being charged by a baboon, ostriches, cape point, and an 8k race

Highlights from the past week:

Tuesday morning began ominously when I found myself to be completely locked into my hotel room. The door just WOULD NOT open and I started panicking and envisioning myself having to be extracted from my room through the window by firemen. I called downstairs to the reception desk and they sent up the Really Happy Woman, who just kind of jingled keys outside the door and tried to fit different ones into the lock. I called Jim on my cell phone to let him know that I was going to be late for work because I was literally trapped in my room, and he came across the hall and told me through the door to flick this tiny little knob thing that looked like the end of a screw which was apparently some kind of secret deadbolt that I hadn’t known about. I flicked it and the door immediately opened to reveal the Really Happy Lady standing there looking confused and holding a lot of keys, and Jim laughing hysterically. Well. Now I know how to deadbolt my room.

At work on Tuesday I had a meeting with Alison, the director of ODAC, and we solidified my agenda for the rest of my time here. I’m going to be working on writing a policy piece about how a proactive access to information provision should be included in any piece of victim empowerment legislation that is proposed.

On Wednesday, my computer charger exploded. Well, it didn’t actually explode but it let out a very sad sort of sizzling noise and then refused to work anymore. I used my computer until it ran out of battery and then left work to walk 15,846 miles around Cape Town looking for a Mac charger. I came to believe that I am the only Mac user in the city of Cape Town, and after being offered this monstrous looking computer adapter device with 20 different cords springing out of it at all angles (none of which fit a Mac, mind you, much to the dismay of the people trying to sell it to me) a bunch of different times, I finally gave up and went back to the office. You can get Mac chargers online here, but they go for 1200 rand, which is almost $160--an absurd price for a computer charger. Fortunately, someone in the office told me that Alison (the director) uses a Mac, and when I asked her if I could borrow her charger for a little while she told me she actually had an extra one at home that I could use for the rest of the summer. She brought it in on Thursday and my problem was solved.

On Wednesday for lunch, Jim and I went to this little Italian café I had been wanting to try called “Trisha Delisha” (an excellent name for a café). Turns out it was pretty delisha- the focaccia bread they use for sandwiches is amazing and the place is ridiculously cheap.

Wednesday afternoon I trekked back to the ENS law offices to have my mock/practice interview. It all felt extremely formal, which was kind of awkward because I don’t actually want to work there. These two Indian-South African guys interviewed me for about 35 minutes, asking me not only the standard interview-type questions (why did you want to go to Law School? Why should we hire you?) but also an array of other comparative law questions about the differences between the U.S. and South African legal systems. I don’t think they were actually trying to test me on my knowledge of the differences; it seemed more like they were actually just curious about how we do various things in the States. I felt like it went pretty well and it definitely showed me the kinds of things I need to think about before the HLS interview program in August.

On Thursday after lunch, Jim and I were walking back to our office and we saw this guy who was trying to sell a bunch of little toy monkeys on wheels that sort of bob up and down as you wheel them. I guess the guy thought the best way to market his wares to me was to aggressively run one of the little wheeled-monkeys right up to me and sort of frantically zigzag it back in forth in front of me as I was walking. It scared the living daylights out of me and in no way made me want to purchase one of them.

I’ve been getting up at about 6 every morning to go to the gym, which is right across the street from me. On Thursday morning, I was walking through the reception area to head out, and Miles, the nice man who is usually at the front desk, got up to open the door for me and accompany me outside. I was kind of saying “oh no don’t bother getting up I can let myself out,” but he just kept coming and said something that I couldn’t really understand—all I caught was something about “my (his) routine”. He let me out and I started walking across the street to the gym. It’s still dark out at this time but it’s a safe area and the gym is literally a 15 second walk from the front door of our hotel. I looked back as I was about to enter the center where the gym is, and I saw Miles just standing outside the hotel watching me. The next morning when this happened again I realized that he’s been watching me every morning as I walk to my gym to make sure I got there ok! He’s also protective of me in a couple of other adorable ways. On Friday evening I was heading out to go get pizza up the street with Nick, Mike and Dave, and they called me when they were about 5 minutes away from crossing in front of our hotel so I could come down and join them as they were walking by. Miles insisted on coming out with me to wait for them, and asked me all sorts of questions about where we were going, how long I had known these friends, and was I sure I was going to have someone to walk me home later. So Mom & Dad, please do not worry about me because I have someone here who is extremely concerned about my well-being and is not going to let anything happen to me on his watch.

On Saturday we were supposed to go to Robben Island in the morning, but since it was raining they canceled all the boat trips out to the island. So I got to sleep in a little bit, and then at 2:00 David, Hirsh, Jim and I rented a car to drive down to Cape Point/Cape of Good Hope, the southernmost tip of the African continent. Jim drove, because he’s had more experience than the rest of us with driving not only in the opposite side of the car but on the opposite side of the street.
As we were leaving Saasveld (our hotel), we noticed this vehicle parked in our parking lot, which definitely belongs to one of the staff, and we absolutely NEED to find out whose car it is because it's hilarious.



We drove down Chapman’s Peak drive, which is this beautiful road down the western coast overlooking the ocean.



The rain had stopped so it was a very fresh, cool day, and there were these beautiful waves crashing all around the rocks and jetties in the ocean. We passed this Ostrich farm, and I of course made them stop the car so I could speak with some of the ostriches. I started taking some pictures of them and they seemed very curious about me.



One of them started walking right up to me, and I took a picture of it. I thought my camera (phone) had been really zoomed in, and then when I took it away from my eye after taking the picture, I saw that the ostrich was basically RIGHT in my face (the lens hadn't been zoomed in at all). I kind of jumped because the ostrich was so close he could had pecked my eye out, and then I guess I scared the ostrich because he kind of jumped too. Here is the picture:



We kept driving until we got near the Cape Point National Park. We were all starving and we hadn't passed a single place to get anything to eat on the drive down, so we stopped into the little welcome building to get some snacks. All they had was soda, chocolate bars, and chips, so we all bought some bags of chips and were standing outside the little building eating them. Perhaps I should have been warned by this sign



...but as it was I was not really prepared for what was about to happen. I had just opened my bag of chips when around the corner came this fairly large baboon carrying a little baby baboon in her chest. Before I even had time to point this out to anyone else, she literally CHARGED at me. She swiped at my bag of chips but they didn't fall-- at this point I wasn't even scared because I actually hadn't had time to process what was actually happening. Then she charged at me AGAIN and just grabbed the chips right out of my hand. Then she sat basically at my feet and proceeded to eat the entire bag of chips, reaching into the bag like a human and stuffing 4 or 5 chips into her mouth at once. The little baby was just sort of looking curiously up at his mother eating the chips. When she was done, she ripped the side of the bag and licked the inside of the bag for any remaining crumbs.




Then, she charged at David who was watching the scene in disbelief and who was also holding a bad of chips. David yelled "NO" and kicked his leg out toward the baboon, who was scared off and left the scene. We all just started cracking up and now we joke all the time that whenever I start to eat/do anything, a baboon is just going to come up and either take the food or stop me from doing what I was about to do. Well, that baboon definitely picked an easy target-- I probably would have just given her the chips anyway if she had asked nicely.

We entered the National Park and as we were driving we saw an ostrich just sort of casually walking down the road. We slowed down and said hello to it, and it just kind of glared at us and kept walking. I suggested that we give it a ride, but no one else seemed very keen on this suggestion.


We drove as far as we could and then got out of the car to walk up to the lighthouse on Cape Point. The walk up was SO gorgeous and it was so cool being on a landmass that had ocean almost all around it.




On the way up we also saw this sign, which was fitting:


It was hard to conceptualize that when you turned away from the ocean, you were staring towards the entire African continent.








There was also a cool post that had signs pointing towards different major cities and showing how far they were away. I felt very far from home when I saw that New York was over 12, 000 km away!


On the way back, we stopped at Boulder's Beach again so Jim could see some of the penguins, because he wasn't with us when we went the first time. Then we stopped and ate dinner at this place called Cafe Piscado in Simon's Town and had some delicious Italian food. Then we drove farther north to Kalk Bay and watched the Germany/Uruguay match (to determine who would get third place in the World Cup) at the Brass Bell. Germany won. Then we drove back to Saasveld.

On Sunday morning, we woke up at 6 in the morning to drive over to Langa, a township about 15 minutes outside of Cape Town, to run in an 8km charity race. It was a chilly morning but at least it wasn't raining. It seemed like all the people running in the race were really intense runners-- a lot of them had matching neon jerseys and track suits, and a lot of them just had the perfect running physique. The race winded through the streets of the township, and it was an interesting experience trying to focus both on running the race at a decent pace and also on the serious poverty of the township. The houses are mostly just little huts with nailed-on tin roofs. The people of the township, however, were EXTREMELY encouraging, especially the women, and they waved and cheered at me as I was running by like I was a celebrity. Anyway, I ran the race in 44 minutes, which meant I was running on average about a 8:40 for 5 miles. Not great, but not too bad. Here's a picture of all of us after the race with a very lovely nuclear power plant and Table Mountain in the background:


On the way home we stopped and had brunch at a French place with an Italian name, and then went home and took some much needed showers. The final World Cup match was last night, and Spain beet the Netherlands. Can't believe the World Cup is over! I think the entire country is suffering from a national World Cup hangover.

Cheers!

World Cup Game, Camps Bay, etc

See my facebook photo album for all my pictures: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2375952&id=1517602&l=ca4bed14fa

Highlights from the past week:
Tuesday night, Hirsh, David, Mike, Hirsh’s two friends visiting from NY and I went to the Round of 16 Spain-Portugal game. I decided to root for the underdogs (Portugal) and wore a sweet Portugal hat and a Portugal flag Hirsh bought me to make up for him stealing and then immediately losing my USA hat last weekend during the US/Ghana game.


We walked along the “Fan Mile” to the game which was pretty crazy- all sorts of people out wearing various Spain or Portugal gear (or just really weird outfits) loudly and obnoxiously blowing vuvezelas and/or yelling. There are these little tiny colorful buildings that line the Fan Mile street selling food and World Cup stuff, and one of them had a big sign on it that said “EGOOOALLL” (which I’m going to conclude was because whoever named the store didn’t know that people were actually saying the world “goal” when they yelled GOOALLLL during a game, and thought people were just yelling “EGOALLLL”). We got to the spectacularly huge stadium and, after waiting in line forever to pass through security and get our tickets checked, finally found our seats. The seats weren’t bad, but we decided for the second half of the game to just sort of stand on the first level and watch from there. It was a GREAT view, and it was a much crazier crowd down there than the one around our seats. Even though I’m not a huge soccer fan, it was really cool being that close to the players that were being watched on TV by millions of people at that very moment. Spain eventually won (poor Portugal). The vuvuzelas weren’t as loud as I expected, but I was glad I had “vuvezela-eliminating earplugs,” as they market them (although I was a bit disappointed that they don’t actually eliminate vuvezelas, which would be cool).




Wednesday night was quite a disaster. After work, Mike, David and I went to this Mexican place right near our hotel called Fat Cactus, and after discovering that there was no indoor seating and it was quite windy and cold on their deck, we went across the street to this cute little place called Pasta Factory. Turns out, this was a horrible decision. The place was small and only had about 4 other parties eating there, but it took FOREVER. Interestingly, after the waitress served us all our respective pasta dishes, she turned to me (and only me) and asked if I needed a bib. A BIB. Really??? Mike and David thought this was pretty hilarious and I still can’t really figure out why she a) asked me if I needed a bib, and b) why she didn’t ask Mike or David if they needed a bib. At the end of the 2 hour meal, we got up to leave, and I looked down to where I’d had my purse sitting at my feet, and it was gone. This was a big purse (that I got in London, sniffle) with just a LOT of personal stuff in it- my wallet with cash, credit cards, student ID, driver’s license, health insurance card; medication; makeup; this really great map of Cape Town; and all sorts of other stuff that it has turned out to be very difficult to replace around here. Luckily, I had had both my Blackberry and my local cell phone sitting on the table, so that wasn’t stolen, and since my camera was already stolen, that couldn’t have been stolen either. I was in total disbelief that this had happened, especially because it was such a small restaurant and we were the only table in that part of the room. The staff started suggesting that these three girls who came in and out to get take out while we were eating must have done it, and described them to me in great detail and then wrote down the description for me to give to the police. I immediately believed that it must have been these girls who had taken it, because I tend to be pretty oblivious about what goes on around me (especially when I’m in the middle of a conversation, and we had been having a heated discussion about the accepted custom of women taking their husbands’ name when they get married), but David and Mike were pretty incredulous and told me later that they were almost 100% sure they would have seen these 3 girls if they had come into the restaurant, and especially if they had edged by our table at some point. Leading to my confusion was also the fact that as soon as we asked them if they had security cameras, they said no, and then when we pointed to a camera that was facing our table, they immediately said it didn’t work (this could also be explained by the fact that a lot of restaurants have fake cameras that don’t ever actually take any footage just to scare people). Anyway, we finally left the restaurant and as soon as we got back to our hotel, Miles from the front desk convinced me to call the cops. Two officers came pretty quickly and took down the entire story. This was actually a pretty interesting experience because a lot of the research I’ve been doing focuses on victim empowerment policies and how SAPS (S. African Police Services) treats victims of crime. So aside from the suckiness of the situation (the fact that this ‘field research’ came at the expense of my entire purse), it was pretty cool to see how they treated me and what they were doing. I’d say overall they were very thorough and considerate, and the next morning I even got a text message from them saying my case had been filed and telling me what my case reference number was. Nothing has come of me reporting the theft, but hey, I guess I’m glad I at least reported it.

I have become friends with the Somalian guy who picked me up out of the road when I fell the other day. His name is Kalan and he has a vendor stand on a side street off of Long street. He asked me how many Somalian friends I had in the US, and I told him I really don’t think I have any. He’s a real sweetheart though.

On Thursday, Jim came back from his foray across South Africa with his 3 fraternity brothers from college during which they attended 6 World Cup games. I was most jealous of the part of their trip when the got to play with baby lion cubs at this place outside of Joburg. That night we all went to the Burger Joint (the one whose kitchen my fire escape leads into) and they, of course, forgot to ever bring my order. I was entering food panic mode (which those of you who know me well is NOT a good mode), and the people at our hotel offered to let me have some of the traditional South African meal they were cooking for some other guests. The manager kept saying it would be “her greatest pleasure,” which I found hard to believe, but I accepted their offer. WELL, turns out unbeknownst to me “mince” is made of beef, so after taking a huge bite and spitting it out I had to figure out a plan C for dinner (and I also had to figure out how to make it look like I ate a lot of the food they had so nicely offered me). Plan C involved some sad microwave noodles.

Friday was one of the weirder days I’ve had in a while. To make a long story short, there’s this huge law firm in S. Africa called “ENS” (Edward Nathan & Sonnenburg, or something), which they claim is the largest law firm in Africa (and I now believe them). Anyway, I guess one of the partners their went to the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, so they really wanted to meet with (recruit) Harvard Law students who were going to be in South Africa this summer. The people at HLS thought it would be a good idea to combine this meeting with their Mock Interview Program, through which they set up mock interviews for HLS students this summer wherever they are in the world to prepare for the Early Interview Program in August. Anyway, this women Themba at ENS set up this whole day for us and emailed us this really intense sounding itinerary about a month ago, and so at 8 am sharp on Friday, we showed up at their building.

As I was about to walk through the revolving doors, I heard something and turned around to laugh at Hirsh, who had just walked into a pole. As I was laughing at him, I didn’t realize that the revolving door (which was apparently automatic after the first push) was continuing to revolve, leading me to become trapped between the revolving door and the door frame. When I finally dislodged myself I basically went tumbling into the firm’s front reception area, and David and Hirsh and Jim were laughing so hard at me that it took them a minute to get themselves under control.

The ENS building was pretty ridiculous- there was a gym on the first floor, and when we went up to the 5th floor to the main reception, the entire floor was covered with a fake grass carpet-thing that was simulating a soccer field. When I went to find a bathroom, I went through multiple sliding glass doors that had fake soccer goals painted onto them, and multiple little areas that were suddenly outdoors and had large rock formations and fountains.



We were eventually brought to a room full of “vac students,” or law school students, who were basically interning/interviewing with ENS for their 2 week vacation period. Here, instead of a law degree being a post-graduate degree, it’s a 5 year program that’s combined with your university education. Anyway, they basically treated us like celebrities and we were set up in the back of the room in a row of chairs facing the entire group in order to introduce ourselves to all the vac students. David, Hirsh and Jim introduced themselves first, and they all said the same exact thing (“Hi I’m ___, I’m from ___, and I’m happy to be here”). Everyone kind of laughed when Jim followed suit and said “I’m happy to be here,” so I thought it would be appropriate to say “Hi, I’m Cary, I’m from the NY area and I’m NOT happy to be here.” Apparently they didn’t really get the sarcasm and the room was silent except for Jim, Hirsh and David cracking up… Brilliant idea, Cary.

Then they put us all in vans and we went to the City Center to get a tour of all the courts and the jails. Seeing the courts was pretty interesting but the prosecutor who was giving us the tour kept interrupting court proceedings to explain to us what was going on. The magistrate and the attorneys seemed fine with it, but the accused looked really confused as to why there were a bunch of students crowding into the court room to see their arraignment.

We got a tour through the jail as well, which was a very interesting experience, especially when we were all crowded into a putrid-smelling holding cell with a lot of unidentified liquid on the floor while the manager of the jail explained to us exactly what happens when you’re arrested and put into this holding cell. I did not like being in there. There was also an interesting little room called the “Prisoners Friend” (no apostrophe), which was empty, and a sign that said “NO MORE ESCAPES,” leading me to wonder how many escapes had actually occurred.



I felt very strange and voyeuristic being in there. At one point, the manager of the jail pointed out to us “oh, look, there are women in that cell,” and then turned to them and yelled “NAUGHTY PEOPLE!!!”. They also showed us the FIFA courts for the World Cup, and explained how they expedite the criminal justice process for the people being prosecuted for World Cup-related offenses because of tourists going in and out of the country. After the prosecutor told us about one guy who went before the judge an hour after he learned what he was being charged with, someone raised their hand and asked, “doesn’t that violate the Constitution?” The Prosecutor just kind of laughed and said “OH- the Constitution’s not a big concern!”, which to me was alarming. I’m staying far away from any criminal activity around here.

Then we were all put back in the vans and taken to ENS’s pro bono office about a half an hour out of town. We couldn’t really figure out why we were there, and the head of their pro bono practice sort of treated the meeting like a focus group, and instead of telling us about his practice asked us all sorts of vague questions about why people do pro bono (and then rejected every one of our answers).

When we got back to the law firm, we had lunch at their very nice restaurant on the top floor. We were supposed to have our mock interviews right after lunch, but then Themba (the woman orchestrating our visit) came up to us looking like she was in physical pain and told us that the attorneys who were supposed to do our interviews bailed out because they wanted to leave early to go watch the World Cup game. Awesome. Apparently we’re going to reschedule those mock interviews, but we’ll see how that goes.

Later that day, we all met at the waterfront to watch the Round of 16 Ghana/Uruguay game. Ghana at this point was the last African team in the tournament, so everyone in Africa was routing for Ghana and was decked out in Ghana gear. I even saw my Somalian friend hanging out supporting Ghana at the outdoor beer tent where we were watching the game.



Anyway, to make a long story short, it was a devastating game that shattered all of Africa’s hopes in the very last possible second of the game. Depressing. After that we ended up at this weird techno club called “Assembly” filled with people that I’m assuming were on E.


On Saturday, I opted out of any World Cup activities (which was easy since I didn’t have a ticket to the game and all the boys did) and I went to Camps Bay, this gorgeous GORGEOUS beach on the western coast of Cape Town about 15 minutes from where we live. On my way to catch a minibus I saw a man standing on top of a store blowing a vuvezela, which no one seemed to surprised/concerned about.



Because I went right during the soccer game, there was NO ONE there except for some locals hanging out, collecting shells for artwork or drying their laundry on the rocks. It was absolutely a gorgeous day (see pictures).






Then I caught a minibus taxi back to town, which was uplifting because of the beautiful scenery and because everyone in the bus was laughing hysterically the entire way back (I have no idea why, but it was cheerful). On my walk back to our hotel from where the minibus dropped me off, this smiley looking man came up to me and asked if he could be my bodyguard. I asked him if he thought I needed a bodyguard where we were, and he said no, he would just like to be it. I asked him if he was going to work for free, and he kind of sadly sad no, it wasn’t going to be free, so I had to tell him it wasn’t going to work out. Too bad… it would have been nice to have a free bodyguard.

On Sunday, I met up with Kristen’s brother John’s friend from college, John, and his friend, John (yes, that’s three Johns). While I was waiting for them on Adderley street, this guy came up to me and mumbled at me for about 5 minutes, and I kept asking him to slow down or enunciate more because I had no idea what he was saying (all I caught was “Queen of England”), and then at the end he said very deliberately, “and in conclusion, you are the only object of my desires.” Realizing that he was trying to pick me up I kind of laughed and said “oh, sorry, that’s not going to happen,” and he just said “oh” and walked away. That was weird. When I found the Johns we caught a minibus for 6 Rand each (that’s less than a dollar) to the beach at Camps Bay, where all the guys were hanging out, swimming and playing soccer. It was a gorgeous day- probably one of the nicest we’ve had in a while. We all hung out and the boys played a few pick-up beach soccer matches with two different groups of Argentinans, who were extremely intense about soccer. I took lots of pictures of them in action while the sun was setting- so pretty!




We all headed back to Saasveld and then Hirsh, David, Mike, Dave, Jim, the Johns and me went to this restaurant called Gold Restaurant where I had made reservations. It was actually a 15-course meal with dishes from all over the continent, and there was traditional Malian dancing and singing throughout the meal that involved people wearing giant heads that were kind of terrifying (see picture). I think the best thing I had was this peanut sauce thing that I can’t really explain now that I am trying. Oh well.



Back to work today- a lot to do this week! And yes, I actually do work around here.

The World Cup continues and other anecdotes

Last week I was very busy so I didn’t have much time to write, so I’m just going to include a few anecdotes!

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!

The Coast and Table Mountain

Friday was the USA v. Slovenia game, which was pretty exciting to watch- we were down 2-0 at halftime and managed to tie the game at 2-2. Friday night I took it easy and went to bed early because I was exhausted!

Saturday was a beautiful crisp, sunny day, and Hirsh and I met Nick at the train station and then the three of us took the train down the coast to Muizenberg, one of the Cape’s oldest Dutch settlements which used to be a seaside resort town for the wealthy. It’s truly beautiful, and we were dropped off right on the beach by the train. There was this really cool row of little colored beachside houses, and the rocky hills rising above the coast were just incredibly beautiful.






Then we walked down the beach through St. James to Kalk Bay, which is this gorgeous fishing village with lots of craft shops and cafes.





We went to this restaurant that this guy on the train had recommended to me called the Brass Bell, which has two patios overlooking the tidal pools and the fishing harbor.


We had some DELICIOUS pizza there (one of them had avocado, cranberry sauce, a spicy sauce, and feta and was amazing) and then bought some of these really cool animal figurines made out of beads and wires by a local woman. We continued to walk down the coast through Kalk Bay and came to a pier with a daily fish market and some people selling artwork. The best part about the pier was the family of sea lions swimming around right next to the pier. This little boy coaxed the “mother” sea lion out of the water and onto a rock to eat some meat, and then told me that her name was Rose (which I think is a very good name for a mother sea lion).






Then we took a quick bus 5 miles south to Simon’s Town, where we walked about a mile down the famous St. George street (which has a lot of very old colonial-looking guesthouses, pubs and houses).









We finally reached Boulders Beach, where we saw the famous wild colony of African penguins! The beach is so cool- it's a small area with a bunch of huge boulders (hence the name) and the penguins kind of run around and cross your path and hide in bushes. I even found one with two furry little babies!











On our way back into Simon’s town, we saw a random group of American tourists getting into a minivan and we asked if they were heading to Cape Town, thinking it was a public minibus taxi. Turned out it was a private charter, but they let us catch a ride with them back to Cape Town for something like 2 bucks each, which meant we didn’t have to deal with public transportation on the way back! They were really nice guys and are staying in Camps Bay, which is a really upscale area on the western coast of Cape Town. The most eventful part of the ride back was when the driver stopped short, and I, who was sitting in the jump seat, went flying forward and landed in a heap on the floor of the minivan. Awesome.

Hirsh and I were pretty exhausted (especially Hirsh, who had gone with a girl he met at work to this club in a neaby suburb the night before and had gotten 2 hours of sleep) so we didn’t end up going out, but we did have a nice dinner with David at a Thai place called Sawadee near our hotel (there was something on the menu called a “Fashion Sandwich,” which I was intrigued about).

Today was another beautiful, sunny day, so Hirsh and I (after I successfully avoided a run-in with CARL on Kloof street by our hotel) took a cab up to the base of Table moutain and took a cable car up to the top. Truly beautiful views; we were 167 meters up! It was pretty windy and chilly up there even though it was a very nice temperature at the bottom. We also got to see a “dassy” which is a little creature that looks kind of like a bunny without ears and whose closest relative is apparently the African elephant (who knew?).




See the dassy sleeping in the sun in the bottom left of this picture:





Hirsh and I explored a bit and then after an overpriced lunch at the restaurant at the top of the mountain, we headed back down.
Now I’m relaxing for the rest of the day because I’m exhausted from such a busy weekend!