Whirlwind week!

Wow! It is hard to believe that we are entering into our third week here!

Lastweek was another great whirlwind of a week! On Monday we went to the University of Cape town and toured around the historical sights. Monday was also Suzanne's birthday so we made dinner reservations and went to a few bars.

Tusday Ron was nice enough to move our classes to the afternoon to accomidate the poor condition that some of our group was in. We met downtown at the Jan Smuts statue, and then walked to Idasa, where one of Ron's friends works. Idasa formerly stood for institute for a democratic alternative in South Africa, and now stands for Institute for Democracy in South Africa. I'm sure they have a website, my best guess at its address would be www.idasa.co.za. That may be way wrong though...Either way, Ron's friend was a wealth of political information! It was almost to the point where we felt embarassed for knowing so little and not even being able to ask intelligent quesitons of him! Also, since we met in the afternoon after lunch, and it was a warm day, and Ron's friend had a slightly monotone voice it was almost impossible for us to stay awake! I was genuinely interested in what he had to say, but I still ended up giving myself a bruise on my hand from poking myself with a pen cap tyring to stay awake! No wonder professors hate teaching afternoon classes!

Wednesday was our first group outing into Isilimela High School and Lovelife in Langa. Isilimela is the school that CHID (Comparative History of Ideas) and HFB (Hands For a Bridge) have a strong relationship with. It is the shcool that I helped teach English in last time, as well as doing the photography/art/writing/poetry project. Lovelife is a type of afterschool/teen place that is like a boys and girls club a little bit. However, the focus of it is HIV/AIDS awareness, education, and prevention. They have a free clinic that is frequented, as well as a radio station, and games and activities to keep teens and young adults off the streets and engaged in their communities. One of the girls in our group works with the Seahawks corporate offices and actually got some donations from the Seahawks to bring to Lovelife. I think a few of the people from our house might work on teaching flag football there, as well as running some sore of basketball tournement.

Thursday we had our last class with Ron :( We discussed our readings for the week--the Freedom Charter as well as the South African Bill of Rights from their Constitution. THe bill of rights here is really quite amazing. Instead of just including civil-political rights (i.e. right to vote) like most, it also includes socio-economic rights (i.e. right to adequate housing). While everythign promised in it sounds great, not a lot of the rights are being fulfilled right now. I really could go on for days abouth this.... a lot of our talks thursday reminded me of a couple of the human rights courses I've taken at the UW.

Friday was a pretty relaxed day. We had a brief meeting with Rebecca (our peer facilitator- she was here two years ago with me), and then there was a house soccer game. I think a good half of the house made it to the soccer game. Some of us (like yours truely) decided on more leisurely activities (i.e. napping). Friday was also Ashley's birthday! (yay she's 5^2 now!) We had a great big huge house braai (bbq) and trashed the place before going out that night. I dont think i've ever seen so many dirty dishes and pots and bags of garbage everywhere- and that's saying a lot!

Saturday and Sunday were both fairly relaxed days. Georgia arrived Saturday morning (yay!) and Ron left on Saturday night (boo!) Its quite sad to see Ron go, but I'm excited that Georgia is here with us now. I chose to stay in and read and work on my journal/scrapbook for most of the time. (Our journal/scrapbooks that we're keeping are 40% of our grade since we dont have any tests or papers) Sunday we ventured out to the beach at Camps Bay, but it was so windy it was painful to stay on the beach too long. The sand was ripping our skin off. My town and my sweatshirt also blew into the water :( It was fairly cold for me after that point.

Today was our first class with Georgia. Also, our group doing the Literacy Through Photography project with the HFB students met to finalize a syllabus for our project and print up handouts. Tomorrow we are going out to Isilimela (the high school in Langa), Wednesday we are going to Belville (in Belville- a mostly Afrikaans suburb of Cape Town), and then Thursday we are back at Isilimela. Hopefully that schedule will continue so that we are meeting at least 4 hours a week with the learners at Isilimela and 2 hours a week with the learners at Belville.

and with that I will end this crazy long post! I really need to work on doing these more often so that they're not just weekly recaps...