How's it?! South African greeting for Hey, or hows it going?! or whats up! It is the early morning hours at home, but here the sun is shining, the grass is green and.. it is a lovely day! I am writing to you once again from the 'garage,' term used for gas station. There is a printing business that goes along with this internet cafe and I am actually having one of my books photocopied right now.. Guess copyright laws don't make much difference? Not weird, just different. I had so much fun listing all of the differences yesterday that I couldn't help but think of more as I walked home, or before I left the garage. One:: money! Ok so it is the Rand system here. The bills come in R10, R20, R50, R100 and R200. The coins come in R1 R2 R5 and maybe R10, wait no, not the last. Then there are coins for the cents that come in 1c 2c 5c 10c 20c and 50c, which just keep accumulating in my coin purse because sometimes it's just so confusing! A taxi ride costs R6 usually and a cab ride is between R25 and R50. The currency is a little under this, but we usually figure 1 US$= R10. Get it? Just like the roads, it's taking some time, but I'm getting better.
Now I am not necessarily an environmentalist or anything, but there is not a recycling system going on here. And when I asked a South African native about it they just chuckled and reminded me that Africa has bigger problems to worry about it.. can't help but think we all will if something isn't done about it. Driving through the townships two weeks ago (wow time flies) I saw piles of pop bottles just stacked on top of each other, and I'm sure that was minor compared to other areas.
At restaurants all pops and juices and tea come in cans-- there is no fountain pop! Which makes me sad, because fountain pop is my favorite.
Tomorrow I am going to attempt to find the sports arena and check out what the swim team seems like. One of my friends is playing tennis and he said they only practice twice a week, so it might be worth looking into, besides with class only once a week I might find myself with a lot of free time, though I have been keeping busy thus far.
Last night was my second cricket game! Warriors won again! So it's not the most exciting or anything, but you can fake it and get yourself really into and my new favorite chant goes "i-YOH I-yyyyyyooooooooohhhhh IIIIIIIIIIIiiiiiyoooooohh" and so forth, so fun to sing! I even ended up explaining some of the rules to a friend, so I'm catching on =). Two guys from PE sitting next to me refused to believe that I was from the States, and I just couldn't convince them I was! I'm pretty sure they were convinced I was from Ireland, but also guessed just about every African country bordering SA, entertaining. Did you know that college is basically free in Finland and most of Scandinavia? I had an interesting chat with 3 of my friends I met orientation week about that last night (interesting conversation to have at a cricket match, eh?).
Oh, I cannot believe I forgot to tell these next two things! One:: I go to school on a Nature Reserve! Like a national park, but better! Walking between some buildings is basically like a Forest and it is such a gorgeous spread of the campus with all of the outside walkways and people always outside, reminds me of spring time at the Mankato campus when everyone is so excited to be outside- such a great feeling!
The other issue/traumatic event was the cockroaches in some of the flats, thankful not too bad in ours, and the maggots we had! One morning we woke up and walked into the restroom and all of these gross rice/worm-like creatures were all over. Oh, life.
It's pretty convenient that everyone speaks English here. I wish I had paid more attention to the importance of knowing other languages (even if spanish isn't useful here) but just because I've met so many people who can speak three or four and to me that is just amazing. Makes me think of the fact that we don't even tap into half of our brain capacity, suppose it's never too late to learn. We'll see what the future holds.
Today in my sports coaching class we got into a pretty good discussion about who you are and how that dictates and kind of creates the way that you are going to coach, where your values are, your philosophy, beliefs and so on and it was pretty interesting. I love the fact that it is a sports coaching class with 60 some studets and we are answering these very personal questions about who we are, what we stand for, where we are going and what we want to accomplish while we are alive and here. What are our reasons for doing the things that we do? I'm going to have to save that piece of paper and see how much changes, stays the same or is actually accomplished. I'll have to make sure I find a computer tomorrow because tonight is my first experience going to the township for teaching, and I'm not too nervous yet.. just hoping that we don't need a lesson plan yet but hopeful that things will go well!
Random blog, but there is just so much to say that sometimes it's hard to collect my thoughts. Next time I'll have to try and upload some pictures.
Cheers!
and love =)
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