It's gettin hot in here....

Hey all!

Sorry it has been a while since I updated- we've been fairly busy! Last week we wrapped up our work with the Direct Action Center. Yazir has requested that we refrain from describing all of the work and sights we visited online so that others who come to work with them dont have a heads up about every little thing that will happen. So, out of respect for him I am not going to put it on here. If any of you are interested, you can email me (krjesse@u.washington.edu) and I can write back any answers or a personal description. All in all, it was a great experience, and I would say we all learned a ton and had good fun at it.

Thursday we got a day off to reflect and relax after our work with DACPM. Then that night we had a pizza party at one of our prof's (Ron) house. I think our group tore through 9 or 10 pizzas and an entire fridge full of beer and wine. Thats what happens when you have college students over! It was really fun, and the house that Ron is staying in is owned by a lady with a couple of dogs. A few of the girls and I went and petted and played with the dogs. I miss Louisa so much! (Although,if she were here she would not be able to deal with the heat at all!)

Friday we had class in one of the local restaurant/cafes. It was a good discussion and debrief time. After that we all rested a little bit, and then went out to downtown on Friday night. We went to a few of the nightclubs that I remember from last time, and had an awesome time. (Pictures to come soon)

Saturday we relaxed after the crazy week. It was generally a pretty chill day. And then Sunday, we got ready and left the house at 830 to go river tubing. We drove about 1 1/2 hours outside of cape town. We all were in lovely little wetsuits, helmets and life jackets (be happy mom!), booties, and gloves that turned our hands into little flipper things. It was generally an awesome time, although I'm a little sore today! I didnt realize how much of a workout it was.

Today we went and toured the University of Cape Town and some of their historic sights and monuments. We had good discussions about Rhodes and why he is all over Cape Town. He is quite a controversial figure. Next to one of the statues of him on campus theres a plaque thing that makes a little bit of mention about the controversy surrounding him, but then it says that the University wouldnt be there without the land he donated. My question is, how do you donate land that wasn't yours to begin with?! (Look up the history of Cecil Rhodes if you dont know what I'm alluding to.) We also hiked up part of the mountain to the Rhodes memorial that looks out across cape town. Great walk, but it is hot as hell today which makes it really really rough! I think it was supposed to be like 90 degrees today, but it felt like more than that!

Additionally, the rolling blackouts have started today. Cape town does not have enough power stations for how many people live here, so pretty much theres rolling blackouts every summer while they maintain all of the ones here. They are working on building more power stations, but its going to be about 5 years until they catch up to how much power is needed in the Western Cape.

Today is also Suzanne's birthday! (yay!) So we have reservations at the mexican restaurant in our neighborhood for the whole house. We already raided the bottle store (liquor store) for tonight as well. I cannot wait for a nice cold margarita with some rice and beans on such a warm day! I think we are going out within the neighborhood tonight as well. We convinced our professor to move class until tomorrow afternoon because the birthday girl might not be in good condition tomorrow morning :)

With that, I'm off! It is way to freakin warm to be sitting with a computer in my lap right now!