In the infamous words of Ice Cube...

..."I didn't have to use my AK, I gotta say it was a good day"

Quite an accurate description of my weekend...for more than just the good day part.

So Friday my housemates and I decided that Muizenburg (beach with the shark flags[sharks!]) was the place to be. And being the place to be, we had to be there. (Sorry, I'm feeling a little story-teller's block) And in order to be there we had to take a train from our house to there. So we walk down to the Rosebank train station, incident free. Go into the station, to the ticketing booth, buy round-trip tickets. Then are told the train is on the other side of the tracks. Okay, no problems there. But the only way to get to the other side of the tracks is to take the subway. South African subway is not like New York subway. It's literally a sub way. An underground walking tunnel. As we walk down to the subway, we see a sign dictating proper subway etiquette. When I say that I mean it was more a set of pictures of things you cannot bring in the subway. They included: Axes, Bombs, and AK-47s. The fact that someone felt the need to include an assault rifle on a list of things you should not bring somewhere is actually horrifying.

Travel to Muizenburg was largely uneventful. I had a conversation with a South African woman who tried to tell me how bad South African public transport is. This is a sentiment I've heard many times here, and I just don't agree at all. I have never had a problem getting anywhere I wanted to go. Minibuses to the City Centre and Claremont, Trains to the beach, Cabs to Long Street. I don't know if minibuses and cabs count as public transport. Cabs probably not, minibuses maybe. Regardless, it's very easy to get anywhere you want to go for very little money in a fairly reliable way. Round trip for the 45 minute train ride to Muizenburg is 11R = ~$1.50. And the trains run about every 15 minutes. Things aren't that bad here, people like to complain (somethings are universal).

Muizenburg was phenomenal. Tried my hand at surfing. Had to be deceitful to get a nice discount. Said I was part of the UCT surf club and got to rent a board for R50. Lots of fun, but I think the waves were a little too choppy, as opposed to wavy. They didn't crest, so it was difficult to ride them for long. But, I did get up briefly and I will try again. Other highlights of Muizenburg, as always, involved the shark alarms going off as soon as I got out of the water. I live in constant danger.

Went to Long Street for dinner on Friday night. Went to a Kurdish restaurant with a belly dancer and no chairs. That's one way to save money, buy cushions for chairs, but not the chairs themselves. Realized I'd never eaten lamb before, or at least I don't remember eating lamb. It's my new favorite meat and I will eat it whenever given the chance. Did the Long Street thing after dinner, went to my favorite spot... The Waiting Room. That place is top-notch.

Yesterday, went to Camp's Bay beach. It was scorching hot. 92 degrees. No real highlights, I decided I want to do that thing where you jump off a mountain in a chair with a parachute, and fly around a bit. I don't know what it's called, but it looks like a lot of fun.

Other highlights from the week included: dropping South African Politics (it was too awful for words) The man also expected that we had a strong base knowledge on SA politics; for instance before reading the articles I was supposed to just understand that the B.E.E. was a failed initiative. That was just an unrealistic expectation, and the professor was horrible. I think I'm going to go pull the international student card and try to pick up a class this week. Not sure what though, possibly linguistics. I need to look through the course catalog.

This week also marked the beginning of my volunteer work with Inkanyezi. Went to the school today and tried to "wing it." They gave us very little guidance. I think the itinerary looked something like this.

Introduction 10m

Explain the School Commission 10m (what is this??)

Make rules and group contract 20m

I hope they give us more guidance next time. The boys were rowdy. But it was still fun. I spent just about the whole time discussing their favorite South African soccer teams. Mamalodi Sundowns! Woo! When I say discussing I mean I would have to ask them to repeat themselves several times before I got the gist of what they were trying to say. I think they speak English, but aren't confident enough with it to speak loudly so I can understand them. And they have tough names aka names I'm not used to and with the quiet voices, I may have them make name tags for a few weeks. I remember GS, Siphe, and Jacob. The rest, I've got no idea yet. I go back on Tuesday.

Also I played the giant African marimba this week in my instruments class. It was awesome. Played it with 5 other people at one time. My rhythm seems to have improved a little. I could play this at least respectably (aka not the worst of the 6).

My genocides class is awesome. I love it.

Xhosa is a challenge. But I'm getting it. I was excited to be able to read a sign this weekend. It was obviously very simple just said "abantu" -- "people". It was still cool. Have a test on thursday, we'll see how it goes. I'm fairly confident of the basic stuff so far.

This was a pretty lame post. It doesn't at all give me the feel that I've accurately described the great times I had this week/end. It was a fantastic week/end.

Oh yes! One more thing I wanted to write on. Pricing in restaurants. It is not consistent at all with prices on the menu. For instance, yesterday I ordered a beer that was listed as R18, but it came back as R27. Complaints fall on deaf ears here. It's not the African way, I think you are expected to just roll with it. It happens all the time. That was the largest discrepancy I've seen yet. But it's like a dollar.