the end.

excerpts from my journal entry last night

things i have learned:

- my first impressions of people are often incorrect.

- the issue of race is more complicated than i had previously thought.

- inequality leads to anger, violence, and unrest. a society cannot really move forward when its members suffer from a vast inequality in wealth and opportunity.

- alone time is therapeutic and underrated.

- the world is small. anything or anyone you want is a plane ride away, if you have the cash.

- money is meant to be used on experiences like this. that's why you save it. don't feel guilty - it's worth it.

- bartering is uncomfortable, and i still don't like it, but it has to be done.

some highlights of the past five months:

- our garden route trip. the secret, beautiful beach we stumbled across. our chalet in tsitsikamma. our ridiculous bonfire on the beach night in jeffrey's bay with the boys.

- elephant valley lodge in botswana with mom and marie. amazing game drives, great food, peacefulness.

- the first wine tour i did with my friends. unbelievable scenery, lots of wine, an entire day of bliss.

- hiking lion's head both times for the sunset and the rising of the full moon. absolutely beautiful, and views of all of cape town.

- st. patrick's day. interstuds were virtually the only ones at the bar, because apparently no south africans celebrate the day. we had great time.

- skydiving. unbelievable. enhanced by viewing the pictures afterwards, which are fantastic.

- being stuck in dakar on the way here, way back in january. at the time it seemed bad, but it ended up being awesome. we stayed at a gorgeous hotel and avoided jetlag, and it was our first bonding experience. the people i got stuck with ended up being my closest friends here.

things i am going to miss:

- 7/11. for everything, anytime.

- how inexpensive it is here. food and drinks, especially. the dollar is going to be a reality check.

- the MOUNTAINS.

- the ocean, and the amazing beaches everywhere.

- these people that i've spent this time with. they are so amazing, diverse, and interesting. not necessarily the people i'd hang out with at home, but that's exactly the point. i couldn't have asked for a better group of people to experience this with.

- UCT campus. so gorgeous, amazing views, old beautiful buildings.

- the weather (for the most part).

- being excited about everything. everything here is new and unique, which makes life so much  more exciting than normal.

- our apartment, helena 5. the meeting place, the hangout place, the go-to for everything. so many glorious days and nights have been spent here, full of friends and food and TV on DVD.

i leave tonight. i can't believe it. i'm anxious and excited to get home, but i'm going to miss this incredibly.

italy

i'm back in cape town safe and sound after my eight day vacation in italy. brief rundown of what we did, because i don't know how best to describe everything:

sunday - arrived in milan in the early afternoon, andrew and his mom picked me up from the airport, went back to his house. andrew's friend dave was still there, so we all hung out back at the house for the afternoon/evening. tired from not much sleep on the plane (although emirates was a reeally nice airline)

monday - dave left in the morning, andrew and i walked into the center of varese (the city where his parents live, about 45 minutes outside of milan). strolled around, stopped for a drink. varese was larger than i expected it to be, lots of shopping, nice area. 

tuesday - took a train to lake como, about an hour away. ate lunch on the grass by the lake, checked into our hostel, and took a ferry ride to bellagio, another city on the lake. we took the "slow boat," which ended up being a (beautiful) two hour ride with lots of stops, and by the time we got to bellagio we realized we only had 40 minutes until the final boat left to go back to como for the night. so we walked around quickly and then hopped on the fast boat. back in como, sat by the lake and had a drink, then wandered around and found a place to have dinner. nice restaurant - wine, salad, risotto, sea bass. really good.

wednesday - breakfast at the hostel (included, and really nice), then finally found a different train station to take us to venice. arrived in venice mid-afternoon, checked into our hotel, and then took a bus to the actual island of venice (we were staying on the mainland, much cheaper). wandered around the winding (read: confusing) streets of the city, ate, feet started hurting, i got crabby, found fantastic gelato, mood improved. pizza for dinner from a tiny hole in the wall, ate standing up outside. headed back to hotel around 9 pm, exhausted.

thursday - up early, breakfast at hotel, checked out, took bus into venice, checked our backpacks at the train station and headed to the main square of venice. went to st. mark's basilica, the correr museum, the doge's palace, and the modern art museum. all interesting, beautiful. more gelato. headed back to the train station to catch a train home around 4 pm. back to varese around 8, dinner at the guizzetti's.

friday - rainy day. went into milan for the day, saw the duomo (huge cathedral, took 500 years to build, fourth largest church in europe), walked on the roof of the duomo. walked around the shopping district a little bit. stopped for a drink. took the train home, got back around 9:30 pm.

saturday - went to lugano, switzerland, with andrew's dad, al (andrew's brother), pat (al's friend), and andrew. walked around lake lugano until it started to rain, window shopped. lugano was really nice, a bit slower paced than italy, beautiful city.

sunday - took a bike ride around lake varese, near andrew's house. rode for almost four hours, stopped for gelato. really beautiful, peaceful bike ride. got back to the house, packed up, showered, ate dinner. headed to the airport around 8 pm.

i had a great time. despite the fact that i barely know any italian, we managed, and andrew was helpful because he had been traveling around italy before i arrived so he knew how to say some things and knew how to get around. there's a lot more of italy that i want to see someday, but we did a lot in the short time i was there. 

now i'm back in cape town, and people are slowly emptying out of our apartments. it's quiet and weird. yesterday a bunch of us sat outside the apartments all afternoon, because it was actually nice outside, and just talked and said goodbye to two people who left yesterday. it was a good day, and reminded me of the beginning of our time here. i'm going to miss these people so much.

today i have my last final at five pm, and then i'm free. i have six days until i leave, which is impossible for me to comprehend. but luckily i have no real plans for those days, so i can do whatever i want, slowly pack/get rid of things that won't fit in my suitcases, do some last minute shopping, etc. 

i'm going to miss cape town a lot. a lot a lot a lot. but i feel ready to go home, in a way that i hadn't felt a few weeks ago. i think staying with the guizzettis brought that on; just being with a family in a real home made me want to see my own family and home. and i miss my friends. and wisconsin and minneapolis. so, i feel ready. 

predation!

yesterday i went shark cage diving with nicole and pujita. i promised mom i wouldn't tell her about it until after i did it, so this is my confession.

we got picked up at 4:30 in the morning (i woke up at 3:45 am... ouch) and drove two hours to the city of gansbaai, which is the apparent great white shark capital of the world; it claims to have the highest concentration of great white sharks in the world. we had breakfast, and then got on a boat along with about a dozen other people. the sun was rising over the harbor, and it was beautiful.

after about ten minutes we reached dyer island, also known as seal island, which is the location they filmed at for the planet earth series. the seals who live on seal island have to swim through a narrow channel each day to go out to find food, and the clever sharks use this to their advantage and hang out near the area to catch seals.

on the way out, we caught sight of a whale blowing through his blowhole, which was pretty awesome. once we got to our location, almost immediately we saw what the workers on the boat called "predation" : a little ways in front of our boat, we could see the thrashing of a shark as it attacked, and presumably ate, a seal. it was insane.

the boat crew continuously dumped nasty fish juices off the side of the boat and dangled dead fish off the end of a rope to attract the sharks. the visibility in the water wasn't great, so we could see more sharks from the boat. we even saw a shark breaching, its huge toothy mouth coming up to try to eat the fish. 

despite the fact that the air and water were freezing, i squeezed myself into a wetsuit and went into the cage that was attached to the side of the boat. i saw two sharks come literally right up to the cage, about two feet from my face; it was incredible.

i think great white sharks get a bad rap, because for all the terror that is associated with them, they really just swam up next to the bait and left as quickly as they came. they didn't "attack," they weren't angry. they just wanted to check out what was going on. it was so awesome to be out on that boat and try to comprehend what was underneath and around us.

winding down

three more days of classes. i can't believe the semester is almost over. but i'm very ready for it to be over. i really enjoy UCT; it's a beautiful school and my classes were interesting for the most part, but i'm tired of it. i guess that's normal. i'm just feeling extremely ready for all of these papers and exams to be out of the way. 

the weather is getting less than great here, also. yesterday it looked like a hurricane outside - extreme winds, rain coming down almost sideways. i'm so thankful that when we first got here back in january, the weather was hot and sunny. i don't think any of us thought that that weather would ever end, though.

i suppose it sounds like i'm sick of it here, but i'm not. things are just winding down and i'm ready for certain things to be over. i'll be home in one month. wow. 

i've gotten so used to it here, with these people, that sometimes when i stop and actually remind myself of all the people i have at home, i get surprised. i'm going to miss everybody here a lot. we've been spending a lot of time in our living room, watching various tv shows on dvd. it sounds lazy, and okay, it kind of is, but it's been a great way for us to spend time together and bond. i like that there are always people around to be lazy with.

we have our interstudy farewell dinner on thursday night. i remember seeing it on the itinerary at the very beginning of the semester, and thinking how far away it seemed. i'm excited for it, though. it'll be good to get everybody together again; there are certain people that i can literally go without seeing for at least a month, even though we all live so close to one another. we're going out for dinner and drinks downtown, and it should be really fun.

i wish i had something more substantial to talk about, but the past few weeks have been pretty monotonous, if you can believe that. i think i've moved so far beyond the honeymoon stage that i feel like this is my real life... and real life sometimes involves writing papers and studying, and being bored once in a while. who would have thought!

i climbed lion's head last week with katelyn and alec; here's a picture of alec and i at the top. there's a 360 degree view at the top of all of cape town; it's fantastic.

!!!!

after much hemming and hawing over what to do during the thirteen day break that i have between my final exams, i came to a conclusion, and bought a plane ticket to italy.

insane? maybe. awesome? definitely. i'm going to visit andrew, who is heading there in a week and will be in europe until august. so, although it's a long flight, it's kind of perfect, and i'm insanely excited. i leave may 30th and get back june 8th, and then i'll have one more final on june 10th, and still have a few days to kill before i leave for the states on june 16th. 

my goal for this semester, clearly, is to go for broke, and i plan on having the time of my life while i spend a lifetime's worth of babysitting/bartending/coffeemaking money. life is good.

in other news, nicole went back to america for a week, and got back last night laden with poptarts, gushers, and mini-boxes of american cereal for us. awesome. honey nut cheerios? yes please. we were embarassingly excited about it all.

nothing is really happening, but:

i finally joined a gym here, so hopefully i can become a real person again and get in okay shape before i come home. being on a five-month vacation = gainage of party poundage. ew.

i have four big papers due in the next two and a half weeks, so apparently now is when i have to start doing real work. it's not fun, but i guess it's a small price to pay for the experience i've had here.

some of my friends (jen, sara) are home already and it's kind of weird. i'm glad i have some more time here, but there are definitely certain things that i'm really starting to miss about america. namely,

my coffee maker

efficiency

panera

coffees larger than 12 ounces

fahrenheit

being able to walk around by myself safely

driving/my car

television.

it's fall here, and leaves are changing colors. wrap your head around that.

andrew got world cup tickets, surprisingly, and i'm jealous. i hope he actually makes it here next june, because it's going to be insanely fun and crazy here.

feliz cinco de mayo! i'm going to go to the gym now with katrina and then make some mexican food. adios.

extended weekend in kwazulu-natal

yesterday i got back from a looong weekend in durban and the drakensberg mountains with katrina and nicole. we had a really great time and it was good to get out and see some more of south africa.

in durban, we went to a market, had indian food, went to a beach, saw a great band play, and met some cool people both when we were out and at our hostel. durban is a cool city in some regards, but it was kind of overwhelming at times and difficult to figure out where the "good places" were to hang out. luckily we had some advice so we weren't totally lost, but the city just doesn't seem as tourist-friendly as cape town is. i guess we're spoiled here, but i'm really glad that i'm studying in cape town. i think it's good when traveling confirms for you that you are happy with where you live. 

our time in the drakensberg was the highlight of our trip. we rented a car, and after getting lost for ONE HOUR around durban, trying to find the highway in order to get OUT of the city (i was driving... a slightly stressful situation), we finally were on our way. the drive was beautiful and scenic, through mountains and valleys. our hostel was nice and it was therapeutic to get out of the city for a while.

on saturday we went through the sani pass into lesotho, the "mountain kingdom." the drive up was insanely rough and bumpy, but gorgeous. after the final treacherous ascent, we finally made it up into lesotho, where it was significantly colder than it was at our hostel and also raining. 

we only saw a tiny bit of lesotho, but i'm so glad we visited. the village at the top was simply a handful of circular huts, and there are sheep and shepherds strewn about. as a sort of coming-of-age ritual, teenage boys are sent out to be shepherds, by themselves, with their flock, for about six months. they then return to their homes for six months and the cycle continues. some of them choose to pursue different careers once they're adults, but some of them choose to become shepherds full-time. their lives are so incredibly different than ours, and different than anything you can find in the U.S. the country seems to be untouched; it is completely secluded up in the mountains.

before heading down again, we stopped at the highest pub in africa. outside it was dreary and cold, but inside i was surprised to find an entirely different atmosphere - it felt like a warm, cozy ski resort, full of people and guitar-playing and happiness. i could have stayed there all day, but (kind of) unfortunately we had to descend back into south africa.

in all, it was a fun trip. it felt good to get back to cape town, though. i always feel that way, which is a good thing.