitting down or propping up extra chairs from nowhere. You feel very rushed and it reminds me of a pb+j sandwich that has too much jelly in it and it's oozing out of the corners. When we were walking on the street I passed a pole and a to my surprise there was a man standing right behind it. It scared the s*** out of me particularly because it was dark and I screamed relentlessly and scared all my friends as well. I was embarrassed of course, and poor man…but really, not a good spot to chill out buddy. On our way back home we stopped at the 'friendly 7 eleven' for various things. 7 eleven at night is an experience in itself. As you're standing at the register paying for your purchases, homeless people stand outside and gawk at you to give them money. They then follow you out of the store and beg and get in your face. They'll just stand at the entrance waiting for anyone wish cash, which is why it's very important to not flash a lot of money. Also I try never to use the ATM in there because too many people are around. The streets get dark quite early (7ish?) and after that it's a whole different world. Homeless people make their sleeping arrangements on our street. It was a cloudy day but still no rain…I can't believe how lucky we've been getting, as this weather is really unusual for wintery July. Table Mountain is beautifully eerie when covered in fog, as it was for most of the day.
I secretly boil my water before I drink it, despite it being deemed safe to drink.
Day 2 of classes:
My alarm went off at 6 40 for my 8 am class (I only have it Monday, Tue, and Friday, phewww). For some reason in my 20 years of living I have not learned the benefits and rationale 7 35, cursed loudly, and flew out of bed. As it takes about 25 minutes to get all the way up to upper campus, where all my classes are, I was cutting it close. I know this will happen frequently in the future. I got to class only about a minute late but I was sweating profusely. As a matter of fact I sweat every time I walk to class. My mom says it's because I walk too fast and she's probably right. The way back is different because it's downhill, but the way up is quite the hike, especially with the never ending stair cases. I discussed this with my roommates and they agree that they begin the walk to school with a couple of layers and undress during the walk as it gets hot. Classes again were fine and I had my 3rd class today, Financial Reporting. I know this course will be the end of me due to the massive size of the lecture hall and the boring content of the material. It's an accounting course…enough side. My teacher is insane in some way that I cannot explain, but I think it's okay. My tutorial for this class will be once a week on Tuesday mornings, and we have to turn in problem sets weekly. Those who got a certain grade in a previous course only have to do 1 problem (students are labeled green), and those who did worse in that course have to do 3 (red). I asked my professor what I would be and he told me to talk to the advisor. Professors don't deal with all the red tape…there are course advisors for everything and a bunch of people that work around the same thing. Yolanda requested a copy of my transcript since internationals are usually labeled red. I was pumped when she switched me to green as I now have to slave over only one problem per week. But of course, if you ask my professor, there's no reason why
"everyone shouldn't do all the problems anyways" (followed by a weird quirky smile). I also picked up my 'reader' for economics, a massive compilation of readings we'll have to do through the semester. Bought an expensive book for accounting that I will never bring to class because I find it too large. In the evening we all had to meet with our landlord, an sharp old white man that was very friendly. We also met with the dude responsible for the neighborhood watch, another sharp white man. They told us the basics of living in the house. Apparently a couple of years ago there was an incident where the dumb students that lived here let in strangers (who claimed to be the gardeners, even though we are told who our gardener is) and they got locked in the bathroom and got all their s*** stolen. We were told to be nice to the homeless but not to give them any money. There are also a few random panic buttons around the house which I wasn't aware of. The house is surrounded by ADT security which should respond within 8 minutes by arriving here if anything happens. We asked the landlord if we can take the couches from the 'back house', another house directly behind ours that is usually occupied by study abroad students but not this semester. Our couches are most uncomfortable, so this weekend we'll do some trading After that was over I began experiencing severe indigestion, and I'm still not sure what the cause of it was. Must have forgot to boil my water or something. Hehe. But I think it was food of some sort. Anyway it was a most awful feeling and I went down to the store to begin a diet of Gatorade/crackers. I've been doing this for the past couple of days and I've certainly gotten a lot better, but I wish I knew what had caused it so I can avoid it in the future. Yuck. Brit bought pepper spray and sprayed it all over her room so everyone in the house was coughing non stop for some time. Good thing I wasn't out in the hallway…Katrina's throat was still irritated two days later.
We all keep talking about doing laundry but it remains to be an idea for the future.
Day 3:
I have concluded that I cannot remain awake in lecture halls and I'm not sure how students at big universities do. Or do they? The internet has been extremely slowly, or not working. It took me nearly an hour to download an article for economics and it wasted a lot of my internet credits. Wednesday is the day for our government policy class with Kevin, and today we travelled to Stellenbosch to listen to a speaker about Zimbabwe. Whenever we do something for this class or something related to our abroad group, we're hooked up with transportation. A van will usually pick us up at our house or the school, and we normally have the same few drivers. Our driver today Joey was particularly entertaining and had no idea where he was going. Whereas our drivers in the past would listened to crazy rap, Joey was into deep soul music. Kevin usually tries to hook us up with the authors of the articles that he gives us to read, and that was the case today. Our speaker Tyrone was great and 2 of the Stellenbosch students that are part of our program actually take a class with him. He himself moved from Zimbabwe at the young age of 13 so he's been through a lot of historical s*** so the Zim crisis now is of particular personal interest to him. The weather all day was beautiful and by the time we got out of our lecture in the evening it was still warm out (chilly when we got back to Cape Town). Stellenbosch is extremely clean and reminds me of some quaint New England town. I'm pretty sure here it's considered to be a 'rich white people' place. It's also extremely safe and our friends tell us they can walk home at night or as early as they want in the morning, even by themselves. Completely different than our situation. We went out to dinner and I ordered bread and tea due to stomach restlessness.
After dinner Susie and I purchased a gram of goodness.
A girl was kidnapped on Main Road (parallel to our street and what we walk on to get anywhere) a couple of days ago by one of the crazy minibus taxi people. They took her money but she's okay.
Day 4 (in terms of classes. I'll stop labeling my entering as day 1, 2, 3, etc soon enough).
I think the house has come to a general consensus that school work is not meant to be done while experiencing Cape Town. I feel like the roommates are never home all together and thus the weekends are something to look forward to. Another day of classes today and a beautiful day outside. I sometimes try to take pictures on my walk to/from campus. I walked by the field hockey practice on one of the fields and remembered how much I hated that sport. Around lunchtime there's always something crazy going on outside in the central area of campus, on the "Jammie steps". These are all the stairs leading up to the Jameson Hall that is commonly featured in pictures of UCT. Usually it's promotional events for random vendors but the stairs are always packed with students. We had another session with Kevin today (sometimes we meet him on Thursdays as well), and we went to a book launching event. The author spoke to us about a book he just wrote, focusing on urbanization in South Africa. A couple of guests were there to discuss the book directly with the author and ask questions. An awkward moment happened when about 5 minutes into the lecture a group of people walked in and sat down. One of the people was the Governor of the West Cape that was just fired yesterday, and the guest speaker that was up at the podium at the time was on the head committee of the African National Congress that decided to fire the governor. The lecture was pretty interesting but I guess it's difficult to engage in something like that if you haven't read the book. We were all pleasantly surprised by food and wine after the talk. My stomach is still recovering so I had to take it easy with indulging.
When I returned to my room I was frolicking around for a good amount of time before I realized my heater wasn't on and I wasn't cold. Perhaps I'm getting used to the weather or the weather is getting better. I am going to drink my ___th cup of tea for the day and perhaps attempt productivity. Happy weekend tomorrow!
We have a cat? Sometimes I hear it or so it circling around our house. Apparently the internationals that lived here before us fed the animal.
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