Poor little rich girl

In order not to mislead the audience (I take you all very seriously, you know) I've posted some pictures of how the majority of South Africans live. Townships -- all-black suburbs that grew in size as a result of Apartheid -- are a common sight along the highways and Kayamandi, a township directly outside of Stellenbosch, has over 30,000 people living mostly in shanties on a 75-hectare area. Suffice to say, it's pretty crowded. When I vented frustration to my history professor about going to restaurants with all-white clientele and an all-black staff, he mentioned that there isn't really a substantial black middle class. Instead, he suggested I go to Spur, this really kitschy Tex-Mex wannabe place, since I was likely to run into clientele of all colors there. The wait staff, though, would still be black, as white waiters tend to work at the high-end restaurants. I guess it wasn't a serious solution to the fact that the society still is very much stratified by race, but it did solve the "where can I find a milkshake for under R15?" question.

So of course your next question is about the white couple pictured above. I only post this because I saw The Curious Case of Benjamin Button last night (it's still a new release here in S.A.) and, though it's not even closely related to the short story, the love interest is Daisy, who of course we remember from The Great Gatsby. Seriously, those Fanning children are cash cows. Anyway, following a sneaking suspicion I had that F. Scott Fitzgerald was super hot (he just writes so beautifully) I found a picture of him and Zelda. He's not hot, but they're pretty cute. And they really knew how to party, apparently, though what with her accusations of him being gay and his sleeping around with prostitutes to prove her wrong, I guess their marriage was a bit unconventional. Long story short, this photo is completely irrelevant. Next.




These are from Mosselbaai -- we drove to what we thought was the city center. Wrong. I don't know what first tipped us off: the mosque, the abnormally large number of not-white people. Either way, we weren't in Kansas anymore.









Since Cape Town Airport isn't really in Cape Town, the drive to Stellenbosch after first arriving here was kind of startling. This was basically the first thing I saw in Africa, and it's probably a little more representative than college-student-town Stellenbosch, which is a bit of an affluent Afrikaner bubble.














I kind of pulled the camera out to take these pictures while we were driving away. I mean, I was already getting stares. Why not just be exploitative?




















I cheated -- this is from Heidelberg, not a township. But you get the idea.

Ele-pants

I'm back from a rather exhausting weekend in (technically) the Eastern Cape, the part of South Africa by the Indian Ocean. Besides the "boys are gross" observation (I've had enough of smelly feet and farting to last me a lifetime) which was basically inevitable given that I was traveling with three guys, there was a lot of rather nice scenery to see. The Eastern Cape is so much more lush than the Western Cape; it actually rains there, apparently, so there's rolling green hills and it's gorgeous. A couple random facts I learned while traveling the 700 km or so:

1) The police are corrupt. I knew this anyway, but apparently they sell dagga (weed). And they can be bribed, etc. etc. Also, since they have cameras at certain points along the highway, police cars aren't parked around corners waiting to bust you for speeding, like in the U.S. No, they send you a note in the mail, provided they actually get around to it. (I have limited faith in the police bureaucracy here.) The more I hear about the South African police force, the more I tend to agree with Larry the Texan: "It's a free-for-all: everyone just does what they want, man. This is South Africa!" It's kind of sad but at the same time a little amazing. Apparently even telling the policemen you were driving drunk isn't enough to guarantee you a ticket/jail time; instead, they supposedly laugh and shake their heads in an "aw shucks; kids these days" sort of way before wishing you a good night and parting ways.

2) Fraternities in Germany are pretty much the same as fraternities in the U.S. They tend to also get drunk and do stupid things together. Steffen, the German guy who came along with us, spoke fondly of his drunken nights "acting like assholes" and smoking 50 cigarettes with his fraternity brothers.

3) South Africa is really, really big. Africa sort of comes to a point in South Africa, and it looks small in relation to the rest of the continent on a map, but it's enormous. I realized that to get to Durban, for example, it'd be at least 25-ish straight hours of driving. (I know most people tend to consult maps beforehand, but they sort of intimidate me so I usually ignore them.)

And as far as our destination, I wasn't quite sure where we were supposed to go when I agreed to accompany Larry and Steven, but it sounded better than the alternative: staying in Stellenbosch, perhaps dragging myself to the grocery store to buy yet more strawberries, and failing to finish my reading for English. Still, we ended up going to Knysna (pronounced nyz-nuh), a town known for its beaches, timber and forbidden caves. I'm going to be honest here, because clearly that's what blogs are all about: I didn't visit any forbidden caves. Just to clear up any confusion.

Knysna is cute -- the townships, as the Lonely Planet guide informed me, use the town's lumber for construction and are unique -- but kind of a ghost town. At night, its one bar is all but deserted; I didn't get a chance to see its one club, but I'd expect about the same thing. We didn't pass anyone walking to and from dinner, and it was a little eerie. Correction: Larry went looking for what he thought was a crocodile, which actually turned out to be a man snoring under a bridge. Still, we found an adorable hostel that, due to Knysna's apparent lack of tourists, we all fit rather comfortably into: the four of us took the large front bedroom that could have held seven people. We didn't have to share the room with others the whole time, a fact I totally could have enjoyed if Steffen didn't snore so loudly in his sleep.

Sleep or no, Saturday was busy. With Larry's improving stick-shift driving, we went to View Point, a part of the bay with rocky cliffs (no, I didn't decide to jump) that seemed at low tide: some fish on a taller cliff looked a little dead because their little pool had run out of water. Luckily for me, an extremely amateur photographer, the scenery was so gorgeous I couldn't screw up the picture even if I tried.

Then it was off to our number one destination, the Knysna elephant farm. It was probably the most touristy thing we did all day, the really overly touristy stuff that's so manufactured and staged it's almost disgusting (DVDs of the experience, complete with techno background music), but there were elephants so I was in. While I was paying for my ticket (R140; ~$14 for elephant petting? Oh yes), the lady behind the counter informed me for a mere R25 I could get a bucket of food for the elephants. Like the true American consumer I am, I said "I'll take it" and found myself holding several carrots, bunches of grapes, lettuce and pumpkin chunks. Granted, it wasn't that much food, but I thought it might do some damage (appetite-wise) to the pachydermed individuals out there. Nope.

This is why elephants have it so well: in the wild, they eat 18 hours each day (the zoologists assured us that, in this reservation, they kept the eating down to a mere 12 hours). 18 hours?! The rest of the time, they're sleeping. Two of my favorite activities, and they've got humans waiting on them, hand and foot. While we stood there trying to feed carrots and other random veggies to the elephants, the zoologists were delivering several kilos of tree branches to the elephants. Yeah, apparently our snacks were nothing to these guys, since they eat 250 kg of food each day. The baby elephant quickly tired of me putting food on my palm and reaching for it with his trunk and instead grabbed my bucket and tried to eat the rest of the food (the pumpkin proved too big for him, though). Adorable. And then, after the elephants realized the silly humans had run out of bucket food, they stomped off to a corner of land and tore up the branches. So apparently elephants eat trees -- the picture of me and Mr. Elephant is a bit underwhelming, I think, because he's got a tree branch all over his face. They are also a little intimidating, though no one got trampled to death during our tour; but it occurred to me they were slightly bigger than I was, even after eating a chicken & mushroom pie, food baby and all. Their plot of land was bereft of trees, which makes sense because they seemed to be chomping those things up. I really wish I could eat trees, too.

Speaking of trees, we had hoped to go to the Big Foot Forest in Knysna's national park (we later discovered it was actually called the Big Tree Forest, though that didn't really help us), but for some reason it was "closed." I was a little disappointed -- how often do you see 700-year-old trees? -- but a little less so when I found that their most popular attraction was a suspension bridge. Just like in the movies where the super-fit, attractive hero is running from imminent death and the bridge breaks in the middle over a 100-meter drop to the center of the earth and, after a few minutes of sweat-inducing suspense, makes it to safety. I thought I might have to face my demons (I'm really scared of heights) and rough it when the bridge broke, and the "enter at your own risk" signs weren't too helpful. Nor was the "bridge history" sign, with its brief timeline of the 30-year-old bridge. The fact that it had been rebuilt and "repaired" in 2007 didn't inspire too much confidence, but I figured it might offer some good photo opportunities. After all, having good photos is a little more important than one's mortality, I think. The view was breathtaking, of course.

And then on to the most beautiful beach I've ever seen in my life, in Noetzie, a little ways past a township outside of Knysna. So many rocky cliffs that lead down to the water, and it was completely deserted. It looked like paradise. There were quite a few nice houses in the hills, taunting us for being (relatively) impoverished students. Again, the scene was a little ruined by Steffen's fascination with dropping trou -- let's say I've seen a little more of him than I'd have liked to, but at least he's comfortable with his body? I warned him it was illegal to be nude in a public beach in SA (it is) but he didn't seem too concerned. Considering the police vigilance here, I can't say I blame him.

We'd stopped over in Mosselbaai (Mussel Bay) before Knysna on day one and took a wrong turn somewhere, ending up in a township instead. Our 2009 VW (which, by the way, was a model type from the 1980s, though the car was brand new) attracted stares from the all-black residents of the town. Yeah. It's completely awkward to get stared at for being white. Even in middle school in Fort Worth, where I was a minority among the mainly-Hispanic population, the shouts of "hey, white girl" still implied some sort of familiarity with white people. In that township, it's completely uncomfortable because you can feel the stares for being different but also because you know you don't belong there. On the other end of things, those houses on the beach scream opulence; also, we passed so many BMWs and Mercedes on the highway (all driven by white people). There are these two completely different worlds, living literally minutes from each other, and it's kind of disturbing.

Zuma: I'm just not that into you*

These posters are plastered to most of the streetlights in town, and with election season coming up, I guess it's kind of a big deal. Still, there's something about ANC pres Jacob Zuma's face that's just... ugh. I know I mentioned the "cat that swallowed the canary" look last time, and I definitely think there's something to that. But something else was bothering me, and I couldn't figure it out until today, when it finally dawned on me. He has awful teeth. I mean, really bad teeth. Orthodontia is in order here.

Which led me to think about politicians and attractiveness. So, disregarding Zuma's past -- rape charges, ridiculous AIDS statements and corruption aside, you have to face the facts: he's a pretty unattractive man. Even with better teeth, he's still got that nose. And those beady eyes. And he's bald. Ugh. So, would a man who looked like Zuma be able to run for president of the U.S.? I really don't think so, for the physical reasons. McCain might not have been the most attractive person, but he was a hottie when he was younger; Obama is fairly glamorous (though I prefer the Obama of the early 1980s, during his Harvard Law Review days; yummy); even John Kerry went tanning so he could look decent. And I'm sorry, Zuma, but I'm afraid you don't make the cut.

I know, I know, this isn't the states. Most people here can't afford braces, and maybe the "common man" look, as well as his skin color, insures him the majority of the popular vote. I guess it probably is better to focus on the politics rather than how orange John Kerry is, but when you've got a hot political leader, why not flaunt it?

In other news, I think I'm going to the Eastern Cape tomorrow. I'm not exactly sure where yet, but me, Larry the Texan and Steven the Dutch guy are renting a VW Golf and setting out for five or so hours across the country.

Tonight I met a Norwegian girl who has a VW bug with flames painted on it. The engine is really loud and growly but it's really cute, and it's much better than walking.

ALSO, I ATE A WORM. Tonight at the student center we had International Foods Night and... yes, I sampled a worm from the Botswana table. It tasted like bacon (perhaps my favorite food)-- it was really salty and crunchy and honestly, not too bad. In fact (sorry, Sarita), it kind of tasted like bacon + Indian food. Very interesting spices. It was kind of yellowish inside, after I bit into it (the rear, not the front with the eyes), so I tried not to think about the insides and whatnot, but it wasn't nearly as scary as I thought. Kind of a healthy snack, really, much better than Choc-o-Break cookies, my latest bad habit (like frosted animal crackers. I know, what am I, five?). The French table had ratatouille and crepes; the Canadian (wtf?) table had salmon and rice (for the record, made by Americans); the Mozambique table had some sort of shrimp/coconut/rice dish that was decent; and there was a Mexican table serving enchiladas and nachos. I was kind of terrified to try the "Mexican" food and instead looked longingly at the Swedish meatballs and was disappointed by the so-called "American" cuisine, macaroni-and-cheese and apple pie. No chicken fried steak? Disappointing.

Brief blog break (BBB), but after this weekend I shall return with pictures of hopefully-somewhat-different geography and stories about my Eastern Cape fling(s). Stay tuned.

* I already broke my back, but I'd really like to not become a political prisoner this semester. Hope Zuma doesn't go blog-surfing...

Limbo

It's an odd state of existence, being an invalid. There are the perks: I'm not allowed to do any heavy lifting, so Alyssa carries the heavy groceries for me; technically, I shouldn't be bending my back to do laundry, so if I really insisted I could probably find someone to pity me and take care of my load; and the cool kids from the northeastern U.S. acknowledge my existence in their cursory "so how's your back doing?" Still, I feel like there's something missing. In the absence of a corset/cast-like device, I think people are less willing to believe -- or fully comprehend -- the magnitude of my injury. I mean, yes, they saw me lying on the rock crying my eyes out post-trauma, but people forget things and minimize incidents later. If I had some sort of tangible "proof" of my compressed vertebrae, well, that'd be nice. No more of this complaining about the uncomfortable seats in film class. Time to bring out the big guns. Maybe I should carry around my chart and x-ray images? Victorian corset? Lug around physical therapy equipment/doctors to class with me? I'm determined to milk this for all it's worth and see what it gets me: the attention of cute foreign boys, free dinners, car rides to the beach, etc.

In between trying to impress those around me with my bravery (give me validation!), I have another uncomfortable state of being. At my latest physio appointment, I complained to my freckled therapist about my sore back.

"Oh? It's sore?" she said, blue eyes sparkling. "That means it's healing -- the cartilage is growing back. It's normal for the pain to sort of fluctuate during the first eight weeks."

Eight weeks? Gulp.

After mobilizing my spine (kind of like a massage, but a little more painful), the story changed.

"Have you been... sitting down a lot lately?"

I told her I'd just come from my two-hour English class.

And that's when she explained to me the three cardinal rules of compression fractures, because these can actually make it worse: don't sit for too long, don't stand for too long and don't lie in the same position for too long.

Um. So that leaves running and walking, two activities I try to avoid at all costs. (Secret: I'm sitting as I'm writing this. Sorry, L1 and T12! <333) What am I, a robot?

"The professors tend to not like it when you stand up in class," she offered. "But we can write you a note and they'll let you stand for exams."

And the thing is, being a sedentary person by nature, there are so many fun things to do while sitting! Without going into the more explicit acts one can perform while in a chair, I especially love sitting and drinking Savannah Dry cider during trivia night at the pub, because I usually know the literature questions, though nothing else (the trivia quiz-writer certainly has a thing for Jonathan Swift); watching movies (in Afrikaans: fliek); consuming bottles of South African wine and chatting.

So, in between trying to decide what position will do the least harm to my healing spine, let me enlighten you, over a week late, on the activities of St. Patrick's Day spent in a foreign country. Because it takes me several years to learn a lesson, I've just recently realized the importance of donning green for St. P's. This time I put on green earrings, went to Hemingway class and... realized no one else realized the gravity of the holiday. There were greys, pinks... no green.

"Do you get pinched if you're not wearing green?" I asked the long-haired hippie girl with the Sartre book on her desk.

She gave me a confused look. "Why would someone pinch you for not wearing green?"

Later that day, someone asked me what it was that St. P was known for. And I think that pretty much describes the importance of March 17 to the average South African. They do, however, have an "Irish" pub in Stellenbosch, so it was filled to the brim that night. As a new 21-year-old, I wanted to partake in the madness, so I purchased a couple glasses of green Guiness. Guiness is really intense stuff and honestly, pretty terrible. A European recently remarked to me that Americans drink to get drunk. I am a stereotype: I hate the taste of alcohol, and I especially dislike Guiness. But it's alcohol, so I'll drink it. Even after the green dye stains my teeth and lips in an especially unsexy way. The big, beefy males tended to congregate in the corner watching some sort of rugby match and screaming in unison at some failed or wonderful play. I lamely left shortly after midnight because I had a paper to write for the following day. Even St. Patrick's good deeds can't motivate me to finish assignments in a timely manner.

On an economic note, let me just say that most things here are cheap if you're an American student. (The dollar equals about ten rand; the situation is even better for the Euro, with about 14 rand per Euro.) You can buy a nice bottle of wine for $3, go to a moderately-priced restaurant and pay less than $5 for dinner, take the train to and from Cape Town for $2, buy a cocktail for $3-4... but their Apple computers are still really expensive, virtually hundreds of dollars more than what you'd pay in the U.S. Supposedly they're still a relatively new phenomenon here and thus more expensive, but it's a shock. Also, their books are just as expensive as those in the U.S. (since most of them have to be imported from England; I guess they don't have any major publishing houses in South Africa... or perhaps most of Africa for that matter). You pay about $15 for a trade paperback, about the same price you'd pay at my beloved B&N.

Earlier tonight I went to a discussion about racism at Stellenbosch (by the way, the birthplace of Apartheid) in which people brought up the concern with Afrikaans being the primary language spoken at the university. The university didn't, until the last ten years or so, offer any courses in English, and was entirely Afrikaans. I didn't know this before coming here, but Afrikaans is the primary language spoken by the white descendants of the European colonists (Dutch, French). They only learn English in school. Xhosa and Zulu are the two main languages spoken by the black population of the western Cape. Thus, the black population of Stellenbosch U. is pretty small; still, some people were talking about being misled about the language situation, since they were informed their classes would be taught in English. Since the only courses offered in English are English literature and international classes, many non-Afrikaans-speaking students (read: the black students) are SOL when they arrive here, having their chemistry instructor literally lecture them in another language. There's going to be a big push to change the course languages offered -- the leader of the discussion mentioned a demonstration in a few weeks? And then the Canadian student on the panel said capitalism was the root of racism and suggested we overthrow the capitalistic system (okay, so it got a bit radical at the end, but it was interesting).

Also, elections are on April 22. The ANC will win but maybe it'll be interesting to watch (Zuma looks very crooked in his campaign posters, like the cat that swallowed the canary).

For homework, our history professor (a cute Afrikaner old man named Hans; I want him to be my surrogate grandfather) suggested we watch an Afrikaans soap opera. Awesome. Another note on academics: 75 is an A, and 50 is a passing grade. And my courses are transferring on a pass/fail basis to Rice. That's why I go out on weeknights.

(Note on the pictures: these are from Kayamandi, the black township right outside of Stellenbosch. By virtue of my race, I'm clearly an outsider when visiting there; I get a lot of stares. The kids are playing cricket; the little convenience store is sponsored by Coca-Cola; I liked the color of the building.)

Here's to China?

Today in my Hemingway class I found out two things of note that don't really relate to Ernest in the least: first, absinthe (the good hallucinogenic kind) is legal here; and secondly, the Dalai Lama was denied admittance to South Africa lately because "they have to focus on the 2010 World Cup" in Cape Town. One made me super excited; the other made me a little sad.

"So what's the real reason?" the headband-wearing guy I'd been assigned to present "Hills Like White Elephants" with, asked.

"Oh, you know, the same. It could screw up our trade with China," the red-haired punkish (albeit very insightful) girl answered.

Silly.

Honeymoon ends; therapy

So sometime this morning, when I was writing the third of this week's last-minute essays, a curious thought popped into my head: "The honeymoon period is over." Of all the hackneyed adages in the world, that one speaks to me the most. It doesn't matter what I'm talking about, because it always seems to ring true -- rocky points in relationships, getting to the bottom of the Nutella jar, or getting passive-aggressively "released" from your job at the bookstore because you had a scheduling conflict and couldn't work the Harry Potter release party (f.u., Barnes & Noble and your still-overpriced-even-when-40%-off-with-the-member-discount hardcover bestsellers).

And no, I wasn't thinking of Heidi and Spencer's delicious/inevitable marriage collapse (wow, that's the first The Hills reference I've thrown in here; I am SO sorry), but more of the fact that I no longer feel like I'm on vacation. Not necessarily because I'm bored now that my pace of life has slowed down (my parents enjoyed taking us to rock museums, so you can only imagine how enthralling those cross-country road trips could be. Don't ask about the petrified forest), but because it finally occurs to me I'm in school. And I have assignments due. I've probably slept a combined total of twelve hours since Monday which means... a slight improvement from last semester. It's just confusing to feel like you're temporarily staying somewhere and then having to study on top of it, sort of like when we went to Austin in 5th grade and had a lot of fun then had to write a report about it. I just can't look at that rose quartz-encrusted rotunda the same way again.

Updates? Updates. I have spinal shock from the trauma, which means my nerve endings are still weird and that my thigh muscles are sore. Haven't turned into a hunchback yet, but I am slowly feeling my muscles loosening up (I can even put my legs straight out in front of me now without dying). And, I know this is super cheesy and maybe I should go write a Patch Adams-esque screenplay or something, but it feels really great to be improving. Rather, physical therapy feels great. So my idea of physical therapy -- a big room with ex-war veterans attempting to walk straight with the tearful encouragement of their physical trainers, football players stumbling off injuries, old ladies stretching -- turned out to be a little off. It's less physical, more... therapeutic. Therapeutic in the massage sense -- let me just say, ultrasound juice is amazing (menthol!) and, though I was initially scared at the physical therapist's announcement that she was going to "mobilize [my] spine," I realized this just meant a thirty-minute massage. The therapist has a French name, like many of the Afrikaners here do, is cute and blond and seems to also have a sweating immunity. So when I walk in to my appointments, the sweat pouring down my face and, if I'm lucky, chicken-mushroom pie crumbs on the front of my shirt (I really have to stop eating while I walk), I feel a bit I've-really-let-myself-go in comparison. But I'm not here to impress my doctor crush; I'm here to improve. Even if her freckles are adorable and her accent music to my ears. We're going on the Garden Route tour in less than a month (ooh, more like two weeks), the one where there will be baby cheetahs who want nothing more than to be petted. I think there's some hiking and rock climbing, as well, but as an invalid I think I'll abstain from rock climbing.

I still have a craving for chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes and cream gravy. You know my address! (If not, please see Facebook profile; too lazy to type it out right now and besides, the steak would probably be cold by the time it arrived, anyway.) For some reason, though Cuban food seems to have found its niche here, and hamburgers and steaks are all over the place, the chicken fried steak hasn't yet caught on. Life can be so unfair.

South Africa fact 1: J.R.R. Tolkien was born in South Africa!

You're a-peein'

Last week as I was leaving African-American lit class, a fellow American remarked that she found it uncomfortable to sit through the America-bashing that was that day's discussion. The South African kids in the class -- one, a red-haired punkish girl (a nice change from the bleached-blond miniskirt-wearing twigs that fill the campus), the other a muscley mullet-donning intellectualish guy -- discussed Jim Crow laws and racial divisions and, more or less, explored some of America's more incriminating moments.

"I just don't know what to do when they insult the U.S.," Ms. New York said.

I guess it is kind of awkward to hear how much America sucks. In terms of etiquette, what is the best reaction? A chuckle? Agreeing unconditionally? Regardless, though, I find myself less on the defensive, more on the "hmm... well, actually, you're right. LOL SRY about the whole Iraq War thing/the last eight years" position. We read a James Baldwin essay in which he mentioned patriotism:

"I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually."

I think Baldwin had a point there. It comes off as a little insecure to deny or ignore America's flaws. Let's ignore, of course, the fact that he eventually got so fed up with life in the states that he left for France. Honestly, I feel like, while al Jazeera might watch Desperate Housewives and get a completely wrong impression of the U.S. (we don't all look like Eva Longoria, unfortunately, and Susan is just an idiot), the message we send out to the rest of the world is kind of embarrassing. Americans aren't exactly known for their intellects. Or for their quiet voices. Or their manners. (However, I'm still convinced we can do Tex-Mex better than anywhere else on the planet.)

Like Avenue Q tells us, we laugh at stereotypes because they're kind of true (another of the show's life lessons: a B.A. in English is useless, unless you can write a Tony award-winning musical and become insanely rich). Last week, our history professor lectured a minute or two past 4, when class ends, and several Americans in the front started sighing loudly and tapping their watches. Pierre from Paris (cliche? Perhaps) has much better manners, I noticed. The girl from Mexico didn't overtly exude impatience. Nope. It was just the Americans. Awesome. Somehow, I didn't quite feel like belting out "The Star-Spangled Banner."

The more I think about it, the more I think Baldwin might have been on to something when he left the U.S.* Maybe he didn't just move to France because of the racial inequalities and of feeling like an outsider in a culture in which he had no ancestral stake. Perhaps he got one request too many without a "please?" at the end. Maybe someone said "Where's the bathroom?" without first greeting themselves or talked loudly on their cell phones in the movie theater. Or perhaps he foresaw the advent of Katy Perry, mesh underwear, Snakes on a Plane and iPhones and took off running.

Today me and Alyssa went with Rick (from the Netherlands) and Tim (from Germany) to a concert at Kirstenbosch, in Cape Town. After some initial road confusion -- we quickly found out that Tim is also used to driving on the right side of the road -- we got to the venue, where we met more Germans and spread out on the grass to enjoy the music of The Dirtyskirts. The music was decent but ultimately nothing special; however, it occurred to me that I really enjoy Europeans.

Maybe that's kind of a generalization. I mean, some Europeans are kind of terrible. I wouldn't necessarily go to a movie with Hitler or invite Jack the Ripper to dinner. Even Mussolini I'm a little iffy about, and Freud isn't really my style. But I like their general attitude. They're quieter, more polite and have a good knowledge of American politics and history (I was out American president-ed by Tim the German today, I'm a little sad to say). And while I've learned during my time here that boys can be jerks no matter their nationality, I'm having a bit of a crush on Europeans in general. This doesn't mean that I'm going to adopt some faux-aristocratic European accent like some of the Texan (!) exchange students here (I really don't know what would be more pretentious), but it just means that I might bolt, Baldwin-style, the next time someone says "misunderestimated" or forgets a "thank you."

* So since I can love America while acknowledging her shortcomings, let me just note that I love apple pie a la mode. And SuperTarget. And Tina Fey. And all my friends from back home! Well, most of them. You know who you are. And yes, that first picture is Dr. Kovac, and technically he's from Croatia but he was my first TV doctor crush, so I think that counts for something.