July 4th, 2012 - Braai

I woke up this morning at about 9am and put my cold outfit on the heating panel. I figured that when I go brush my teeth and come back, my clothes would be warm and ready to wear. At 10am, Dontranika and I were out the door. We met up with the other Howard students who live in the buildings next to ours. I could tell from looking at us as a group that we were very excited but also very cold. We all underestimated the weather. Winter in Cape Town is no joke! They say it doesn’t get as cold as the States, but you would have to pay me a million dollars for me to believe that mumbo jumbo.

All eleven of us followed Alicia as she gave us a tour of the campus and got us registered in school. I notice that there is a diverse group of people in Cape Town. Blacks, whites, Indians, Asians and unidentified were in presence. We made our way to the student center, which is the equivalent of Blackburn in my opinion. They had food shops throughout the building, dining, and vendors selling accessories. I couldn’t get anything to cure my mild starvation because I didn’t have any South African money, and none of the vendors accepted debit. So needless to say, I went without food for a long time.

After a few hours of doing serious stuff to get us settled into school, we had a 4^th of July braai(bbq). OMG! I don’t know if South Africans in general are great cooks or they just hired the best catering service for us, but that is the best cookout food I’ve ever had! (Deep breath) Barbeque chicken tender to the bone, barbeque lamb, sausage links, some vegetable pot pie looking stuff with cheese on top, pasta salad, roasted potatoes, strawberry cheesecake, and crème filled puff pastry with dipped in chocolate. (Exhales). You know I had seconds.

My new friend Wes, who is from Zimbabwe, entertained us. He brought his music and his friendly personality. Of course I told him to play some Jamaican music, and that’s when our braai turned into a party. I was teaching the older folks some Jamaican moves, while a couple of students taught the rest the electric slide. I also learned some words from the Afrikaans language. Mynames means my name is and Totsins means goodbye!

After the braai IES Abroad provided us with transportation to go shopping for food. But guess what? Chantal only had US currency! While everybody else shopped for food, the driver took me to the airport to hopefully exchange some money. Vivian was the woman’s name who worked at the exchange bureau. She asked me for my passport. “I left that in my room, can I use my ID”? “No, we need your passport to process anything”. Yea, I don’t like Vivian. I had to ask a random lady to exchange the money for me; she looked like she just got off the plane so she should have a passport. I explained my situation and asked her nicely to exchange the money for me. She said no. L People here are so mean! Anyway, I repeated the process to this lovely guy from Antigua and he said “yes, no problem”. Give it up for the Antiguans!!!

I made it back to the grocery store while everybody was checking out and paying for their goods. But they couldn’t leave me so I took my time. LOL. I bought the usual cornflakes, soymilk, chicken, seasonings, tissue, rice and pasta. All that came up to 271Rands. We drove back to our dorms to unpack our grocery then call it a night. But that didn’t happen. My suitemate and I went across the courtyard to visit two other students, Wilson and Theo. We met their roommates who are also very cool people. We talked and laughed and learned some more African languages. We all then left and went across the courtyard to the other girls’ rooms. We hung out there for the rest of the night.