I went to the post office here to try to mail Alie a birthday present. After standing behind a guy wearing a sweatshirt that said “Knowledge Enlightens” for about a half hour, I finally got to the counter. The woman asked me if it was ok for her to send it by “surface mail,” or by boat, and then told me that would take about 3 months. So I asked if she could send it “by plane,” and she kind of raised her eyebrows and then proceeded to put 5,432 stickers all over the package (some of which were just little stickers with an airplane on them). So I have no idea if this is ever actually going to reach North Carolina but we shall see.
Tuesday afternoon was the South Africa game against France and Hirsh, David and I went to a sports bar near our hotel to watch it. The S. Africa team played really REALLY well but in the end they lost 2-1 to France.
On Wednesday on my way to work I was innocently walking down Long Street and the next thing I knew I had COMPLETELY wiped out and was sort of laying in a tangled little pile on the side of the road. I literally couldn’t move at first and this really nice guy who had a vendor stand right by where I fell came and like carried me out of the street. It took me a while to get my bearings and it turns out I was fine, just a lot of nasty bruises and a few scrapes. I’m still not too sure what happened but I think it was because the soles on these shoes I bought here have pretty much no traction at all (I bought new shoes with traction that day at lunch) and one of the guys helping me said it’s a really slippery part of the road and he’s seen a bunch of other people slip there (I'm not the only one!). When I fell, I was actually heading to the train station to go to Observatory for a meeting at the Rape Crisis center, so Hirsh (who takes the train to work every morning) was able to swing by in a cab and grab me and help me get to the train station.
I got to Observatory around 9:45 and walked up Trill street, this really cool street with a bunch of restaurants and cafes, to try to find the Rape Crisis center. For security reasons there is no sign on the building, and the only information my contact had given me was that it was a “blue and white stripey building” up Trill street, so I had a little trouble finding the place. I called Jennifer at Rape Crisis and she just kept saying it was “blue and white stripey” (not a very helpful description, as it turned out). I still couldn’t find it so she eventually came out of the building to try and locate me. The building, or really the house, was distinctly turquoise/green, hence my confusion. It was beautiful on the inside though- they had a lot of cool photos and pro-female artwork up and the house was really old and unique looking. The next day I actually had to go back to the Center for a two-hour meeting with the roleplayers involved in this victim empowerment initiative- basically, they have been contracted by the UN to undertake this project assessing the feasibility of victim empowerment legislation in South Africa, and so they’re working with the South African Department of Social Development (DSD) and the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to make this work. They’re midway through the project in the research phase, and they also have a blog about the issue which you all should check out (http://victimempowermentsa.wordpress.com/). My angle coming from ODAC is about why rape victims should have the automatic right to be updated on their perpetrator’s progress through the criminal justice system, so as soon as I’m done with my brief about the state of access to information laws in the DRC (summary: dismal), I’m going to be writing up a report on that for them that they’ll eventually incorporate into a presentation they’ll be making to the DCD, the Dept of Health, the Dept. of Justice, the National Prosecuting Authority, the Dept. of Correctional Services, the S.African Police Services, the Dept. of Community Safety and the Ministry of Women, Children and People with Disabilities (aka a lot of different stakeholders).
Street in Observatory:
Inside the Rape Crisis center:
On Wednesday afternoon I got let off work early to watch the 4:00 USA v. Algeria game at O’Driscoll’s (an Irish pub). Apparently having to watch your country in a soccer game is a totally legitimate reason to leave work early here. Anyway, there were about 15 of us in the upstairs part of the bar watching the game, which turned out to be an INCREDIBLE game—for those of you who haven’t been following, the USA beat Algeria 1-0 in the last added-on 4 minutes of the game. We were all FREAKING out and then went out to celebrate afterwards.
On Thursday the only notable thing that happened was when I came home to my room to find a little can of deodorant with an attached card that said “I’m sorry for the mishap…please enjoy the rest of your journey” sitting on my bed. I was rather befuddled as to what kind of "mishap" had occurred and as to why there was a new deodorant on my bed, and I looked around to discover that my own deodorant was nowhere to be seen. I found out today (the next Monday) from the Really Happy Lady that apparently the girl who cleans my room had knocked my deodorant out the window and it exploded when it hit the ground. Interesting.
On another note, the girl who cleans my room really needs to chill out. As soon as you open a bar of soap and use it once you literally blink and it’s gone and there’s a brand new packaged bar of soap in its place. It’s really quite wasteful. Additionally, they like to “tidy” the room which involves them hiding all of my stuff in different places every single day, leading me to waste about 10 minutes every morning looking for my hairdryer/shoes/jacket. The other day I had left a pile of clean gym clothes on my chair to change into when I got home from work, and when I got back the clothes were nowhere to be found—I eventually found them in my dirty laundry along with my other dirty gym clothes. Awesome. So on Sunday I finally talked to the guy downstairs and politely asked him to ask whoever cleans/completely rearranges my room everyday to kindly chill out.
On Thursday night, Hirsh’s best friend from college, Mike, got into town and since it was his birthday we went to dinner at this place called “Cape to Cuba” which was very yummy.
Mike attacking his piece of birthday cake at Cape to Cuba:
On Friday night we watched some soccer game (I honestly can’t even remember who was playing due to an affliction I’m going to call ‘Soccer Overload') at this place called “Bob’s” and then kind of bar/club-hopped for a while. At one point we were about to go into a club but witnessed the bouncer telling a girl who had apparently swore at him that he was going to “slap her in the face” and repeatedly calling her “lightie” (which I believe is the opposite of being called “darkie” and is pretty offensive). So we ex-nayed on that bar and just kind of wandered around for a while, at one point coming upon this sign (seriously they will do anything to lure tourists into bars around here):
Saturday was a very windy but sunny day, and after sleeping in, working out, and getting some laundry done we all convened around 4:00 to get ready to celebrate/watch the USA v. Ghana game. I had purchased a lovely new trucker-ish looking America hat and I also quite craftily sewed an American flag onto a T-shirt.
The boys bought these really weird packets of whiskey, which I think are designed so that you can sneak them into events (and this is exactly what they planned to do with them):
They kind of look like salad dressing packets.
The FanFest was closed because of the wind, so we went to the Purple Turtle to watch the game. A lot of other Americans had convened there as well.
It was quite a good time until Ghana scored a second time, making the score 2-1 and causing USA to lose the match and causing many Americans here in South Africa to become very, very sad. We tried to cheer ourselves up afterwards and I even started a limbo contest using my USA scarf as a limbo pole.
Yesterday (Sunday) was an absolutely beautiful day and I went running down to Seapoint along the “Fan mile”, a kind of path through town that has been set up for fans to use when going to the soccer stadium. The streets were pretty empty because everyone was watching the Germany v. England game (Germany eventually won). Then I proceeded to go to sleep at 6:30 pm and sleep for 13 hours, which was amazing.
Today I had a pretty productive day at work, and at lunch I went back to the Eastern Food Bazaar we found the other day. You basically go into what looks from the outside like a garage but on the inside is this huge food place with different counters of Indian food. I got some delicious dosa for about 2 dollars and then ate it outside in the sunshine near my work.
After work I went to the gym, which is usually not a noteworthy experience except that today two South African women who were on ellipticals on either side of my found it appropriate to have a screaming conversation at each other across me as we were working out. If I shifted at all they would bend and crane their necks so they could see each other as they continued their ridiculously loud conversation in Africaans across me. Finally I thought I was going to have a panic attack so I just asked one of them if they wanted to switch with me (in kind of an irritated tone, I’m sure) and they were just like “oh, sorry, we haven’t seen each other all weekend,” as if that make it a totally understandable thing to do.
Sigh.
Tomorrow I’m going to the Round of 16, the Spain v. Portugal game!! I’m so excited. David found us reasonably priced tickets and it will be my very first World Cup game!
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