Monday, October 20, 2008

Weekend Adventures

This week is my last week with my Cato Manor family before we move into our participant-learning homestays. I'll miss my family, but I'm kinda ready to move. I feel a little constrained by living with my families, especially since people in Cato Manor go to bed SO early! No joke, people go to bed at like 9:00. Sometimes my mama goes to bed even earlier than that. It's ridiculous. On Saturday I went with some of my friends to an area called Davenport and we had lunch at this all-organic restaurant called Earth Mother. It was so good! Then my friend Daryl and I went to the Davenport square to find an ATM, and we wound up staying there a while because Daryl wanted to get some pictures developed. The guy who owned the store was really nice- he kept the store open for us, and even gave us a ride to where our other friends went because it was a pretty long walk. Ah, the joys of hitchhiking! Later we went down to the harbor to an area called Wilson's Wharf for dinner, and we at on the pier at this really delicious Thai restaurant. Then we headed to the Bat Centre to see the Urban Voices poetry slam. SIT subsidized the price of our tickets, and it was really good! There was a Zulu man who told a poem where every word had a "q" click in it (which I think is the hardest clicking noise). I was really impressed. We also saw an American poet and two people from Jamaica. It was a really good show!

On Sunday, my mama told me that I was making dinner, so I had to make a quick run to a grocery store to get everything I needed to cook. Daryl and I wanted to go to the Hare Krishna Temple of Understanding, but we found out that it took a really long time to get there, and since we both had to fix dinner, we didn't want to be late getting home. So instead we had A.Kay take us to the Botanic Gardens (which is now my favorite place in Durban) and we threw my frisbee for a while and got some reading done. We also saw some monkeys, and one of them had a baby monkey clinging to its stomach! It was SO CUTE! I think we must have taken about 40 pictures of them, until they started attacking our feet.

For dinner for my family, I decided to make spaghetti with meat sauce. It took a lot longer than I expected because our stove apparently only has one working burner (which I found out last night). I even made the sauce myself and I was really proud of it! I also grated a big thing of Parmesan cheese. I think my family was a little skeptical at first, but they ended up really liking it! My mama saved some of hers to take to work today to "show my friend that you can cook!" and my bhuti took some of the leftovers for his lunch! Daryl and I made a joint dessert effort of brownies and ice cream with chocolate sprinkles for our families, and they really liked that too. I was really proud of me because a lot of the other students who made dinner for their families weren't nearly as successful as I was.

This week we started our group focus studies. I'm in a group with 7 other students in the reconciliation study, and we're focusing on the amnesty process of the TRC. We're even going to make a trip to a town where our case study crime took place (close to Pietermaritzburg). It's definitely going to be a good week. I'm excited. Sala kahle!

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