If only I knew what I know...

March 18^th 2010

 If only I knew what I know....

                So I am very aware that the previous post was exceptionally long, not to worry I will keep this one shorter. I do want to say thank you for the responses I have gotten, I love hearing from you and it is so encouraging.  I hope that St. Patrick’s Day was fun for everyone!

                So after all of the excitement that happened in the rural village and in the Eastern Cape our group headed back to the Western Cape. We flew from East London to Cape Town and from Cape Town drove straight to Stellenbosch. Stellenbosch is about forty minutes from Cape Town and, like every other part of South Africa, is beautiful. The claim to fame for the area is wine. Stellenbosch is a predominantly Afrikaner area. Let me make a note here of the term Afrikaner. An Afrikaner refers to the white Afrikaans population of South Africa, obviously, but also a culture of people who is known for their rule during apartheid. Also note that there is a big difference between an English speaking South African (roots in England) and an Afrikaans speaking South African (More from the Dutch side).  Just as there is tension between the blacks and whites there is still a lot of tension between the Afrikaners and the English.

                So we went straight to a house in Stellenbosch to meet our third homestay family. Similarly to the previous, we were paired. This time I was with a girl named Olivia. We met our family and, yet again, I immediately liked them. They are a married couple with three boys. The father has a glass blowing company which makes scientific materials (i.e. lab equipment) and the mother is a former lawyer and has this year become more of a stay at home mom.  Their boys are 16, 12, and 10 and all of them are very involved in tennis and several other sports. The family is constantly busy with one thing or another. The family is not unlike my own in that sense. Just as my family was they are always going to some event for one of the three kids. They are a wonderful family and I loved living with them. The food has been delicious and they had the best coffee in South Africa. Overall it has been a low key week of hanging out with them and going to lectures.

                On our final night Olivia and I made dinner for our family. We made tacos and key lime pie. So simple but something our family had never had before. I love Mexican food so it was fun to share that with them. Buying ingredients at the grocery store was an experience in itself. You don’t even realize things that people would not have in other countries, like lime juice, sour cream, and pie crust. I was a little nervous that the family would not like our meal but as it turns out it was a big success. Hooray! Everything was delicious and they liked it all; at least they said they did. It was really fun to be able to cook again. All in all, a great last night.

Now that I have a moment I would just like to chat about less of what I am doing and more of what I am learning. So if you do not care what I am thinking, this is your cue to stop reading. Now that we are at the end of our third homestay and going into the fourth and final one and looking at our final project (which takes all of April) I am beginning to see how exhausting this program is. I have found that it is really challenging to be moving all the time and not just moving but moving into completely different cultures from week to week. As you can tell there are HUGE differences between groups of people in South Africa.  It is physically, mentally and emotionally draining to adapt from one to another in sucha  short amount of time. I am not by any means suggesting I wish I had not done this, I love what I am doing, but it definitely takes a toll on a person. I have also been thinking  a lot about the fact that I have learned so much but at this point am unsure what to do with all this information.  I really believe that it is crucial to do something with what we learn, otherwise there is no point in learning it. I can sit in classrooms around South Africa and experience some of the most surreal things but what am I going to do with it? At this point I still don’t know.

I know I have mentioned this before but staying with various families, all of whom have been great, has made me so grateful for my own family. They really are incredible and I do not know where I would be without them. So family, I love you and miss you!

Coming up in the next week, another wine farm tours, camping for three days, and headed into our next and last homestay. Stay tuned J

I hope you all are well and please please watch the Duke tournament games and cheer them on for me. It is killing me to miss March Madness, but not that much because I am living in South Africa and that is pretty incredible.

Sala kakuhle,

Keely

Sorry for the very random assortment of pictures but they are mostly from previous weeks but I still wanted to share them :)

Maddy Katharine and I

Maddy and I having fun at the Cape of Good Hope

Katharine and I at Cape Point

Maddy Kathrine and I

My firend maddy and I on the beach in the Eastern Cape

Me at the Afrikaans language memorial

Stellenbosch

Sunrise

my whole Tshabo family

From the wine tour we did this afternoon