South Africa: Hello From South Africa

Molo !! (Hello in Xhosa)

Sorry i have not been writing, i have been semi busy, but here i am. It has been a month now and i feel like my time is dwindling down :( . So upset about that. But i have met some amazing people since i have been here. And the "are you American " question never gets old haha. Lately i have been just attending classes and hanging out with friends. This weekend however, i will finally be going out of town to do some touristy activities! So pumped. I have had the liberty of touring grahamstown however, and started community engagement yesterday. It was fun but really difficult. This is when i really realized the language barrier. In town, it is okay because i am only going to the store and they can speak a little bit of English. But at the program , they do not speak English so it is tough. But the bright side of the story is that i have been learning Xhosa and am getting a little better at it. I even speak to the ladies in the dining hall in Xhosa now and they love it! It feels good too because i felt bad speaking English to them when they barely understand me. So two points for me!

PHOTOS

View of town from monument

lecture hall

campus

downtown

A few weeks ago, we had a campus wide party --"the great field party". It was fun because i was with my Friends, but i personally did not like the party as much as i thought of was. Mainly because the party is a time where the students wear overalls and throw paint on each other, although i didn't know this. The festivities began at 3 pm so i figured the paint part was over way earlier than when i arrived at 7, boy was i wrong. So i was dodging paint blows the whole night because they did not care where they threw the paint. One guy was even walking around throwing paint on people like it was fairy dust. So, i was definitely watching out for him lol.

Me and some friends at the Great Field Party

here you can see the powder i mentioned

We have also had two balls within our hall for the last month. I will include pictures of that too. Classes are going okay, but i am not used to huge lectures. My classes have almost 400 kids in them and the teachers don't even know you exist. Definitely different from what i am used to at WAC. But the biggest difference is sitting in a lecture and listening to one professor for an entire class period. So it has taken some getting used to.

Hall ball and friends

Other photos

Lovely ol' g-town

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Community Outreach Project art work

Welcome to Grahamstown

The cathedral

We also got a chance to visit the townships here in grahamstown and ate a wonderful traditional xhosa meal prepared by momma docs. The townships are where most of the "black africans" stay.