A hard life, but someone's gotta do it...

Before I describe to you my glorious, fabulous holiday, I just have to give a little public thank-you to my wonderful aunt, uncle and cousin who sent me a sun-care package in the mail this week! I am now the proud owner of Clinique lip/eye SPF 30 sunblock, Super City Block SPF 40 for my face, and UV-Response Body Cream SPF 50! THANK YOU! It is always needed here in Africa where I apply sunscreen daily! It was such a treat...and, you know that my mother is heaving another sigh of relief by being able to check off one potential threat on her list. Skin cancer, take that! Now, we face the crocodiles. More on that to come...

On July 7, I left for Durban and was picked up at the airport by my friend Kate Meyerowitz who is an outgoing Ambassadorial Scholar from South Africa, headed to San Diego in less than a month. She and her family have a cottage in the Drakensberg Mountains which they were visiting for the weekend and they kindly allowed me to join them. So, we drove up on the evening of the 7th and spent the entire day Sunday there and part of the day on Monday. Here are some pictures of the hike I took up the mountain with Kate's parents. The stream at the top is so clean that you're officially allowed to drink from it!

The picture of the aloe is, of course, for Carl.

On Monday, Kate and I went to see a birds of prey show on the mountain. Very cool. My favorites were the Long-Crested Eagle and the Cape Vulture pictured below (isn't the picture of the Cape Vulture awesome?!).

After returning from the Drakensberg on Monday, we retired to Kate's house to shower up and do some laundry. Kate's brother Andrew and I even got to watch the Braves take on San Diego (to whom they almost lost in the bottom of the ninth!). We then went out to dinner to meet up with my fellow travelers, Cape Town Ambassadorial Scholars Emily Avera and Emily Kenney, Emily K's sister Alli, and my friend Niv. We had dinner at the Harbour and heard the band Love Joint (I think that's correct) which is a relatively big-time South African band. We then retired to our backpackers.

The next morning we awoke early in order to get some breakfast and head to the Victoria Street Market. We bought some spices, etc., but I must show some Jo'burg pride and say that our Oriental Market is far superior, regardless of the vast Indian population in Durban. We then retrieved our rental car and began our journey to St. Lucia. Of course, we made sure we had a music selection first, knowing that we would not have radio for much of the journey. This meant that we bought a few community CDS: A #1s compilation from the 1980s to today, Amy Winehaus, Bob Marley, the new Maroon 5 album, and Cape Town Jazz. We figured that gave us enough that we probably wouldn't be so sick of them by the end of the journey. The drive to St. Lucia is through rolling hills of sugar cane plantations which makes for incredibly beautiful scenery. We passed through small villages, etc., and in a little over 3 hours made it to St. Lucia.

And that is where I'll leave you for now, friends. More to come soon, I promise! Love and miss you all!

This is the last post before I leave, this time I promise, but I had a few minutes and knew you'd appreciate a post. I happened to realize that I didn't give you a detailed breakdown of where I'm going on my vacation! So, here you are:

Today: I leave at 3 for Durban. My friend Kate is picking me up at the airport and we're driving to the Drakensberg Mountains to her family's cottage there. Here's a picture of the Drakensbert Mountains:

As Natalie says, "geez, Lis, it's a tough life." It is tough, but someone has to volunteer for it.

After two days in the mountains, I will join my friends Emily A., Emily K., Alli, and Niv in Durban where we will stay overnight. If you're interested in seeing more about Durban, follow this tourism link.

The next morning, we're leaving Durban for St. Lucia, South Africa. St. Lucia is in the middle of a huge nationally-protected estuary. It's basically a small beach town with lots of crocodiles and hippos and birds. I should be in paradise! I am going to see if I can't convince the group to go on a whale-watching expedition. It's whale migration season in this part of the world and I've never seen a whale, so I think that should be on my list of to dos. Here's a link about St. Lucia.
In St. Lucia, we're staying at BiB's Backpackers, which looks pretty cool. Check it out. My favorite part are all of the "freebie" activities.

From St. Lucia, we'll drive on to Maputo, Mozambique. Yes, I'm so excited I can hardly stand it. I've already talked to Naftal on the phone and I'm just counting the days. Here's a link to info on Maputo. While in Maputo, the group will go on to Tofo, and I will stay in Maputo with my friend Kristian. Then the group will return after a couple of nights in Tofo and we'll all head to the Kruger National Park. You don't need a link to that--just go back a couple of days in my posts and see pictures. Ok, just kidding, I found information on the birds you can find at the camp where we're staying, and even if Laurie Glenn is the only person to ever look at that, I'm satisfied. I've been wanting to see a broad-billed roller. And just so that my nerdiness is complete, I went out and bought the cutest tiny little binoculars yesterday. They were only R160 and they can fit in your pocket (with some difficulty--womens pants are not made to carry things right now). I'm super excited about using them. I may drive the rest of the crew crazy with my birdiness, but I'm okay with that. They already love me unconditionally, so I think we're fine.

So, I'm pretty excited. We're going on another great adventure with great friends--what could be better?? Ok, yes, if Orlando Bloom volunteered to come with, but I don't see that as much of a possibility, so I'm looking at the bright side of things. Plus, my accompanying friends are much cuter than I--there'd be no guarantee that Orlando would be all mine. So, no, this is the best possible vacation! See you in 11 days!

Crazy Week

Since I've been updating you on my trip with my family (which ended almost a month ago, can you believe it??), I haven't been updating you on what I've been doing. Don't worry, this won't take long.

1. "Marking" papers. That is the word used for grading here. I graded 127 exams and 127 projects and about 40 homework papers. My highest class average was a 64, which isn't off track at my school, so I felt secure but not satisfied with my teaching efforts. My next task is to plan for the next term.

2. Researching. My literature review is due on July 23, but since I'm leaving Saturday for Durban (more on that in a moment), I've been studying non-stop to get as much done before-hand as possible. I don't think I've told you my research topic, but I'm sure you could've guessed it: Human Rights Education in the South African School Curriculum. If you're interested, I can post some good articles on the subject. I'm certainly reading plenty.

3. Weekends--I've spent several weekends with my friend Kristian who is working in Pretoria for the summer and our mutual friend Katy Ginanni. We have visited some great restaurants, the Rosebank African Craft Market, Museum Africa and the Market Theater. Katy and I spent a weekend at the Pilanesberg Game Reserve (not Kruger, but a closer option. It'll do.) and did a lot of birdwatching. Call me a nerd, but in Africa my favorite hobby is bird watching! Last weekend was a Rotary weekend with the District Governor induction Saturday night and our club president's induction on Sunday afternoon. AND, our very own mom Lynne Ward was given a Paul Harris Fellow Award for her outstanding service to Rotary! For you non-Rotarians, that's a heck of a big deal!

4. Trip planning. On Saturday, I leave for Durban to meet up with an Ambassadorial Scholar friend in Durban and to go to the Drakensberg Mountains (again--wooohooo!) with Kate's family to their cottage. Then on Monday, I'll meet back up with Cape Town friends Niv, Emily, Emily, and Alli and we'll head to St. Lucia which is a little town in the middle of a National Park on the coast between Durban and Maputo. Did I just say Maputo? Yes. If you know me well enough, you know that no trip that close to Maputo would see me not driving to the city to see my friends! On our family trip to Kruger, it was all I could do to stay in SA! So we'll spend two days in St. Lucia and then head to Maputo where Kristian will meet us. The group will go on to Tofo and then I'll stay with Kristian in Maputo and visit with Naftal, Telmo, and other friends. On the 16th, we'll then head to Kruger for a couple of days and then back to Jo'burg. The major benefit about this trip (other than it being breathtakingly beautiful and exotic and full of great friends, blah, blah, blah) is that it will be WARM. Forget warm, it'll be HOT! I heard that in Maputo tomorrow it's supposed to be 80 degrees F!!! I can't wait. My swimsuit is ready and so am I! Bring on the sun.

So, I won't be posting for a while unless I just have some good time with the internet at some point during my trip. Hope you all have a great two weeks!

Massive update

Ursula and I have a friend who let us use her password for internet so that we could update you! Tell Melody thanks. Anyway, here is an update from the past week and under this post is one that I wrote in Paris and hadn't been able to post until now.

I am told that my internet will be working “hopefully sometime next week.” Faculty says it’s Oracle (the new system)’s fault, Oracle says it’s the faculty’s fault. I say I really don’t care as long as it gets fixed. SOON! Regardless, I plugged my laptop up in my room, charged it, and wrote this in Word to transfer it to the internet and avoid paying another R30 for internet time. So, since we’ve lost a lot of time, let me do one marathon update and then we’ll consider ourselves caught up.

MY BIRTHDAY: On last Monday (more than a week ago now—I’m really old), my friend Katy who works for EBSCO in their SA office here in Jo’burg picked me up for dinner and took me to a restaurant called Moyo in the Zoo Lake area. Those of you who are really quick have realized that this restaurant is likely by the Zoo and the lake. Moyo serves traditional African cuisine and includes African entertainment such as dancing, singing, and face-painting in the tradition of some African tribes. The restaurant itself is really cool with lots of African sculptures and carvings. As you walk in, there are what appear to be unlit large Christmas lights hanging in arches, but as you approach further, you realize are rocks. Very cool. I had a chicken tagine (a West African dish), a glass of African wine, and we shared the African cheese platter. It was a lovely birthday and I felt well-loved.

Also on my birthday, we picked up Ursula, one of the other Rotary Ambassadorial Scholars studying here at Wits. She is a really fun girl who attended Wellesley and has spent the past year in Jordan. We’re enjoying getting to know each other and figuring out this crazy campus.

THE ENSUING WEEK: Since I had already jumped through all of the Wits hurdles, I helped Ursula to find her way around registration, etc. On Wednesday, we realized that if she was going to stay in res any longer, we would both need to go shopping, so we called up a Rotarian friend of mine named Pat. Pat is a wonderful lady who works for the Democratic Alliance (look this up on Wikipedia if you’re not up on your South African politics) and often has odd hours. Luckily, she had almost the entire day free, so we shopped for about 5 hours! What fun.

By Thursday, I hadn’t checked my email in five days due to this crazy email situation. When I finally broke down and went to check it, I found that I had 147 new messages! Lesson learned: check your email on your birthday!! Luckily, I skimmed through the mail and found a message from Jon David titled HUGE FAVOR. I wondered what huge favor I could possibly do for someone who was now in Cape Town, and then was informed that he had not yet made it to Cape Town, but instead had spent an extra night in Addis Ababa, courtesy of Ethiopian Airlines and now had to switch airlines in Jo’burg, most likely resulting in huge baggage charges. He wanted to know if I could come to the airport and pick up a bag—he would arrive around 1pm. This was fine, I thought. I’d arrange it. I looked at my watch, and it was 12:20! So, I called Katy and she graciously offered to drive me to the airport. What luck! We arrived just as Jon David was exiting customs and then stood in the airport for yet another several hours while EA decided whether or not they really had booked him another flight to Cape Town. A few hours and several hundred dollars later, he was on his way and I on mine with baggage in hand which I’ll deliver next weekend when I go to the conference in Cape Town. It was not only a comedy of errors and quite enjoyable for that reason, but it was good to see a friend from home!

The real highlight of Thursday, though, was getting to talk with my mom for the first time in two weeks. You have to understand that though I NEVER live at home anymore, I do talk with my mom A LOT. So, this was a real treat.

On Friday, Katy and I loaded into the car for a trip to Pietermaritzburg/Durban for she and a friend to swim the Midmar Mile, a swim race across the Midmar Dam (lake—they don’t realize here that a dam is made of concrete, not water). We followed Colleen and her family through the Free State (grassland/farmland traditionally inhabited by the Afrikaaners) and then KwaZulu Natal (more mountainous and inhabited by the Zulus and Afrikaaners) provinces. The drive is absolutely beautiful and I couldn’t possibly have been happier to ride along. The views were astonishing with the Drakensburg mountains in the far background and huge valleys in the foreground. Pietermaritzburg is the home of Alan Paton, so if you’ve ever read Cry, the Beloved Country, this is the area he describes. If you haven’t read that book, then consider it Lisa-required reading.

We stayed between Pietermaritzburg and Durban, and on Saturday, Katy drove with me into Durban to show me the sights. We walked by the old town hall (which is beautiful and reminiscent of most of the European domed buildings I saw in Italy and France with ornate carvings and copper cupolas), walked through the downtown market, and walked out on the pier over the Indian Ocean. It was a nice adventure.

Sunday was the day of the race, so we rose early to drive to the Midmar Dam. We arrived just in time, Katy and Colleen swam, and then we departed. They both did pretty well considering the water was so choppy, it was as if they had been swimming in the ocean.

THINGS I LEARNED FROM THE MIDMAR EXCURSION:

KwaZulu Natal is lovingly called KZN (read KzedN)
Lakes are dams and so are dams. This gets confusing, in my opinion.
When you set the table, you always include a knife, whether you think it is necessary or not because people here eat with knives.
Little boys who say “can’t” in the traditional English way are very cute
A lightning storm in KZN can be really terrific, but also rough on the power supply
You wear a costume, not a swimsuit (this is disappointing if you should actually expect to see costumes in the American sense of the word)
Zebra can be seen on the way down (even if they are likely on a farm)
Ostrich biltong (jerky) is actually pretty good
I was incredibly close to Lesotho. The next time I make that drive, maybe I’ll go. (I mean, I now have two friends from Lesotho, and I am about to begin taking Sotho lessons.)
The old/new/traditional name for Durban is eThekwini. Look that up on Wikipedia!

CLASSES: Lecture started yesterday, and I am definitely going to like this course of study! Did you know that rape only became an official war crime according to the UN in 2004? Neither did I, but soon I will be able to tell you all about human rights, human rights education, and human rights in education. Today, my ed. Theory course begins, and I am also really excited about that. My Lesotho friend Isaac is in all of my classes, and though I am by far the youngest so far, I still feel very much at home.

So, all is well in South Africa. I will post pictures as soon as I can use the internet without paying for it—otherwise, you’ll all have to take up a collection. I have also moved the address to the sidebar soon so that you can always get to it. I also have a South African cell phone, so if you want to call, get an international calling card, and then it is cheap for you and free for me. I promise to get Skype up and running soon, but now is just not yet the time. If you do call, which I would love, remember that I am 8 hours ahead of you. So, your 8pm would NOT be the time to call.

Go well.