Rocking the Daisies

Almost forgot to blog about my weekend in Cape Town!  We took Friday off of work and drove down Thursday night to stay with the interns in CT.  We got in late, but Charlie, Durkin, and Rebecca were awake to greet us - only 1 hr late after getting a tad lost. 

We had all Friday to walk around the city and so we did.  We visited the head office and got to see people we missed and meet the faces belonging to the voices we hear on the phone so often.  It was nice, and the office is amazing - very laid-back sheik.  Very GRS I guess...

After this we kinda split up (the boys wanted to drive up Table Mountain, but Jess had the keys - oops).  Jess and I went around Green Market Square and walked up and down Long Street shopping.  I got some bangles and we had lunch at a cafe outside.  It was really nice.  Cape Town feels more like Europe and the Africa I know (PE).  I commented that it was like Chicago and Jim said San Francisco.  Either way - a very different feel than what we are used to.

When we were getting a little bored Jess and I called up the boys and they were down at the waterfront at some brewery.  We headed that way and after finding the Ferris Wheel they were easily able to direct us to their location.  We had some cider and walked the marina before heading back to grocery shop before our departure.

We ended up getting packed and having everyone ready (Us 4, Durkin, Rebecca, Charlie, and Danielle) around 7 I believe.  The drive was supposed to take around 1 hour.  Google Maps however made it a very difficult drive (the location didn't help).  We were trying to find this wine estate somewhere in the Western Cape and ended up turning around many many times, asking random people directions, and finally, after pulling into a gas station, a guy in the same predicament recognized our car and offered to direct us as he had found the appropriate directions at last.  Minutes later we were at the Cloof Wine Estate.  Mountains in the background, and fields abound, we set up our tents in the dark - it was near 11 - and had a quick drink before heading over to the stages. 

There was some live music playing, but we were more interested in the DJ at this point for some reason.  We danced and met people and Trevor and Lauren arrived from Kimberly!  It was here the night really started.  Bedtime around 4 am, we woke up hours later with the sun and readied ourselves for a long day.  The days activities were followed with near 100 degree weather.  The boys went swimming in the "dam" and I wondered between stages (took a nap in the short-film festival tent) had some vors, and hung out with everyone.  We spent a good portion of the afternoon sitting under our canopy (fell over real fast) passing around cheap wine and sharing stories about our time in Africa so far.  This was such a nice way to reunite with these people I barely know, yet love already.

Our one hiccup was our braai.  We brought sausage to make for a meal, but we were instructed to NOT use our charcoal braai.  Luckily, we found neighbors with a gas braai and they let us use it.  They also donated some sausage to us so we ate well (despite Charlie trying to ruin dinner by spilling all the sausage on the ground!).  At night we went to the main stage to watch some acts.  The heat however really tired us out and some people (myself included) didn't make it too far into the night.

Early morning everyone woke up and we headed back to the main stage.  7:00 am, bright and early, the Springbok were playing Australia in the quarter finals of the world cup.  I am positive this drew the largest crowd of the festival.  So many people were heartbroken at end time.  The game JUST slipped through the Bokke fingers.  So sad.  The upside for an exhausted person like myself was that the mood fell so much that people all started heading home.  We got an early start on the road and arrived home at a decent time.  The weekend stayed with me though and I had a couple days of sickness.  blurg.  Fun weekend though and I am excited to see other interns again soon.

Fail

 

Oktoberfest

Who knew South Africa celebrated Oktoberfest?  Sure, it's a knock-off, but it was still a lot of fun.  Last Friday we bought tickets at this German sports club place and went back later in the evening to meet up with Warren and Silky and everyone.  There were beer tents and German folk bands and pitchers of beer and lots of happy people.  The tent was filled with picnic benches - I don't know if people normally sit at these, but by the time we got there everyone was standing on the tables and singing.  It was a completely insane scene.  Enjoyed myself even though a guy spilled beer all over my head and soaked my hair in the first 15 minutes.  O well....

Welcome Dinner

Well, we finally had our official welcome dinner with the staff.  We went to this buffet place and had mongolian-barbecue style food along with a lot of other stuff.  Drinks (not paid for by GRS) and conversation flowed in what was an enjoyable night.

Coaches

Bej

 

Bere

Chika!

Lavie and Sindi

Gee

 

Ntombie and Knoxie

Knoxie and Titie

Lavista

 

Nkadi - had better pics, but like this best

Nowie

 

Sba

 

SHUFFLE

Siya

 

Slice

Voete

 

So, one of the greatest things about GRS is our coaches.  They are amazing people.  So, I thought I'd add a post in here to give you faces as references to the people I am speaking of.  Not all coaches are featured here, I will work on getting more photos.

Skillz Holiday

This kid grabbed me, pulled me to the side, and posed for this photo

This week we are running a program called "Skillz Holiday".  It is designed for kids to be in most of the day while their schools are on break.  It runs from 8:30 to 2:30 I believe.  I went yesterday for the day to Motherwell to help out.  We are trying to get a story about our Skillz Holiday in the GRS newsletter so we are documenting it particularly well.  Because of this I spent most of my time taking pictures.  These kids LOVE to get their pictures taken so there are a lot of individual and group posing shots.  Wherever I was there were kids yelling "Mulungu! Mulungu! (White person!) Take my picture!"  I got some really good ones of activities though too and of their soccer games.

The rest of the time I was making sandwiches - over 400 of them.  Eish!

Shark Diving

CRAZY AWESOME EXPERIENCE!  Everyone should do it.  It's not scary, it's not expensive, you get great pictures, and now I get to say I went swimming with a Great White SHARK!!!

For about $150 we got a room for the night, breakfast, lunch, and cage diving for 1/2 hour +.  We arrived on site around 8:45 for a 9:00 meeting.  We were served a breakfast buffet and then proceeded to sit until around 9:40 when a busload of people arrived from Cape Town.  This busload was a group of people who are in a yacht-around-the-world-race.  They are docked form 3 weeks in Cape Town, and one of the boys actually went to High School with Jess - perhaps the most random meeting two people could have. 

We got our instructions from perhaps the best definition of a man I have ever met.  He was a big guy with hands as big as dinner plates - seriously.  He works with Great White Sharks and was just a huge bad ass.  Anyways, after we knew what was going on we went outside, loaded the boat, and set out.  I was a bit worried about sea-sickness because this past summer I went finishing with my grandma and aunt and felt a bit of motion sickness.  These fears never manifested themselves however - yay!  After about 20 minutes we anchored and were given wet suits if you wanted to dive.  Somehow I got in mine first - probably because I was already wearing my swim suit so just stripped and put it on.  This meant I was the first in the cage - quickly followed by Jim.

 

We weren't using scuba gear because the bubbles and noise freak the sharks out I guess.  They just give you goggles and put you in.  Your feet sick on the back side by the boat and there is a bar for your hands so they are not touching the outside.  You then get a weighted belt to help you lower yourself in the cage.  There is a guy working the bait line - chum is just some tuna heads and he gets the sharks to come next to the cage.  When a shark comes you can't really see because you are at water level.  The guys on the boat look from above and tell you to dive.  You then plunge yourself under and get to see the sharks under water.  The first shark that came by bumped the cage!  It was so cool.  We stayed in for a while - the water was not bad, around 60 degrees they told us.  Our shift was the best and we saw the most sharks.  Some came so close, it was crazy.  One came around the side I was on and looked a me really close-up.  When I had to get out I just went up on the top story and looked from above - this is the best view. 

Almost forgot, the coolest sight probably was when I was in the cage.  While we were still above water this shark just jumped out of the water facing us and took the chum.  We were eye level and his mouth was open and everything - soooo cool!

Most of the sharks weren't too big.  There was only one that I saw that I would say was terrifyingly huge.  Overall a great experience.  Will did get sea-sick and him puking over the side of the boat was captured by the videographer and shown to everyone while we were eating lunch.  Pretty funny.  Got some great pictures.

Hermanus

Great, relaxing weekend.  Lots of driving, but the Garden Route is very nice.  The drive was about 7 hours, but we rented a nice car and it didn’t seem so bad - shorter than a trip to school.  We got to Hermanus at around 4:00.  We checked into our hostel and walked into town.  There were a good amount of people there.  Hermanus is just a small town, about 1.5 hours from Cape Town.  It's situated right on the Atlantic Ocean and it actually has quite a dramatic landscape.  The edge of the city is just these cliffs that plunge down to the water.  It's here that the festival really takes place.  People stand all along the edge of the cliffs to watch for the whales that come to mate here each year - hence the Whale Festival.  We didn't see any major action, but did see a female and her calf frolicking a bit.  Southern Right Whale I was told. 

From here we walked around a bit.  We got some boerevors with carmelized onions and sweet chili sauce - soooo good!  We then looked at the markets (some pretty jewelry, but I didn't buy anything) before heading to the big tent.  There was all sorts of food for sale, but what we were looking for was the booth of the sponsor.  The main sponsor of the event was Two Oceans wine.  We got a bottle of red, white, and rose and sat down outside to drink.  The weather was a little dreary, but the atmosphere was fittingly festive and there was a band playing on stage.

This band was incredible.  They were singing a mix of covers and their original music (not super awesome) and the big screen behind them was playing both scenes of them getting mobbed my paparazzi and fans and concert scenes - just so those in the crowd got that they were famous (still questionable to me).  To top this off the guy (it was one guy and one girl - no band) was wearing a black t-shirt with a white tie, one fingerless glove, and sweatband, and played the key-tar for ONE song only.  He quickly stole Jess's heart.

3 bottles of wine later it was around 6:30 so we went to a restaurant that was supposed to have live music.  Just my luck, it was a SPANISH TAPAS RESTAURANT!  I, needless to say, got really giddy.  I had jamon serrano, paella, some cheese...so good.

While eating, this guy from the DRC was on stage playing the guitar and singing (sometimes in French - missed Eric) and one guy accompanying him on the djembe.  They were really enjoyable and quite good.  However, when their set finished we decided it was time to move on.  We walked down the street a bit and found a bar a lot of young people were going into so we decided to follow.  The bouncers were actually looking at IDs and got a kick out of ours.

The bar was nice and filled with a lot of people - I was severely underdressed in my sweater and flannel from being out in the cold all day.  We met some  people and had a drink and watched some soccer on the TV.  The people we met though, eish, not as cool as PE people.  In PE, everyone I meet I almost immediately love.  They're cool, laid back, fun...the people we met in this bar were serious Afrikaaner racists.  For some reason people like to talk to us, the Americans, about race relations.  This one guy though...I have no idea what was going on.  I feel like as he talked to us he knew we were disapproving of what he was saying, so he kept trying to qualify himself and explain himself and it just got worse. 

Our conversation started off about language  and continued a little something like this:

Us (Jess and I): We want to learn Xhosa.

Him: Why would you ever want to learn Xhosa?

Us: Well, we work with a lot of people who speak it and it would make work easier.

Him: So you work with a lot of blacks?

Us: Yeah

Him: Where I come from Blacks work on the farms that Whites own.

Us: ok….

Him: I mean, that's just the way I grew up.  I'm from a small town, but Blacks and Whites don't really mix.

Us: uhhhhh

Him: I mean, I don't hate black people, our cultures are just so different.

Us: (blank face)

Him: I really don't hate black people, I just don't agree with their culture.  We are too different.

I just walked away.  I kept thinking about that though - and I still think about it.  I wish I would have said something.  In the moment I was just annoyed, but as time goes on I get more and more mad about it.  It's sad.  However, it makes me happy to have found the friends that I have.

After this, Jess and I called it a night and went home to sleep...we DID have to wake up early in the morning!