Valentine’s Day was our first real day of classes. I’ve finalized my schedule: African Dance, Ancient Mythology, and Health Psychology. African Dance is all American but I’m looking forward to it for entertainment purposes. Psychology is always interested (I am a psych major), and I’m thrilled to learn about the subject from a Safrican perspective. Then there is Ancient Mythology which was randomly picked but has turned out to be great. The lecturer is young but very on top of her game, which is a refreshing difference from much of the school system here. So far we have learned about mythological origins (aka powerful creatures reproducing). Because it is not a class about Africa, there is a great mix of American and local students in the class. Hopefully it will be a good way to meet other people.
Monday evening 8 of us, a very usual crowd of girls whom I’ve come to really love spending time with, made reservations at a great Italian restaurant on the waterfront called Balducci’s. “Abes”, our regular cab driver called last minute to say he was very behind, so we frantically hailed a mini-bus and told the driver we would pay him 120 rand if he took us straight to the waterfront without stopping to pick up anyone else on the way. That is a lot of money for he and his collector so they happily agreed. There were 2 problems. First, they didn’t have enough gas, so, much to our disappointment and even in the midst of our impatient backseat driving, they pulled into a gas station. Sensing our hurry, the driving kept the car running while the assistant starting yelling out of the window to get service as soon as possible. We were all waiting for the car to burst into flames at that point. Then, we continued on, only to realize that the driver didn’t know the first thing about how to get to the waterfront. The minibus we were on did not have a regular route continuing there. So, of course, the driver began yelling out the window to people in cars adjacent to us to see if they would know of how to get there. Funny thing was, he need only ask us; we have been there before directly from Cape Town.
After many wrong turns, we arrived at the restaurant and had a beautiful meal. It wasn’t complete without a toast,
“On Valentine’s Day, you are supposed to be with the people you love. This is a toast to our families, our friends, and our significant others who we cannot be with right now but who are here with us in our hearts. And this is to us, learning to love each other one day at a time.”
Well, it was something like that at least.
Continuing, Monday night I went to homegroup and learned about Zimbabwe. Did you know that, for a while, they were using a 100 trillion “dollar” bill because inflation was so high? Now they use the American dollar, but bills not cents at all.
Wednesday, we had more class and then took a bikram yoga class at a studio and Claremont. It was fun!
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