Stellenbosch Living!

After living in South Africa for almost 3 months (man, how time flies!) it's definitely time for another update of our experiences so far. And as the first sentence indicated, our blog will from now on be in English as our international friends from around the globe still does not understand the Norwegian language (funny enough!).

As we mentioned in the last blog, after leaving Harnas in mid-January we jumped on a plane to Cape Town as we didn't have enough energy for the 26 hour bus ride that we took from Windhoek in Namibia to Cape Town in 2008. At the airport a guy from the university picked us up (service free of charge ) and drove us straight to our new apartment in Stellenbosch - about 30 minutes away. Our landlord (Ania - a young Polish lady who is lecturing at Cape Town University and runs a "hobby" real-estater on the side) met us outside the complex, and gave us the best start possible on our South African life. She had bought all sorts of food and drinks for us, South African simcards for the phone, and in addition the apartment was equipped with almost everything we needed. We are more than satisfied and happy about our new place, totally European standard on the flat! It is situated 2 minutes from our University building (we can see our classroom from the balcony), right across the bus-station and local market. It is considered not to be the best part of town, and two of our friends were robbed and lost their cell-phone/cash just outside here, but we've had no problems so far and enjoy it a lot! Even though we can hear the sirens almost 24/7, we suspect the reason is mostly impatient policemen or ambulance drivers that is pulling a fast trick in order to get through the traffic faster, withouth nothing really happening. At least we feel really safe in the city, and haven't even been close to experiencing any danger. In the new photo album coming up soon we'll put some pictures of the apartment, views from the balcony and our surroundings, so you will get a sense of what we're looking at every day

When we first came we had almost 3 weeks to kill before the lectures started, even though we had some initial information meetings for postgrad- and international students at the uni. This time was used wisely on socialising with our other friends that had already arrived, trying to get to know Stellenbosch, shopping in Canal Walk (Africa's biggest shopping mall, in Cape Town), and of course hanging out at the beach. We rented a car a couple of days and went into the amazing beaches in Cape Town, to Camps Bay (posh district) and Clifton. The temperature when we came to South Africa was good and hot, between 25-30 degrees, while February was even hotter and March almost unbearable some days, as it could be over 40 degrees with a wind like a hairdryer. The rain has also been good enough to stay away almost every day since we came to South Africa except maybe 3 or 4, but then usually just for a short time and often during night. Right now we can actually sense the autumn coming and the temperatures are a bit more moderate, between about 17-26 degrees. In fact, we had to go shopping this weekend for warmer clothes and we're even considering buying slippers (tøfler)!! - strange how fast we get used to new climates, can still remember the freezing minus 20 degrees and snowy roads we left in Haugesund and Evje just a few months ago!

The city of Stellenbosch is one of the oldest in South Africa, and is situated about 50 km east of Cape Town in the middle of South Africa's biggest wine district. The city itself does not feel big at all, but has about 140 000 citizens where about 20 000 of these are students (however, it feels more like 100 000 are students when you walk around in town). There is one large informal settlement (township) called Khayamandi just outside the city centre in the hills, but we don't know how big the population is here. Most people here speak Afrikaans (dutch origins) as their first language, but there is also large English and Xhosa speaking minorities. We can actually understand a lot of the Afrikaan words in writing (for example: 'gratis parkering' is spelled the same in Afrikaans and Norwegian), but we find it difficult to understand people speaking Afrikaans.

Stellenbosch University (http://www.sun.ac.za/) is one ofthe oldest in Africa, and it is consisting of a LOT of different buildings in the middle of the city, and with one of the biggest underground libraries in the world. The building where we have our classes is not the nicest we've seen, to be honest, but luckily we don't have to spend too much time there. We have 4 different classes with 2 hours of lecturing every week: Political Economy of Southern Africa, Research Methods, Foreign Policy and Theories of International Relations. In addition there is a lot of guest lecturers/experts from different fields that is visiting us. The focus this semester is a lot more theoretical than the extremely practical semester we had in Oslo - theory is definitely not our favourite, but still we find most of what we have learned so far interesting. The classes are also a bit bigger than what we hoped for before we came, over 50-60 students in some of them. The uni has been hectic from day 1, and we have already had both presentations and bigger papers that we had to write - in average it is at least as much work as a regular full-time job back home, and we definitely wish we had a few extra hours every day. Especially now since we both got elected into the ANSA board for the next year (Association for Norwegian Students Abroad), with responsibility for the approximately 100 Norwegian students studying around South Africa - first thing we'll have to do is to arrange the 17th May in Cape Town! The former ANSA people had a great barbecue in their big house with a pool, the night before the annual board meeting. We got to meet other Norwegian students from universitites all over South Africa, and there was also a representative from the Norwegian Embassy in Pretoria, which told us more about the work at embassies and life in South Africa in general. Barbecuing (or braiing as it is called down here) is a regular event, usually there is an invitation to at least one every week, and it is always a good experience Food down here is amazing by the way, and A LOT cheaper than in Norway, in fact especially in restaurants.

We've already made many friends down here from all over the world, that is the beautiful thing about studying abroad Just when we started the studies, a friend from Harnas (both in 2008 and this year), Richard from Wales, came to visit and stayed with us for almost 2 weeks. Although he is a big Arsenal fan, he's a really good guy and we had a great time. Hopefully he did as well, even if Arsenal was beaten badly by the quality team, Man.United. Besides having the same people here that we had in class in the Oslo semester (8 Norwegians and 9 from all over the world), we've met for example Mike from the Democratic Republic of Congo, a talented musician and poet who live in Khayamandi and work as a security guard, trying to earn a living while dreaming of making it big as an artist. Another friend is Bjorn Leif, a South African from Johannesburg studying Chinese and everything else, with Norwegian origins (grandparents from Sunnmøre) and a funny Norwegian accent. In our class we have many other South African's, for example Noma, a girl from Port Elizabeth (closer to Durban, on the South African coast). She invited us one day to go to Mzolis Meatplace, a couple of weeks ago, and about 12 of us went together, including our friends Texas Phil (from Texas obviously), Serge from Cameroon, Vicky from Bristol in England, Sonia from Canada, and Per and Johan from Norway. Mzolis' is a sort of outside restaurant/club in a township called Gugulethu just outside Cape Town. We arrived around 11 on a Sunday morning, bought loads of different meat that a chef barbecued for us and put in a big bowl, ate with our hands and had a few beers. The place was suddenly PACKED with people after a few hours, and it is basically one of the biggest parties we have seen - they closed of the whole street, and people were dancing allover the streets, on cars, on the roofs etc. No need to say we had a good time in this strange place, before the minibus picked us up and drove us home around 7 in the evening

On the 17th of March about 10 of the guys in class took the train into Cape Town for St. Patricks day, the big Irish celebration. We remembered this day from Australia, where it was a huge thing, and it was basically the same here in South Africa. We stayed at a backpackers place in Long Street for one night, right next to the biggest Irish pub and had a great time with live music, green beer, stupid green hats and good friends We even met a live leprechaun, a small funny guy with long beard that is supposed to bring you good luck and fortune (pictures will come)!

Last weekend, we also rented a car and went into Cape Town with Alex (one of our best friends here, from Holland), shopping for warmer clothes on Canal Walk. We decided to check out the casino in the evening, and booked rooms on a hotel right next to it. We arrived there at 8 in the evening, had a great dinner, and a good time in general! Unfortunately, they were rebuilding the poker department so we didn't get to play, but luckily we got to loose at least some small money on the good old slot machines. The GrandWest Casino was enormous and beautiful, almost a small city in itself, with a strange construction of outside streets indoors with a painted sky on the ceiling, which made us feel that we actually were outside. It was open 24/7, but we had a relatively early night, and the next day we also spent at Canal Walk, finishing the shopping and having a good dinner at a Taiwanese restaurant before we drove back home to Stellenbosch in the evening.

We will be finished with our last exam on June 10th, and then the most hectic times will hopefully be over (as we are taking one extra course now, making it a total of 4 - next semester we'll only have 2). The day after that, the event of the decade are starting - the first World Cup ever in Africa, right outside our doorstep! We were lucky to get hold of 2 tickets each, to 4 different games at the brand new and enormous Green Point Stadium in Cape Town: Siri will go in with a few of our other friends for the opening match, France vs. Uruguay on June 11th, whilst Roger has a ticket for Netherlands - Cameroon on the 24th. On June 21.we'll both go together to watch Ronaldo, Nani and Portugal versus North Korea, the last true communist country in the world. We are extremely excited about this, and really can't wait for the games to begin Our winter vacation lasts for 5 weeks from the 10th to the week after the World Cup finishes on July 11th. Then the next semester lasts until mid/end of November.

As mentioned, we've got some seriously busy times ahead of us, but will try to write some smaller blogs now and then, when something is actually happening. There is a limitation of how interesting it is for you guys to read about our work at the uni, but hopefully we'll get some good experiences the few days we have off!

Happy Easter to everybody!! this is one of the few times we are jealous of all the snow you have and the lazy easter days back home in Norway. Hope you all are doing fine and enjoying life wherever in the world you are, and as always, we'll get really happy if you leave us a message in here

Big hugs from

Roger & Siri