Posted 6:03:54 PM by Ben
happy birthday mike. my roomate mike turns 22 today. you know, 21 does not seem that old, it's the drinking age but that's about it, but 22! man, i'm living with a true twentysomething.

today has been a real low key day, and it feels great. it's the first day since i have been in south africa that i have not had anything to do. eventually i'll explore this whole town and get to know it, but today was a real easy day. got up real late (9:30 or 10:00) and then went to this little cafe around the corner that i have dubbed the "hippie cafe." it's run by a bunch of hippies, but the food is really good and resonably priced. i think tonight we are going to stay in, have a little suprise birthday party for kate who is turing 20 and maybe order some pizza. i guess i could have had this day in chicago, except from what i hear no one wants to be outside. i don't miss the frigid cold or the wind whipping around one bit! sorry guys. this goes to almost anyone reading this, if you can scrape together the cash before the end of february (or a free plane ticket) come and see cape town with me. (i realize that this is mostly just joke, but this is really a place to come to, at some point in your life.) dinner is coming up soon so i think i'm going to send a few more e-mails and get out of this internet cafe.

one little note about this place. they ALWAYS are playing this radio station that mixes early 90's rock and late 90's hip-hop from the us. i just heard a peal jam song followed by a outkast song followed by a blur song. strange.

Posted 4:13:33 PM by Ben
i knew that this was coming. i have been waiting for the last two weeks, while traveling around south africa for it to hit, and it finally came yesterday. what i am talking about, of course, is the pressing feeling of reality that i have been able to avoid finally caught up with me yesterday. let me explain.

last night we had a reception/dinner with the head of the tourism department in cape town. during her little speech about the future of the city and how important tourism is i began to think about how separated from reality my experience is in this city. she was talking about a bunch of bullshit and completely ignoring the poverty and segregation that still goes on here. for most of the people in this city, the luxuries that i am able to afford are simply not possible. what more, we are living in a complete bubble, away from this city. we are literally placed upon a hill and last night it really struck me how weird this all is. i have been having a great time so far, but the vacation is over and i'm beginning to get annoyed again. all the excess stimulation and beauty coupled with being in a different country has overshadowed thing until now but after two weeks i'm really getting frustrated with things. i'm frustrated with society, with the double story perpetuated everywhere and with my inability thus far to get into more of the country than what has been placed before me. i want to get to know people here. i want to understand what it going on through some sort of "authentic" way. i realize the inherent hypocrisy in this, being a white, middle class america male, i know that i will not really be able to fully experience what it means to be south african, but i need to do something else. i don't think that i am going to be able to live in the lap of luxury for this whole time without going nuts. a few of us have expressed interest in working for some sort of organization in the city, a ngo possibly. i know that in seven weeks it'll be hard to "make a difference," but maybe at least that would allow me to meet people i would not otherwise and see a different perspective. if that's a purely hedonistic response, i am aware, but i don't really know what else to do.

class today did not help. in xhosa class, we had a "culture day" which consisted of learning about clans and praise singing distinct to various indigenous tribe to south africa. that would have been fine, but the approach we took was terrible. we have two teachers, a white woman named tesa and a xhosa man named zakilie. zakilie came in dressed in traditional dressed and proceeded to some praise singing. then the class was divided into groups, each give a different clan name, and proceeded to imitate the chants and calls. i understand the intentions of this, i suppose, but the whole time i couldn't shake the feeling that this was some sort of exploitation, or at the very least was an absurd way to go about this. to me, it seemed analogous to dressing up in a head dress and leaning a native american dance. even with a member of that society leading the lesson, it felt so, so awkward i couldn't even concentrate. maybe it will get better next week, i hope so.

now we have a long weekend, no class til monday, and we have a field trip on friday. i don't know exactly what it is, it's called the "apartheid tour." i'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Posted 2:48:25 PM by Ben
all right loyal readers, i'm finally going to update this thing from cape town. i 've been stymied in my attempt to access the internet until this point but i think now i am in a position where i'll be able to connect almost every day and keep this thing up to date. one note, the punctuation seems to be getting a little screwed up due some international translation, but i don't know how to fix it. oh well, here goes nothing.

we all arrived here on friday afternoon and were shuttled to one of two guest houses in a neighborhood of cape town called tamboerskloof. the 24 of us are divided up between the two places that are only two blocks from each other. not bad in chicago, but both are built on the side of a mountain, so i am living two very vertical blocks away from the rest of the group. i'll have excellent calves by the end of the two months. anyway, the guest house i'm at is amazing. absolutely amazing. it overlooks the entire city and has a spectacular view of table mountain and the surrounding mountains called devil's peak and lion's head. when we all arrived and checked in we literally spent an hour sitting out back, looking at the scenery with our mouths a gape, unable to communicate. the house it self was built in 1824 and has since been added on to. i am rooming with a guy named evan, and we have the best view in the place. out room in on the second floor and overlooks the entire mountain. i wake up each morning to the most amazing scenery possible. as soon as i get it together, i'll try and up load some pictures on this page to show what i am talking about. for now, i'll have to rely on words to describe the place. the guest house is run by a family, chris and vicky and their kids anthony (12) robin (15) and another daughter who is 19, but i have yet to meet. vicky is also a caterer, so the weeks we eat in our place (we switch each week with the house down below (hillcrest)) should be fantastic.

our first full day here, saturday, we went on a walking tour of the city, bought all our books for the course (536 Rand or about 68 bucks, not bad at all). then shawn, katrina, kate, sara and i went to the top of table mountain for dinner and the sunset. fabulous we packed a little dinner and took the gondola up to the top at 7:30, just in time to see the sun set and then we sat around for over two hours, watching the stars come out and the lights of the city below come on. i think this weekend we are going to hike up and take the gondola down. the view was one of the most amazing natural view i have ever had. the mountains sort of combine the ruggedness of the front range i the rockies with the pacific ocean in nothern california. one side we could look down and see cape town itself, the other we looked straight down the spine of the mountains that continue all the way down the cape to the cape of good hope. as we took the taxi down the mountain, shawn asked the driver if he had been up the mountain. he replied that very few cape town locals can afford the trip. this really brought us down to earth, but also elicited a very interesting discussion about class dynamics and the "new" south africa. if i have learned anything while being here is that while apartheid is now over, there are still many issues to be worked out and the official story of south africa is far from the truth. the new, unified image that the government is presenting to the rest of the world, like anything else, has a back story and is more complicated that most people outside of the country understand. i gain so much from these sort of experiences, just talking to people. the more i do the more i learn about what this country is really all about.

sunday, the whole group took a driving tour down the cape a little way. we didn't make it to the bottom, but saw some spectacular sights nonetheless. we stopped in a few towns down the cape (considered suburbs of cape town but each with a unique local flavor, something suburbs in the states are sorely missing) and toooled around. the culmination of our trip was our visit to boulder rocks beach, a nesting site for thousand of penguins. we were able to go and see the nests and then get in the water at another place and actually swim with the penguins. your would not believe how fast these guys can swim. they are the silliest looking things on land, struggling to even walk upright, but once underwater they can move! i've never seen anything quite like it. then we had dinner at another one of our program director's homes. she made this fantastic malasian rice with safron and spices and so much goodness. i already asked her for the recipe.

yesterday we began class and the paradise trip ended, kind of. we have two, 1.25 hour classes in history and then a hour long class in xhosa (insert a click). xhosa is one of the 11 official languages of south africa. it is similar to zulu but more difficult. we are learning it because it is the primary native language in the region, so hopefully we will be able to practice on the street. everyone knows english, but it would be great to try out another language right away. yesterday the class was a little silly but today was much better and i think that it will be an interesting addition to the course.

tonight we are having dinner with the head of the department of tourism of south africa. i honestly don't know what to expect, but it's another good dinner with someone famous. i think i'm up to six now. okay, i think that updates me for the moment. i'm in a new internet cafe today that works a little better than "must be a mustang" where i was yesterday. i'll be back and this page will grow.