CapeHoppin: From Cape Cod to Cape Town: Playing catch up

I realize in my last post I made promises of filling you in on the crazy events of our last few days in Langa. So here goes! Last Friday Janey's family invited us all over for a braai to celebrate her 21st birthday. Much like our braai at Ellen's a few weeks earlier, I was overwhelmed and shocked by the amount of people, food and similarity to home this party had to offer. It was literally a suburban rager, sort of like our Cape parties- full of parents, college kids, deep freezer full of beer, barbecued chicken, baby running around, potluck style side dishes, BABY RUNNING AROUND BY HERSELF WITH A BEER BEING PICKED UP BY EVERY DRUNK KID ON MY PROGRAM! So yeah, you're average house party. It was a great night, our program assistant Thabisa showed up and was downing shots and loving life with us all. That was interesting. I decided to climb a tree in the backyard- don't think I've actually climbed a tree before, woke up Saturday with a giant cut on my butt/leg from falling out...oops. Is this blog not the place to share that? All in all a great night. With every drunken evening, I learn more and more about these 24 classmates I am bound to for the next 3 months. 3 months....not 4....cause the first month is over! whaaaaaattt! How can that be?!?!?!?

Saturday morning we awoke nice and early to hit the Old Biscuit Mill, again, for the last time for the next 3 weeks :(. It was perfect as usual, and we just ate and ate and ate. The pics of those treats are in the last post. After a unsettling mini-bus, or so they said, ride back to Langa we enjoyed our last Saturday night in Langa. Gaby and I hung with the sisi's and got our goodbye gifts together. The boys came over for an Entourage marathon and we tested the limits of how much weight a double bed can hold. Man I forgot how insane season 7 is! Vince is really off the deep end- but still perfection.

Sunday was our last day and the day of our goodbye dinner with our families and program directors. Gaby popped over mid-morning, during the third round of watching the Lion King with Linathi and Gaby's sisis and not doing any of the homework I "completed" for yesterday, in a traditional outfit. After gathering myself, she told me I had to come over for mine. No topshop dress I was planning on wearing awaited me, it was my own traditional outfit from Gaby's wonderful mama (Sidenote: Gaby's mom was unbelievable and basically took care of me also all weekend as my family was out a lot and not nearly as loving and welcoming as Neo. Truly an inspirational women who is so mature and caring, despite all of the shit she has witnessed in her life). She set out all of her traditional jewlery for us to choose from and gave me my head wrap and matching dress. Although semi-embarassing, because although I may look like my dad, I cannot pull of the bald look as well as him, it was kind of like playing dress up and I figured what the hell everyone is gonna look rediculous. Wrong! 5 of us showed up in these outfits, many were wearing their stupid, American clothes. So we were the laughing stock of the party, as par usual, and had a blast. Performances were made by the mamas, Tristan did his spoken word (incredible, unbelievable and perfect), speeches given and then it came time for us to sing. We sang out xhosa song for our families, which was pretty good if I do say so and then came time for our American song. A few days earlier we had decided on Wagon Wheel as the song to perform- what? my idea? nope! I didn't fight it though. And honestly, although the group was insanely embarassed, I loved it. It may not be the perfect representation of American music, but it was fun, sing-alongy and an awesome fucking song.

Afterwards we enjoyed our last night in Langa, attempting to write our papers, getting the work out of the century attempting to fit all the shit I've accumulated into my already breaking suitcase and getting no sleep. Now this is where things got sad- as I brought my bags out to the bus at 7 am the next morning, trying not to wake anyone, Linathi came running out after me in her pajamas with a big hug. I DIED! She insisted on helping with my bags, equal to the size of her entire self, and then of course asked me about the bag she had seen the day before from a kids store she loves. Inside was her birthday gift, which was yesterday, that I had given to Nozuko to give to her then. Classic kids, always wanting you for something. She waved to me as I got on the bus, and that was the end of my time in Langa. The perfect, adorable and sad, goodbye.

We had class that day and I finalized my ISP plan, for now, and will be exploring music in Cape Town and the racial, social and gendered demographics of the venues and genres in and around the city. Should be awesome.

Off to Simons Town 3 night beach getaway before the eastern Cape.

here we go again....!

Hello again! Only so much internet, sothese posts are back to back. After a quick train ride we headed to Simons Town for 3 nights of fun in the sun

Quick recap- cause you're sick of reading and I'm sick of writing and lunch awaits me:

First day, beautiful chilled with penguins in a lagoon type oasis heaven-like location I only have seen in movies involving out of this world vacations. Swam in the freezing water, hung on the rocks. It was great.

group shots on group shotssss

this was following the 3000 plus photos the
Japanese tour group took before us.
Literally took almost 30 minutes before we could go.

Next day bright and early hit up the ol' Cape of Good Hope, ya know that thing you've seen on a map your whole life and never really knew what it was. Well I have now been there twice- first time with the parentals back in August. Hiked a bit- still not my thing.

Took the classic group shot by the sign, claaaasssic study abroad in Cape Town and saw the most south western point in the Southern Hemisphere...nbd.

Next and last day was rainy, but Grace and Sophie and there friend Lizaby took the train down to kick it with me and Gab. So we had a mini-skid/nyc reunion on the coast of South Africa. Ate some fish and chips, shopped around, the usual.