If You Seek Amy

Hello all! It’s great to talk to you again. Here I am- still in Cape Town. I’ve been here for seven weeks!! It really is amazing how fast the time is going.

On Wednesday, Diane and I are going into the city to the Mozambique Consulate. In between 8 am and noon we are going to drop off our visa applications. We’ll wait around… And then at 3 pm we can go pick them back up. Seems real secure, right? I'm pretty happy about it though because it means I won't have to go back!

So anyway… What have I been up to? Thursday night I stayed up waaaay too late and wrote a paper for my Advanced South African Politics course. It wasn’t a long paper and it definitely should not have taken me all evening to write it. I was just having troubles.

I also finished the application process for an internship in Ben Nelson’s office in DC. I’m hoping that in July I can go down there and work for a few weeks.

So this weekend was… interesting. CIEE planned a home stay for us in Ocean View. This community is the result of the apartheid regime. In the 1960s, the community that lived in Simon’s Town was forcibly removed from there and forced to live in Ocean View instead. It is traditionally considered a ‘coloured’ community. During apartheid you were one of four things- white, black, indian, or coloured. So anyway- we went there and were placed in people’s homes. I wasn’t particularly excited going into it. If you know me at all you probably know that I don’t really enjoy being forced to spend extended periods of time with strangers- it brings on awkward questions and all that. Once we got to Ocean View I met my host mom Debbie- ironic, right? (People used to call my mommy Debbie!) So anyway- Callie (who was the other CIEE student staying with Debbie) and I had dinner with her, her daughter, Melissa, and Melissa’s friend. We then walked home where we spent several hours get to know one another. At dinner the first question Debbie asked me was if I drank. That probably should have been my first clue as to how the weekend was going to go.

So on Saturday we went to the grocery store in the morning. Debbie was making a big dinner that night and needed to get some things. We also went out to lunch at a local chain so that was quite nice. We got home and didn’t do much of anything. The house was very small- though, exactly what I expected. It had a total of four rooms. Callie and I slept in the same bed, which was in the same room as Debbie and her 16-year-old son Elton. This was something I was not so comfortable with. It would have been one thing if it had just been Debbie, but I did not like sleeping in the same room as her son. He was a nice boy, but… Yeah, just but…

Debbie also likes to have a good time. She was a “cool mom.” Translation: she likes to hang out and drink with her kids’ friends. She told Callie and I about her mom who had been “too strict.” She knew that she wasn’t going to do that with her kids. It really isn’t my business how a person raises their children, but when she would talk to me about how she likes to drink with an 18-year-old girl named Theresa I didn’t know what to say. Alcoholism and drug abuse are MAJOR problems in areas like Ocean View and the townships. Apparently so is smoking. I’m finally getting rid of the headache I’ve had for the last two days from the chain smoking inside the house. Everybody knows I’m really interested in Maternal and Child Public Health, right? Well I didn’t know what to do about all the pregnant girls that were smoking.

Debbie was so nice. Very welcoming and friendly, but I was ready to go home. I NEVER thought I would be ready to go back to LBG. (As you can see from the blog title- I missed my roommate, Amy!)

Some people had great experiences during the home stay weekend. My friend Shelley rode a camel!! So fun, right? My friend Sydney went to a club with her family and also did some shopping. Lots of people went to the beach. There were also a lot of people who had an ok experience like me. It definitely wasn’t the best weekend of my life. It definitely wasn’t the worst weekend of my life. I was just ready to go home.

So this week I have a test in my Advanced South African Politics class. I’m super nervous considering I’m not stellar at Basic South African Politics. Hopefully all goes well.
It’s also my friend Elsha’s birthday this week! We will definitely celebrate that. I don’t know where to get a cake in Cape Town…

I’m really craving a book. Hopefully I can find one when we’re in town on Wednesday. I’m still on the lookout for Ryan Reynolds and Denzel Washington. I know where they’ve been, I just can’t figure out where they’re going ahead of time!!! Maybe God will intervene and I will just bump into them.

Living in Africa sure has me thinking… I’m thinking about what I’m missing at home, what I want to do in the future, etc. This is exactly what I wanted to happen while I’m here.

I hope you all are taking good care of yourselves and the one you love. Thanks for sending some of your cooler weather my way. I’m a happy woman with nonexistent sweat stains!!!
Despite my less-than-stellar weekend, all is still well here in Africa.

If you have some spare time, please send nice thoughts/prayers/whatever to our fellow humans in Japan. This tsunami has been absolutely devastating and I fear that things might get worse before they get better.

Love you all,
B.