We will all be happy and like each other

So Stellenbosch's version of spring break is this next week, and with the AIFS program I'm going on a week-long tour of the Garden Route. I think Easter is somewhere in there, but I've been so lax religiously for the past few years, I had to log onto catholicism.about.com to figure out it's the 12th. Thx, internet!

I felt like a diabetic in a candy store yesterday when we were signing up for activities to do. Or like a recovering alcoholic in a liquor store? My physical therapist warns me not to do anything involving vibrations, back-and-forth spinal impact. In plain English, this means I can't do anything fun. Horseback riding? Canopy/zipline forest tour? Bungee jumping? No, no, and no. Though apparently the horses are kind of feral and it turns into some sort of rodeo-type thing. And... I saw some of the videos of past students bungee jumping and it almost made me barf. Why would someone willingly subject themselves to that? And then it costs R1500? Someone couldn't pay me enough to jump off that bridge.

One girl from last semester, immortalized through YouTube, had second thoughts once she was in the harness and at the edge of the bridge. She was all, "No! No! I don't want to! Please, no!" and the guys sympathetically (NOT) shoved her off the edge of the bridge, where she flailed like a piece of bait for three or four minutes. It was kind of gross. The sporadically facial-haired guy who was here last semester assured us that "she ended up really enjoying it". Yeah, I'm thinking I'll pass on that type of "enjoyment" for, like, ever.

The most interesting part of the meeting, though, was the list of ground rules our rather hairy program director had organized. A few of them were legit, if we were like 5 and on a school field trip to the zoo: keep up with your belongings, remember to pee often and early, remember clothes and toothbrushes. And one of them was (I wish I were joking, but alas, I'm not), "We will all be happy and like each other."

First off, this sounds like brainwashing, Barney-style. Second, Mr. Hairy's observation that "over the course of the trip, you may discover you kind of never want to see some of these people again", while having some merits, fails to account for people you already never want to see again. There is that girl I sort of called a bitch on Day 1; I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess we won't be penpals post-Africa. Third, what?!

But really, this is all sort of indicative of the biggest problem with the program. This is what happens when you have an altogether too-large group of people studying abroad: you get cliques a la the 10th grade. I'm not even joking. The rich bitches, the athletic girls who run every afternoon, the people from Providence, the hippies, religious + athletic, religious + not so athletic, beautiful people from New York, the short guy with a Napoleon complex + his unlikely hot hookups, the surfer boys, butterfaces, and that group headed by the girl who hates everyone but little kids (like that Demetri Martin joke, "people who just like kids are sort of saying, 'I like people... but only for a little while'"). Guess which one I'm in! I think I'm in the "spillover from Boston" group that's sort of a catchall for outcasts. I'm surprised we don't have cheerleaders dating football players and contested Homecoming Queen elections. Still, I'm fulfilling pretty much the same role I had in high school (antisocial turbo-nerd, since I like to read and don't really care about impressing people I already sort of think I'm better than) so I guess some things never change. Still, that is my criticism of this program: there are too many people. Schlossman went with a cozy group of eight (?) or so to Poland, and they meshed. Because, even with a cheerleader and a nerd in that group, how many cliques can you possibly form with eight? There is no meshing here because everyone immediately finds a group they "fit" into, because they have that luxury of choice, and it's PHS all over again. Because there are over 60 people on the trip, and lines apparently have to be drawn. I just wish there was a band hall so I could more obviously identify as a nerd, just like in high school. Here, I have to be a bit more subtle about it and relegate my useless fun facts to Trivia Night at the Irish pub.

Subject change! Food complaint:

In Stellenbosch (or, as the residents affectionately dub it, Stellies), we have a McDonald's and a Steers, a more-expensive, barbeque-sauce version of McDonald's. There are milkshakes everywhere you go, and you can order hamburgers even from the "Tex-Mex" place. Craving some nice ground beef the other day, I ordered a hamburger. And, like so many things I pine for and then finally receive, it kind of... sucked. Hamburgers here are not hamburgers. They are meatloaf sandwiches. The meat is all soft and sort of lacks any real form. I don't like meatloaf. And, sadly, it gets to the point where the fast food places are the only decent joints in town to satisfy your hamburger craving. It's very lonely. (Lonely=having a hankering for a good cheeseburger and being unable to realize those desires.)

The moral of this story is, send me a delicious cheeseburger in the mail. Please?

Love,
Sarah

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!