Stellenbosch (a.k.a Greenwich, CT with vineyards)

4 hours deep into Stellenbosch homestay and here are my thoughts:
1. I have wifi- if you are reading this blog and we are actually friends, like who would skype and haven't gotten to yet, now is the time!
2. My family is hilarious- although we are prepared to semi hate this, being that these are white Afrikaaner families who are apparently responsible for keeping apartheid still around, they are here for us to learn from and we have to keep an open mind. My family is mom (homeschools her kids by day, plays tennis for leisure {hey bess}), dad (joke cracker of the year- has already mentioned leaving us with the kids for a holiday, something I would not kill him for), Jana (15 and cooler than me- amazing painter, long boards and plays guitar and is gorgeous) and Michael (11 and cooler than me also- rocks skinny jeans, also long boards and is taking me to half price sushi on Sunday). Good thing there are no similarities to home here to make me miss it- not the funny dad, tennis playing mom and brother and sister almost exactly the same age difference as Brett and I. Phewf! Avoided that one!
3. Beautiful, expansive home. 3 cars. Endless rooms. An entire wing with private bathroom for Tori and I. An awesome kitchen, well decorated and practical and with tons of appliances- yeah!
4. There is a pool

Good Night! love you already Stellytown

Buccaneers

I feel like all I have to write in this post is GO THERE!

Just go. It's amazing and perfect and the best combination I have ever seen of a vacation with activites, relaxation, recognizing the fact you're someplace tropical but also 20 minutes from a township in the Eastern Cape of South Africa and always with a fully stocked bar.

Here is the link: read and book you're next vacation: http://www.cintsa.com/

List of things done in Buccaneers:

Began with volleyball and wine with Richard. After showing off my beautiful serve, I showed how I can stand in the middle of the court and completely not pay attention to the game. Next the race for the first showers in a week for everyone except me- remember I got the glam hotel the night before so I was good to go for a little.
After a delicious (looking-still couldnt eat) Mexican feast, it was off to Night 1. Had some great chats, learned more about the group and how they handle, and cannot handle, binge drinking. Was honestly a frat party and I was the sober girl witnessing the shit show, which is always super fun.
Next day included a tour of the local village and a talk with Denver, the coolest guy, yet another one of my inspirations on this trip, who has an NGO helping with computer literacy, health clinic access, education, small business ownership, sports, etc. in the village and is awesome. As he explained, how could he not do this? He made it so simple, if you wanna make a change, just talk to people and do it and if it fails, it fails. But it so easily could not and succeed and make a difference.
After that exhausting morning it was off the beach. Well never say I haven't swam, and almost got my foot eaten by a crab, in the Indian Ocean before! Check! Then it was on to Night #2: highlights include jello shots (as a fundraiser for children in need), midnight beach rugby and memorable slumber parties.
Next morning was a bright and early game drive at the local reserve. It was very cool to see male lions, but not a safari, more like a zoo with lots and lots of grass. The whole thing was very staged and they keep the cats seperates from the prey to preserve them for longer, which is just not the point of seeing animals in the wild. Anyway off my high horse. After another bananagram, rugby, and more crab attacking feet in the warmest ocean in the world, beach filled afternoon, it was our last dinner and night and was awesome. More chill, as we were worn out from the first two, but still memorable and I managed to tp a house for the first time in my life. Before the flight the next morning we did the classic stop by with the elephants. So casually on our way out of town, stopped in for a elephant interaction and touched the gentle giants for a bit and took upwards of 4,000 photos as a group.
All in all, Good Timezzz in Bucc.
Loved the vaca, free time, tanning and memories.
On to Cape Town then Stellenbosch.

Craziest semester of my life continues on.
Best of the best pics:

4 pm Volleyball and Wine- daily

beach

what a model

petting a lion....on a budget

elephant time!

our new friend

Reality Check

As we drove into town and the students in my car exclaimed, “Does this remind you of South Carolina?”, “Aww! I miss my cows”, “Wow this looks just like home”- it hit me. I have never been in a place so far from home. Physically yes, South Africa is the farthest georgraphic location I have ever been to. But in terms of what I was seeing, it was unlike anything I had seen before. No rural Vermont, upstate NY or even vineyards of Italy could compare to the amount of grass, rolling hills and space in front of my eyes. So that was where I was going in. After a slight panic attack and encouragement from my friends- I loaded up my backpacks (yes one on front, one on back cause its cool!) and walked up the dirt road to our house. Or should I say Rondevills- a traditional one room, xhosa home, which is- you guessed it!- round and one room! Sidney and I were partnered together for this homestay which was great- we both share a love for cereal, 18 year old annoying and amazing brothers and a common understanding that showering is not necessary. We met our amazing family, mom Nozuko (I know weird that that is the same name as my Langa mom, but entirely different women- much more loving and traditional xhosa), sisi Imange- 3 and an adorable pest- and Pabama, our incredible 11 year old brother who is awesome and going to be the worlds greatest entertainer one day if he isn’t already. After our first massive meal, it was time to all tuck in for bed at 7pm. But wait gotta pee first, ok no toilet, no problem. We were introduced to the green bucket- which I waited to see others use before going for it. Quite simple really, except the American in me, immediately asked if I should go outside, to which I was laughed at. So I went for it and sat on the green, medium sized, beach bucket. As I began to pee, Imange ran over to continue our patty cake game from earlier. It was that moment, as Sidney cracked up in bed watching, that I let go of all expectations of the next week. I was in a new world. A world with no toilets, outhouses though, no running water in the house, no roads, minimal waste, no hair washing, yet TVs, cell phones and lots of Beyonce. You’ll have to read my journal for the daily activities- the synopsis being lots of movie watching, great soccer games with the boys from the village and me as a cheerleader- with the most cliché “study abroad in Africa” pictures possible-, 12 hours of sleep a night, a 3 am excursion to the outhouse with 4 cows, a chicken slaughtering, lots of cooking and an eye opening high school visit. Then there was today. I woke up yesterday morning, on our last full day a bit earlier than usual with stomach pains pushing me towards to outhouse at 7am. That was the beginning. The beginning to 7 hours of outhouse visits- got to see em all pretty much- and a good old welcome to sickness in the village! So I stayed in a hotel last night in the town, 30 minutes away, with my program directors, in a bed, steps from a toilet and happy as a clam. Showered finally and got re-intouch with the outside world.

So in a sentence- if possible for me- as much as I loved my family, seeing first hand how the majority of the world lives and experiencing things I never thought possible, I do not think I am cut out or would be happy in a rural home. I am grateful for the experience and learned a ton, but the beautiful scenery was not enough reason to rough it for any longer.

I am very happy to be back in civilization. We are off to Buccaneers- a beach resort, 3-night vaca- until Sunday. Just arrived here and it is awesome. Beach volleyball and free wine at 4. Mexican Feast at 7. Drumming night tonight and the cliché Club Med esque events just keep on going. Tomorrow I am deciding between yoga and massages at the Beautification Boutique or attempting surfing.

Peace out Tshabo. Its been all too real. 

me and my mama makin some bread dough.

cliche study abroad in africa pics 

trampled by love

soccer star of Tshabo

my home for 6 nights. fav color!!!!

FAM SHOT!!!
From left: me, Pabama (11 and cooler than me), mama (Nozuko) with Imange (smelly, adorable, devil in her arms), Asa (9 year old cousin) and her sister Inati (19 year old cousin)

soul matezz

fat cakes. donuts of xhosa culture.
delicious, but could use nutella in my opinion

last pic (12 hours into my disease, but freshly showered from the hotel so lookin freshhhh)

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. 

housemates- you will be seeing this baby next year.

IT SAYS GRACE'S NAME ON A PILLOW AND SOUTH AFRICA.
AND ITS GRACE IN SOUTH AFRICA!
AHHHH!!!

And that's all folks! 

Sorry for the inconsistancy on this thing. I'm still figuring this blogging business out.

avettinreallife.avettinreallife.avettinreallife.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Feature Film: Saturday Night in Langa!

Staring:

Brenna Goldstein

Gaby Gignoux-Wolfsohn

Luthando

Co-Directed by:

Simphiwe and Ooletu Peter

enjoyyy (cause it took forever to upload with this slow ass internet)

Priority Crisis

Ahhhh!! So I know I have been slacking. I know! Busiest days happening currently and I have SO much to fill you all in on, I just don't know when I'll get to. Left Langa this morning, off to vaca in Simon's Town   (beach, penguins, party) for 3 nights then Thrusday fly to the Eastern Cape for our rurual homestay in Tshabo village (no running water, one bed for everyone, no internet, no showers (secret yeah!) and all that jazz), then vaca part 2 at Buccaneers a week from Thursday (party, beach, Club Med of SA, party, beach, PI take 2, beach, party).
Ok so I have to write an essay... I know who am I? I just gotta throw some cliche Brenna phrases down on a page hand it in and then back to you lovely folks.
Look forward to these upcoming posts:

1. House party in Langa friday night for Janey's birthday...

Girls crew with Thabisa...our assistant teacher/ director.

 Saturday morning Biscuit Mill: (indescribable as par usual)

     

some food we ate/ saw. Grilled mushrooms, pesto on pesto, attempt at bagels, paella for all and the best dumplings and turnip cake in the world.

GROUP SHOTTTT!!!!
In order from top to Gaby: Olivia, your genious blogger, Meredith cracking up, Tristan (Cristina more commonly), Crystal falling down and Gab-ster not paying attention.

Greenmarket Square choir...incredible beyond words. Videos to come

And just a peak at what I wore to our goodbye to Langa party yesterday....more to come...lifetime embarrassment for looking bald.

The three best friends anyone could have...Langa style.
Just one big happy family.
me! Tristan! Gaby! then Linathi of course and Ooletto our beautiful girls

Talk soon! 

Panic. Pasta. Perfection

So tonight I was asked my host family to cook, we were all kind of expected to do it but I just never really said anything about it, but thank the lord they asked me yesterday if I was ever going to cook cause MAN WAS IT FUN AND DELICIOUS!

After much stipulation on what in the world to make, with limited oven space, very little parmesean cheese in the country and only an hour, I settled on the Goldstein classic Pasta al Forno. If you've ever been over for dinner chances are you've had this, its short pasta mixed with sauce with mini meatballs and cheese baked in the oven until ooey, gooey and crunchy on top (burnt if Bess or Brett have a say in it). After running around all day, finding an organic, imported goods grocery store by the chance of god, and spending at least 3 times more than anyone else on this trip, I had all necessary ingredients and was ready to cook! Got home at 6:15, later than I would have liked but Simba decided to fill us in- for the first time ever- on what we are gonna be doing for the next few weeks, which I will fill you in on later, jeez just give me a second! And so I was off to a late start. I started with making the sauce, and putting water on to boil. Literally the water took the amount of time to chop everything, make the sauce and meatballs, before it boiled. An eternity! Eventually it began bubbling and I threw the pasta in. As this was happening on the stove, my two helpers Linathi and another sisi were busy on the chocolate covered strawberries.

You're thinking "Woah Great pic Bren!
You should be a photographer" Well, nope. Can you believe my sisi tooks this....she is 6.

I know, kind of a cop out dessert, especially for me, but I was already using the oven for the pasta and they were beautiful and delicious so shut it (they also don't really grow strawberries here, so they were imported from Spain and fucking expensive BUT DELICIOUS! well worth it....I promise dad).

So they made those, I stirred the pasta and the sauce. Threw some olive oil and garlic in a pan for the cauliflower, which the girls helped me turn from ball to mini pieces and- one hour of running around like a mouse cleaning up and mixing and grating cheese and watching the girls steal chocolate off the strawberries and being asked 100 times what I was making by everyone in the house and almost dropping the entire pan of cauliflower and not knowing how to turn the oven to broil or what the fuck 400 degrees is in Celsius- and ka baam! Dinner was on the table! And when I say table, I mean I hand delivered plates to everyone in their rooms cause that is just how it's done here on ol' Zone 7 number 29.

All in all had a total blast cooking with the girls, turned out delicious and was awesome to eat something almost identical to what I remember from home. Italy would have been proud of me tonight.

best friends...(excuse my sweat as it was the work out of my life)

did I get around to study for my xhosa test tomorrow....oops.....