What a day

Service was really successful today, as we met with Reney and Nicolette, our supervisors at House to establish our roles there and their expectations for us.  We know now that we can lead lessons indoors or outdoors with the children as long as we communicate with Connie, the playschool teacher, when we want to work with the kids.  It will be much more productive for us to go into the Playschool with a plan, and knowledgeable of the disciplinary procedures, in order to decrease the chance of attachment by just cuddling and coddling the kids and rather teach them a few things and have, as our Irish friends say, “some good fun,” haha.  We also painted one more bedroom and I thoroughly cleaned some kitchen cupboards in addition to the meeting.

After a hot, hard morning of work, we hurriedly read the rest of our reading assignments for afternoon class, took a kombi to class, made it through class, and stopped at the grocery on the walk back home. After I had cut up some sweet potatoes (which are white in SA) and butternut squash (commonly referred to as pumpkin here) and put them in the oven, I realized a text sent hours ago from an American, Sarah, that I met at a “church thingy” on Monday night.  She is from the University of Alabama, and she invited me to pizza, which I had ironically been craving (NOT a normal craving for me).  I jumped at the prospect of a spontaneous meal and the chance to meet some more people, so Laura, one of my flatmates, and I quickly got ready and walked about a half-hour down the road to meet the ladies for some dinner.

We got to Brightways, the ladies’ flat, and a South African student, Charmaign, picked us all up and took us to Roman’s, a pizza shop.  It was BOGO (buy one, get one, like Payless shoes :P), so I got the small order with a Sweet Chili Chicken pizza (sweet chili sauce, chicken, feta- the most common cheese in South Africa) and a Seafood pizza (calamari, mussels, shrimp with olive oil, and oreganium (oregano to Americans)).  I was fortunate that a Lindsay-style Amusement Park called Superspar was next to the pizza joint.  I stole away from the pizza date for a small while into the novelty-food-wonderland of the new-found supermarket entirely pleased with the discovery.  

I discovered such exciting things that they deserve their own paragraph.  (How’s that for a topic sentence, Aim? Haha)  I found 100% fruit juice (the only way to go ;D ) juice boxes of litchi juice (the alleged nectar of the gods I discovered on the Addo tour) to control my portion sizes, chocolate pudding that requires heat for the starch to take in the milk- not quite as simple as the sugar-free fat-free instant Jell-O pudding, but I am excited to try it!, and some sweet chili flavored “smooth cottage cheese,” which I put in quotation marks because it is more like flavored sour cream than cottage cheese.  Sweet chili is a popular flavor here and is often put on rice dishes.  It is even the most common Doritos flavor, taking the supreme level of the Cooler Ranch Dorito in the States.  The smooth cottage cheese is a wonderful lunch!  I spread it over whole wheat crackers and top it with cucumber slices for a fresh-tasting summery meal.

I arrived back at the flat with the notion that I’d be going to bed, but I relented to flatmates’ peer pressure, with the convincing argument that we can catch up on sleep in the morning before afternoon class, and went to karaoke night at Captains, the closest bar to our flats.  We went to the SAPPC (South Africa Party Planning Committee) Secretary of Defense and Treasurer’s room to fellowship with some of the students we are less familiar with on the trip.  After the first noise complaint of the night most people left, but my flatmates and I went out on the balcony for a while before heading out.  When we got to Captains, we were sad to see an English Premier League soccer game between Chelsea and Manchester United (a BIG game) rather than the usual karaoke.  

At half-time the DJ appeased our pleas and the fun started.  I am a karaoke observer, as I am never inebriated enough to get on a stage to sing in front of strangers, although I don’t think it would take me very much.  I had my first shot last night, courtesy of Nick Zweber, SAPPC Secretary of Defense.  It was called a springbok, named after one of South Africa’s antelope and also the name of one of the most famous South African rugby teams.  It had mint liquor and Amarula, the rum whose claims to be the “spirit of South Africa.”  It went down like coffee.  After my shot I just danced to the karaoke for a while, and came home relatively early to end a llllong day.

P.S. One month down, ahhhhh!  It went SO fast.