Monday night we took a cab to the waterfront to have dinner and watch the Italy-Paraguay game. In the cab on the way there, I convinced the cab driver that I was a professional soccer player. He kept asking which one of the boys was my boyfriend and we told him that they were my bodyguards. He also was extremely solicitous about sports bras, and kept asking me whether I thought they gave enough support for soccer-playing, and what my teammates thought about whether they gave enough support.
When we got to the mall we have to go to the Vodaphone store so Jim could get a new phone. The boys had been telling me that we had to go to this place to meet “Hirsh’s sister,” and kept talking about this girl who apparently looked just like Hirsh. I was expecting to be looking for a human being, but when we got there they just pointed to this huge poster on the wall of a girl and a guy talking on a cell phone. Apparently Hirsh’s sister did some modeling and the picture (taken in the states) ended up on the wall of a Vodaphone store in a mall in Cape Town. Random.
We had dinner at a tapas place in the mall at Victoria’s Wharf and watched the game, which ended up being a tie.
Note: The lady at our lodge/hotel who monitors the breakfast buffet activities in the morning scares the living daylights out of me every single day. I’m always still half asleep and she manages to pop out from behind plants, from under the buffet table, from inside of the coffee pot, etc, and scream “GOOD morn-ING” in this creepily cheerful, extremely loud voice, and she’s just grinning and so excited that I’ve come to breakfast (which I do every morning), and I’m like blown across the room in my half-asleep state from the blinding power of her greeting. I’m glad she’s enthuastic about her job but seriously…
Note: I'm using a cell phone that Russell bought somewhere in Asia with a local SIM card that I bought here, and I was playing with it yesterday and I found that it has a series of "Quick Notes" programmed into it (these are supposed to be texts that you would commonly send to a friend like "Where are you?" or "I'm almost there", and you can just send them without having to type them out). The ones in this phone are hilarious. The phone says "MUCH" on the front of it, which apparently is some sort of TV show or TV station somewhere in Asia. Here are the quick-notes programmed in the phone:
-"NICK" (who is Nick?)
-"Can't talk-watching Much!"
-"Go away, you smell like Ed the Sock!" (What is Ed the Sock?? And even if that is a thing, why would you ever need to say this to someone?)
-"S.O.S.- Save me!" (a little more information here would probably be necessary)
-"Check who's on Much right now!" (ok, we get it, you are advertising "Much")
-"You're too much for Much!" (seriously?)
-"Rock and Roll!" (not something people say un-ironically)
-"Where is you at?" (Asian attempt at ebonics)
((Russell has since informed that this is a Canadian phone he got off of E-bay. Womp womp)).
Tuesday night we ate pizza and watched the North Korea-Brazil game (Brazil won 2-1). Afterwards Hirsh, Jim and I went to this bar called the “Waiting Room,” which involved walking up 3 flights of what felt like a fire escape and then dancing semi-awkwardly in what felt like someone’s living room. We soon left that bar and went to a more local bar, where they were playing old school 50 Cent, and we were dancing and having a good time until I felt something kind of pull on my purse. I turned and saw this guy kind of tangled up in it (my jacket was also tied to the strap) and at first I thought he just must have gotten caught on it, but then I looked down and saw it was completely unzipped. He looked kind of surprised/sheepish and then jetted to the other side of the bar. I’m definitely glad I caught this guy in the act before I had something else stolen…
After that happened, we left and went to Dubliner’s, which is this huge bar on long street that has dancing and more contemporary music downstairs, but upstairs is an awesome piano bar 7 nights a week. This woman was playing Billy Joel, the Beatles, Elton John, and the piano she was playing on was literally built to be leaned on (there was padding all around it and it was covered in glass so you could put your drink down).
By the time we left it was pouring outside and we ran back to our hotel in the rain. We were all completely soaked but it was pretty fun running around in the rain!
Wednesday was a public holiday (“Family Day”?) so we didn’t have work. A couple of Hirsh’s co-workers had invited Hirsh to go with them to this place called Mzoli’s, which is an outdoor bar/BBQ place in a township near Mowbray, where Hirsh works at the University of Cape Town Community Law Center. So Hirsh at I left the hotel around 8:30, walked to the train station, caught a train to Mowbray, then caught a minibus taxi to the campus. I can't believe Hirsh does this every morning. If you have never had a minibus taxi experience, you really should. These minibuses just drive around and pick up people on the sides of the road, and charge people a little over a dollar to shuttle them to wherever they want to get off on the route. There's usually one guy driving and one guy collecting money from passengers, and they usually BLAST extremely loud music. For them to make any money they have to squish as many people into the van as they possibly can, and this often leads to some interesting, albeit cramped encounters.
We got to the campus and waited around a bit to meet up with Hirsh's co-workers, who eventually showed up an hour late with 4 other Americans they had met at a bar or something the night before and invited along.
Hirsh's co-workers are really nice- while we were waiting for everyone to show up, we hung out in the office and this one guy made me some DELICIOUS coffee. I told him how good it was and he told me that he got it from his native town in eastern Africa. He said he would bring me some back next time he went home and give it to Hirsh to give to me (people are so nice in this country).
Then, we piled into three cars and drove to the township. I knew the surrounding areas of Cape Town were really different than Cape Town itself, but I was really struck by the difference. This township consisted of stretches of little one or two room huts made out of wood and plastic, and clearly had no plumbing. We eventually arrived at Mzoli's, which apparently was started by this entrepreneur who just basically put up a bunch of tents and built a butcher shop right next to it. Now it's a total hotspot, and people come from all the surrounding areas to drink beer, listen to the (REALLY LOUD) techno music they play, watch games, eat huge amounts of meat that you get at the butcher shop next door and then eat with your hands out of big communal bowls, and hang out. It was a beautiful day and there were a ton of people there-- I don't know if this is typical of a Wednesday afternoon or if it was particularly festive because it was Family Day and because there were three World Cup games playing.
Hirsh and I are both vegetarians, so we both realized that we might be facing a slight problem in the getting lunch department. Fortunately, Velma, Hirsh's co-worker (a middle aged South African woman who is hilarious and was drunk and dancing the whole day) went "around the corner" (wherever that may be) and came back with two to-go boxes of what turned out to be a DELICIOUS mix of potatoes, chick peas, green peppers, onions, tomatoes, and spicy sauce. The rest of the group went to the butcher shop (I did not go for obvious reasons) and came back with an extremely large amount of meat. It looked disgusting to me, but everyone said it was pretty much the most delicious BBQ they'd ever had. The only thing they brought back that I could have eaten was a loaf of bread that happened to be "Albany" brand (see photo). Go capital of NYS!
At one point, Velma went over to the bar to get drinks, and came back with a 6-pack of "Brutal Fruit," which apparently is kind of like a Smirnoff Ice-type drink. I think this is quite possibility the best name for a malt beverage and I have been annoying Hirsh ever since by referring to all alcohol-related activities using Brutal Fruit-related terminology (e.g. "That guy must have been hitting the Brutal Fruit pretty hard last night" or "We should go out Brutal Fruit-ing tonight").
I was walking to the bar after the Chile-Honduras game, and I hear someone yell "CARY!" Assuming no one in this township knew me, I was very surprised. I turned around to find RONALD (he works in my office and who is always decorating the office with South African flags and wearing ridiculous bufana gear) who was there with his girlfriend! He made me wear his ridiculous glasses and then he took pictures of me and Hirsh and Hirsh's co-workers.
Now it's time to talk about Carl, the Worst American that has Ever Lived (also known as The Reason Why People Hate Americans). So, there were these four Americans that Velma had invited along with us. They were two couples traveling together, and three of them were from Norfolk (an area on the coast in southern Virginia) and were generally meek/inoffensive. CARL, on the other hand, was anything but meek. I've decided that a good way to describe him is by analogy to the guy who saunters into a party smiling and winking and waving at people who aren't paying any attention to him or waving back, but he just wants to look cool by pretending he's having mutual exchanges of greeting. My best Carl anecdotes:
-When Carl told Hirsh and me all about how he "gets the local flavor of different countries" while traveling (he does this by going into grocery stores and seeing what kinds of food is on the shelves). BRILLIANT, Carl.
-When Carl, who apparently works for U.S. Customs, told us all about when he was sent to Iraq to train customs officials there, and described it as if he were a really important federal government official who was sent on a top secret mission to end the war and succeeded by using Jason Bourne-like tactics.
-When Carl started a sentence with "IF YOU EVER HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO VISIT THE BRONX...." (and yes, Carl talks in capital letters).
-When Carl came up to me and pulled out this little blinking thing attached to his vest, which turned out to be a whistle that he blew AS LOUD AS HE COULD in my ear and then, after I regained hearing in that ear, said to me "you didn't expect that, did you?" (No, I didn't.)
-When Carl told me that he lived in "WASHINGTON, D.C." which (not that I had probably ever been there) was THE MOST EXPENSIVE CITY IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. When I said that I actually didn't think that was true, he corrected me by telling me that he read it in an article in THE TIMES.
-When Carl repeatedly yelled BUFANA BUFANA (name of South AFrican soccer team), pronouncing it "BUFAN-A BUFAN-A" (correct pronunciation is bufah-na bufah-na) in this nasally kind of voice.
-When, during the car ride from Mzoli's to where we could catch a minibus taxi back to Cape Town, Carl took pictures of EVERYTHING (literally road signs, the steering wheel of the car, cars driving past us, the license plate of a car in front of us, Hirsh and I sitting stone-faced in the backseat).
-When on the minibus taxi ride back to Cape Town, Carl danced THE ENTIRE 20-MINUTE RIDE to the really loud techno music being played (I wish SO much that I had video footage of this), occasionally twirling around the blinking whistle on his North Face jacket as if it were a glowstick and he was at a rave.
-When Carl took 5 minutes of video footage of the minibus ride, rotating the camera around to get a 360-degree view ("the FULL experience," according to Carl). Honestly, the look on the face of the guy sitting next to him that was half confusion, half pure disbelief was probably the most hilarious thing I've ever seen in my life.
-When Carl on the minibus ride made his girlfriend take about 6,000 pictures of him cupping his ear up to the speaker with this weird like "WHAAAT?" expression on his face.
-When Carl was talking to the minibus drivers in robot-speak, screaming, "SOUTH AFRICA SOCCER TONIGHT... WIN??? OR NO??" (shaking his head vehemently to convey the concept of NO), and the minibus driver responded in perfect English, "I think we're going to win" (because people in South Africa speak ENGLISH, Carl).
Hirsh and I were NOT fans of Carl.
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