sorry it's been so long...

Last week I managed to get at least one of my exams out of the way. It was Making of the Modern Middle East, and I think it went pretty well. I wrote on Israel/Palestine, Egypt, and the end of the Ottomans. People sounded pretty stressed, but I think that it went ok. Which I'm sure you all know means one of two things: it went pretty well, or it went horribly. I guess that I'll just have to wait and see...
On Thursday Emily and I went to the V & A Waterfront (V&A for Victoria and Alfred). We went to the aquarium there and got to see lots of cool stuff. We were there for the penguin feeding, featuring mainly jackass penguins, a type of penguin unique to South Africa. Two things to note here: first, I'm in a hemisphere where penguins roam free, second, they really are called jackass penguins. I also got to see a cuttlefish, seahorses, and jellyfish. All in all, a very cool place. Afterward we went and saw some vaguely bizzare chick flick. Good for a rainy day I guess.
The V & A Waterfront itself is kind of a bizzare place. It's a humongous mall, one of the most visited attraction in Africa (how sad is that). It's a weird mix of African kitsch and high fashion stuff. It's way too big and just kind of overwhelming. I think that my system tolerates shopping as well as the next person's, but there's something about a bloated mall selling everything you never wanted that's just too much. I guess I do a lot better in smaller venues, or when I know what I want from a specific place. Long story short, it's way too much.
Other than that, I haven't been up to too much. My friend Hannah and I have managed to get through season six of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (if you haven't seen it, it really is much better than you think), and are hoping to get through seven as well. I have all of this coming week off. My exam schedule is pretty horrible, just the one last week, then one on the tenth, two on the eleventh, and I leave the twelfth. Gross. I pretty much have to be packing as I study and say goodbye. Sometime this week though I'm hoping to go to Stellenbosch with some friends, so that should be fun. A short road trip to go wine tasting and hiking? Count me in!

Well, love you guys loads, and I'll see most of you very soon. And I've put new pictures up, so feel free to check them out!

a marathon

So, I managed to finish and turn in all of my semester work yesterday, but it's not over yet! I have my Middle Eastern politics exam on Wednesday, and in the proud SA tradition, it's half of my grade. Stressful to say the least.
I'm hoping tomorrow to go to the Saturday morning market again, as well as to the aquarium with the girls I mentor at LEAP. I haven't been to the aquarium yet, and I'm actually really excited about it. And tonight there's an African culture night, which hopefully I won't have to pay admission for. If I do, I just might have to reconsider going... Ugh. It's so hard, because it's nearing the end and there's still so much to do, but nothing is free. I'm sure it'll all work out though, it just takes some planning!
Sorry I can't write more, but honestly nothing too scintillating has happened recently. The past however long really has just been about getting the semester wrapped up. But classes are over now, and I can't wait to fit in tons of fun things in my last couple of weeks, at least when I'm not freaking out about exams...

Lots of love!

Holy Hell

So these past two weeks have been somehow both uneventful and overwhelmingly stressful at the same time - ah the joy of the end of the semester! I've have several papers that, while interesting, were also a bit like pulling teeth. Who knew that Palestinian nationalism was not just intuitively obvious? Go figure!
Seriously though, most of my time has been spent holed up in my room, drinking obscene amounts of tea, instant coffee, and decidedly non-instant hot chocolate (think milk, a sauce pan and cocoa - aka a great way to short-term procrastinate), and reading never ending amounts of literature on the world at large. Some part of it is actually extremely liberating though. Since going to IU, I've been so focused on biology that I kind of forgot that there was in fact a larger world out there. Between Middle Eastern politics and Southern African archaeology it's been wonderful to start thinking big picture again. I remember how much I used to enjoy spending my highschool study hall hours just surfing wikipedia to learn about whatever interesting event caught my fancy at the time. It was so nice to feel somewhat broadly-based. I feel like this semester has to some degree, albeit maybe only termporarily, re-awakaed that in me. Even all of this blogging and non-science paper writing I feel has somewhat shaken me out of a sort of biology induced stupor. Mind you, that doesn't mean that I can wait until next semester. Organic, phyics, and mycology all at once? Hell yeah!
Sorry I haven't written about the Cederberg rock paintings. If you ever really want to know, just ask me when I get home and I'll give you an earful. There's so much worth saying, and I'm not sure that I could even really do it justice via this format. Fascinating stuff though, and you know you can count on me to get excited to talk about it!
That's about it for now. Hopefully it won't be so long until another post, but I warn that this particular wave of intensive academia won't be over until next Thursday...

Love and miss you all!

it's going to take even longer...

I just realized that I don't actually have time to say everything I want about the road trip to the Cederberg mountains, but I'll try to before the end of the week. That should give you some indication of how much school work I have, which has unfortunately dovetailed into a serious lack of motivation about school / over motivation about knitting and crocheting.

ninjas, townships, muggings and cheese

So, yet another crazy week. First, some more comments on the elections. We went around and saw the polling stations and things seemed generally pretty laid back but organized. After you vote you get the top of your thumb marked with an ink that stains like henna, only faster. I heard about people trying to wash it off right after it was put on, and it would re-appear rather quickly. People are still walking around with thumbs that look like they were maimed by car doors...
As for parties, some of my favorites I saw were the Cape Separatist Party, the plethora of Muslim and Christian parties, and the party founded on the basis of bringing back the death penalty. Especially the Separatist one. But in the end it happened just like everyone thought it would, and by Saturday we had found out that Jay Z was in fact the new president and the ANC had won in a landslide, but just below 2/3 majority, which is good. So no constitution changing. In the western cape (where I am) the Democratic Alliance (aka DA, aka generally white middle class) won the regional parliament and premier (like a governor). Last election they just got the premier but the ANC got the parliament so they were both basically deadlocked. Throughout the rest of the country the main opposition came from the Congress of the People (Cope), which is an offshoot of the ANC. Cope Leaders were generally in Robben Island along with Mandela, Zuma and the like, but either quit or were kicked out of the ANC due to their non-support for Zuma. As a side note, I think it's interesting that I've seen newspaper headlines calling Jay-Z SA's sexiest politician, which is horrifying. Here's some context: after purportedly raping a girl he was asked if he was afraid of getting HIV/AIDs, and he said no, he'd taken a shower. Awesome. He also has hundreds of counts of corruption and fraud against him that will basically just never be brought to trial probably. One of the minor parties that will be lucky to get even one seat in the national parliament, the Independent Democrats (ID), had as one of their slogans, "Put criminals in jail, not in government." Pretty telling if you ask me.
Aside from that, the week was interesting in and of itself. Emily and I went to see Elections and Erections on Thursday at the Baxter Theatre, which is right on campus. (I know that I'm probably mis-using "which," but I can't help it. I apologize to the proof readers and English buffs out there). It's a one man show by Peter Dirk-Uys, a political satirist who also wrote Macbecki. It was in two acts and really good, but I fell asleep during the second act and couldn't seem to stay awake. In the first act he dressed up as different (female) characters in order to speak as different voices commenting on the elections and politics in general. In the second half he dressed as his alter-ego, Evita Bezedenhuit (or something like that) and interviewed some local political figure. His fame basically comes from being an anti-apartheid activist as well as being openly gay. He's spoken to both Mandela and the national assembly while dressed as Evita, which definitely takes some balls.
Friday I went to a house party that my friend Sebastian was putting on at the house he considers himself an honorary member of. The theme was "Ninjas For the Advancement of the Space Program," and it was loads of fun. Emily and Maggie went as well, and we met loads of cool people and generally had a great time. It was nice to be able to go to a house party especially, because so much of the going out here is clubs, which never feels quite as comfortable. Sebastian had done some really cool art for the walls, and they had (for a reason I never picked up, but wholly agreed with) decided to fill the bathtub with fake blood and a disembodied arm. Walking to get a cab we got mugged, but we were carrying barely anything and the muggers definitely weren't too pushy, so it was not nearly as bad as it could have been. Somewhat scary, but we were intact and even got to keep a few things, so it could always have been much much worse. The only annoyance is having to figure out how to get a new phone, my task for later today...
Saturday I went to Yzerfontein to see some archaeological sites that had been discovered when building excavations had disturbed them. The sites were about an hour from Cape Town and we went for a class field trip. They were mostly shell middens, which are sites with tons of ancient shells that were eaten by ancient people (probably about 120 thousand years). It's amazing especially because they think that modern humans actually evolved here, partially because of the high amount of marine food intake which supplied ancient brains with the omega fatty acids necessary to encephalize (get bigger and more interconnected). Sadly we had to leave everything we found behind. Damn Monument Protection Act!
Sunday (sorry, I know this is a long post!) we went to Gugulethu to go to a really popular restaurant there calls Mzoli's. Shannon has a flatmate name Sia who's married to a girl named Zola (who's about our age) from Gugulethu, so she took us. Gugulethu is a black township, which means it's generally very poor, a little bit rough, and it's likely that some percentage of the population lives in handmade tin shacks. Lots of the townships started when black or colored populations were forcibly removed from where they were an put into these makeshift settlements. We walked around a bit during the day and some sites, including a place where they make Umqoboti, a traditional African beer made from fermented maize meal, among other things. We paid 5 rand to get a big coffee container full of it, and it was pretty good. It tasted really metallic, we think because of the metal container it was served in. I'll post pictures soon, it was quite an experience. We also saw some old hostels where men from the Eastern Cape would stay when they came to this area to make money. No women were allowed in the hostels, but often men would have a wife at home and a girlfriend here. Generally polygamy is widely accepted here. The idea of a "white wedding" - one were the marriage in monogamous - is pretty recent, and even Zuma has multiple wives. In the evening we made it to Mzoli's after buying some alcohol at a shabeen, which is an illegal liquor store (illegal because it doesn't have a license, tends to stay open later than others and will do things like sell you alcohol on a Sunday). Mzoli's is actually the freshest butcher in Gugulethu, so what you do is buy fresh meat then take it back and they grill it up for you. It takes forever, but we had brought salad and bought some dumplings and pap (it's like polenta), so it was a good time even for the vegetarians.
Yesterday was a day off, so we rented a car and went to wine country for a cheese festival. Basically the whole day can be summed up as wine, cheese, chocolate, olives and sun. I was driving so I did a bit of wine tasting early on, but then stuck to juice and water tasting. I think Maggie got sick off of all the cheese, which means we definitely got our money's worth on the entrance ticket. It was so much fun, and I'm already getting excited about the gourmet food festival in May!
So that's about it. I'll post pictures when I can. And kudos to any of you who were dedicated enough to make it all the way through! Love ya all loads!

election week!

So this Wednesday is of particular note, seeing as it is election day here in SA. Everyone generally expects that the ANC will win and that Jacob Zuma (referred to here as Jay Z - I'm not kidding) will become president. Elections here are party based, not people based, so you vote in the party and they pick the person for each individual seat. I'm not sure if it's still on going, but for a while there was also this kind of goofy period of floor crossing. What would happen is that a party would win a seat, and they would in turn put someone in. But then there's this one magical day where the people put into the seats can defect to whatever party they please, so there's no assurance that the party voted in will actually have that seat. I'm not sure if they still do that, I think there were concerns as to its constitutionality. Oh, also, it only takes a 2/3 majority to change the constitution, which from an American perspective is a little scary. On some level I'm really glad that it's so hard to mess with our constitution. I'm excited about the election, but let's not kid ourselves, I'm also just really happy I get the day off. I also get next Monday (Freedom Day) and next Friday (Worker's Day). Exciting! Hopefully next weekend we're taking advantage of the long break to road trip to Cederberg to see the rock art...
This past week I didn't do much other than go to a little art thing at someone's house with my friend Sebastian (a real live South African!). There was pottery this man did that was absolutely beautiful. It was really delicate in a way, which isn't normally my style, but he used these really gorgeous glazes and put textures in with lace, so it was really cool. There were also paintings by a woman. They were good, but nothing too special. There was also an old Argentinian man dressed all in shades of white and creme except for his red tie with white polka dots, which looked like it was painted onto paper. He was certainly older, but still taking art classes and loving life. I'm always so extremely happy to know there are people like that in the world.
Over the weekend Emily and I discovered this amazing market in another south suburb called Woodstock. The market is full of foods, designer clothes and jewelry, and set amongst all of these really cute little boutique-y shops offering just about everything you could want. The market goes on year round, which is even better, so hopefully we're going to make it a Saturday morning fixture. I got a pretty necklace with a ship on it, some shiitake mushrooms, sourdough bread, a gingerbread man, and this amazing preserve made of olive and chilis. In short, I'm in love!
Afterward we went to the Iziko slave lodge (Iziko just is what all of the museums in one group in Cape Town are called). It's the oldest slave lodge in the area and was used to house the slaves of the Dutch East Indies Company. Slavery wasn't abolished here until 1834 under the British, and for a while there were more slaves in the area than white people. Most of the slaves came from northern Africa, India, Malaysia, and the surrounding areas. The local people, the KhoeSan, were largely not enslaved because the colonialists wanted to keep at least somewhat friendly relations with them. The building itself was later converted into the parliament and supreme court buildings, so it's hard to see the infrastructured that allowed for it to be a horrid, dank slave lodge. It wasn't renamed until 1998 and is still under rennovation to properly showcase its history.
Sunday I went to the planetarium with my friend Sebastian. Afterward we walked around the Iziko South Africa Museum, which is basically just a natural history museum. First things first: SA'a dinosaurs are ugly. They look like mutant monitor lizards with dents in their heads and weird fangs. They really got not of the attractive ones. They were so interesting to look at though, mainly becuase probably due to their ugliness they weren't well publicized and therefore I've never seen anything like them. We also saw lots of random animal skeletons, some mineral, and an exhibit on some of the native groups. The planetarium show fell kind of flat because it was all just about the SA Large Telescope (SALT). I guess SALT used to be the biggest in the world, but within the past year or so it was overshadowed by a telescope in the US. As Sebastian puts it, SA realized that it really only had the money to invest in one science, and the one it picked was astronomy. Most of SA is karoo, a sort of scrubby vegetative area with low rainfall, which means that it's dry and flat and visibility is high. I've also been told that we're basically under one of the holes in the atmosphere, which also makes visibility good. Seems like pretty pristine location...
Afterward we went to the Mount Nelson Hotel (not named after Nelson Mandela, but something Nelson, who sounds like a big colonialist). It's basically the fanciest hotel in the area, but we managed to wander in and get some hot chocolate. It was definitely fancier than we were, but lots of fun. You know it's nice when you can finish the salty snacks and they just bring more without asking or charging. That's right, I'm living the good life!
That's about it though, other than the ongoing saga of trying to have good internet access. I was down at the coffee shop earlier and it kept kicking in and out, which is just infinitely frustrating. I've never been so tempted to believe in the gods as when I'm starting at a blank screen trying to figure out what sacred ritual or divine slaughter I need to commit to appease the masters of the interweb. We really don't realize how spoiled we are in the States, and I certainly can't wait to go back to being so!
Love and miss you all, and if any one actually knows what souvenir they want, then I would greatly appreciate the information. Otherwise if you're not careful you'll end up with cowhide house slippers and ugly jade statues of elephants. Consider yourselves warned!

pictures!

I can't put all of the details up right now, but I put a bunch of pictures up on picasa from the trip!