I recently stumbled across an alarmingly apposite quotation in my desultory wanderings around the internet. I cannot recall the author, nor does it seem vital for me to re-find the line itself, but it struck me as I read: “Writer’s block is simply the dread that you are going to write something horrible.” As evidenced by the gaping rift in my blog archives, I’ve been suffering from a sort of writer’s block myself. I do not believe that I have been dreading putting pen to paper (because I do actually write all of my entries in a notebook before typing them, often while sipping double espresso lattes and listening to the swirling mixtures of Afrikaans accents around me). I do not fear creating inadequacy, especially in this format where my audience is my friends and family and the blogosphere will quickly engulf any wayward entry. Instead, I have found myself fearing mundane redundancy. I had a fervent desire when starting this blog to avoid creating a tedious chronicle of my day-to-day life, as often befalls the fate of study abroad annals and introspective livejournals. My desire instead was to create a space where I could reflect on my incredible experiences while here in South Africa, and where I could wax lyrical in the particularly magniloquent and sometimes obtuse manner to which people who know me have become accustomed. I felt from the beginning that if I treated this blog as one would treat the ever-popular study-abroad-blog, I would not allow myself to think of Cape Town as home. If I treated every experience as something to be noted for my friends and family back home, I would not find myself settled into a routine of every day life. I have found a routine here, and I have made Cape Town a home. I work the same hours every day, I teach the same classes every week, I have some friends with whom I go out and party at night and others with whom I stay in and eat pizza while watching movies. I am happy and fulfilled, and part of me is glad that I haven’t had a blog post in a month or so. This means, as a friend put it to me earlier, that I’ve been having far too good of a time to think about writing. This is true. Baby Kay is still gorgeous and lights up my life. My students are still inspiring and vivacious. My social life is still incredibly active. My boxing gym is still kicking my sorry ass into shape. If I could transplant my friends and family here to Cape Town, I’m not sure I’d ever want to leave.

That being said, it feels good to write again. I will be updating again soon, I promise, and for the sake of those with whom I do not have frequent Facebook contact, here are some highlights of the past month:

I travelled the Garden Route with two friends, during which I rode an ostrich (which may be one of the most terrifying experiences of my life), stood on an ostrich egg, squeezed my body through a series of underground caves and caverns and hiked more than 100 meters below the surface of the Earth.

I began volunteering for the Out In Africa Film Festival as a promotions and event planner, the culmination of which was a big party thrown at a hall in town here. The event was a big success, and we had close to 300 people in attendance.

Through the OIA Festival I’ve met some fabulous people with decades of experience working in non-profit management and they have taken me under their wings and given me some wonderful insight into where I want my future to go.

I began my job search for when I come home to the States. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

I travelled to wine country for a day with Rebecca and Steve and Kay, a day in which we tasted scrumptious wine and stuffed ourselves silly with an amazing meal on one of the vineyards.

I continued to make friends and meet new people. I, as all of you should of course know, have always been a very social and outgoing person. However, here in Cape Town I have pushed myself further than I ever have to put myself out there, meet people and speak with people. I’ve attended events by myself, and approach people in bookstores, coffee shops, concerts, etc. This has resulted in probably the most eclectic and eccentric group of friends I’ve ever had, and I absolutely adore every minute of it.

Tomorrow Rebecca, Steve, Kay and I leave for Europe for almost two weeks. We are spending six days in Paris, where my mother and younger brother will meet us, then on to four days in Bruges (which I have never visited) and then two days in Amsterdam before heading back to Cape Town. Travelling with an infant will be a new challenge for me, but I cannot wait to see my mother and brother, and to revisit Paris for the first time in over seven years. I will definitely be blogging from Europe, do not worry.

So there will be some weeks when inscribing my thoughts and reflections will take a back seat to facing my world head on and diving into my own experiences. There will be some weeks when my ruminations will rival the self-absorption of Rilke and the blog entries will flow. I thank you for your care and support when reading my ramblings, I apologize for my inconsistency of late, and I love and miss you all.

Afskeid.

One you never heard of I, push it hard to further the

Grind I feel like murder but hip hop you saved me

One you never heard of I, push it hard to further the

Grind I feel like murder but hip hop you saved my life

Hip hop, you saved my life

Hip hop, you saved my life

 

The influence of dance and hip hop on my life are inextricably linked. Not just because I am a hip hop dancer, no it is far more allegorical than that; it is the voice that both dance and hip hop have given me. The voice, the confidence, the joy, the story. Hip hop, in it’s original form, served as the voice of a disenfranchised generation. Young people who had nothing else, had hip hop. It doesn’t matter how similar my background is to those of Kool Herc, Bambaataa, or Grandmaster Flash– these artists started a revolution in the streets and minds of America. It doesn’t matter how similar my political experience is to that of Public Enemy or Run DMC– these artists spoke up and spoke out and spoke to millions of people with a voice the people never knew they had. It may not be 1976, I may not be in the South Bronx or in Fresno, California, but this is my time, this is my generation, and this is my search for verbalization, vocalization, voice.

I recently wrote about how dance translates volumes, across style and language, music and culture. Hip hop has that same ability for me. Last night I went to the Hip Hop Connect 2009: Love of My Life performance here in Cape Town. Staged at the Arts Connect center, where Cape Town’s finest ballets and operas are shown, I couldn’t help but feel the pride pump through my chest as hundreds of young people in sneakers and hoodies streamed into the performance space to see their own highest art form displayed on this national stage. Talent pulsed from the stage as MC after MC took the mike and poured word after word onto the floor of the dais, allowing each syllable to slink its way out into the audience, slowly infecting each person with the kind of manifested vitality that only comes when the fingertips of a DJ wed instrumental intricacies with the soul of an MC. Most of the artists were not spitting in English– Xhosa and Afrikaans dominated, dedicated fans chanting every word back into the person who had become the face to their voices.

Similar to my experience with watching the children of the townships’ ebullient dancing a few weeks ago, I let the lyrics wash over me and the beat throb within me, and it no longer mattered that I couldn’t understand what they were saying. Instead the passion, the heartbreak, and the struggle that these young people were expressing so eloquently through melody enveloped me and moved me until I felt the kind of tireless spirit that still comes as a joyful surprise every time I connect with hip hop.

Hip hop gave me confidence in my individual expression when I didn’t know where else to look.

Hip hop gave me an egress from life when I needed it, and a connection to life when I didn’t.

Hip hop gave me a place in a global community.

So I sat in my seat, surrounded by the kind of love I will only ever be able to give to hip hop, and I closed my eyes and chanted with the MCs and the crowd as raised arms undulated in the air…Hip hop, hip hop, you’re the love of my life. Hip hop, hip hop, you’re the love of my life. Hip hop, hip hop, you’re the love of my life…

 

Afskeid.

I found it. I found my bagel– dense and moist, with a coat of poppy seeds so thick that it would make a nun test positive on the opiates scale. I found my latte– non-fat, no sugar, rich but not bitter, with an artist’s representation of a delicate leaf sculpted into the airy foam dancing precariously on the surface of my liquid gold. I found my spot– Origin Coffee Roasting near the Cape Quarter. Origin boasts all-natural coffee with a headline, laminated on the wall behind the counter, proclaiming “Know what you’re brewing!” With blends from Bolivia, Tanzania, India, and Brazil (and these are just the signs I can read from my seat), Origin hosts the most diverse and eclectic choices I’ve seen in a coffee house. The interior is minimalist–the cement floors and long wooden tables, designed to be shared, are a deep espresso color, with bare wooden slat shelving on which rest coffee equipment, mugs, and the aforementioned lauding headlines. The world-travelled beans sit in open wooden crates, their solid sides linked at the corners in an interwoven pattern reminiscent of my childhood Lincoln Logs, for which my passion still runs deep. An open, intricate, vintage-looking furnace crowds the entry way, giving the already sparse interior an even more warmly industrial feeling. Located near the hip Cape Quarter, the baristas wear cockily perched newsboy caps, and the clientele (at 11:30am on on a Tuesday morning) consists of painfully stylish, late middle-aged Afrikaans women and twenty-somethings in jeans so tight they could easily be mistaken for a pair of ill-fated leggings that cling to the thighs of any young Hollywood back in the US.

I’ve been looking for my spot for awhile. I can’t really call a place home until I’ve found the one location I can always turn to–where I can go with friends or by myself, where I can write and read, where I can sit and skillfully make a single coffee last, sip by sip, for several hours. Back home it is Maine Roasters Coffee, at school it was Milkboy (or the Lusty Cup if I was lazy), in New York it is Washington Square Park, in Boston it is the Funky Bean, and in London it is the Somerset House fountains. I’d discovered in my search for belonging here in Cape Town that something was missing. I’ve found friends, I’ve joined gyms and clubs, I’ve found a jogging route and a favorite bar, but my “place” was missing. I hadn’t found my alone place, my creative place, my delicious place, my energy place, my social place, my coffee place. Origin Coffee Roasting–The Artisan Roasters of Africa, with their enlightened bagels and diaphanous coffee-topping artwork, is now my place. I can now start to think of Cape Town as another home.

 

Afskeid.

I have never felt so patriotic as I have over the past month in this place where my nationality is on constant display. It is easy, in a sense, to decry America’s inner workings when surrounded by peers and fellow citizens on a day to day basis. However, when most conversations begin with “oh! Are you American?” and then progress to “where in the States are you from?” and then of course on to “Maine? where?” most often, but occasionally to “oh it is beautiful there,” it is easy to place negative details in that casket in the back of the mind most often reserved for love missteps to be repeated relentlessly. Instead I’m allowed to focus on the beauty of the place from which I come, the excitement of New York (many South Africans’ favorite city), and the sheer size of the country, as people I encounter marvel at the distance between New York and Los Angeles. I have also found myself relapsing into the passionate fervor that was Obama Mania. South Africans absolutely adore Obama. He was elected eight months ago, and more than five months has passed since he was sworn in, but people in the street light up when they say his name. This American election inspired hope across our country, and that hope has spread, grown, and blossomed across oceans and continents to South Africa. For the first time in a long time, I find myself proud of my country because I am surrounded with love, not the cynicism and negativity found in my time in Europe, and which is even more pervasive on my home shores.

The moment I open my mouth to speak, I am outed. There is no hiding the fact that I am American here in South Africa, for no matter how long I stay here or how ingrained into the culture I become, my voice belies my roots. Instead of apologetically admitting to my cultural background, I find myself laughing along with the smiles that greet my vocal cadences. I can breathe, reassure the people with whom I’m speaking that Jon and Kate are not my neighbors in Pennsylvania, and relish the infectious adoration of my home that spills from my acquaintances here.

This fourth of July was the perfect elucidation of this intercontinental appreciation. As anyone who knows me well can attest, I get incredibly excited at the idea of a theme party. When the idea popped into my head to host an extravagant American-style barbeque (or “braai” in Afrikaans), I did the first thing that any host would–I ran to the party store. I can spend hours in a party store, slowly perusing color palates and themes, changing my mind repeatedly and filling my arms with items far outreaching my budgetary limitations. As I wandered through the small corner party store on Main Road, the two women working followed me inquisitively with their eyes. One approached me, and I said I was hosting an American-themed fourth of July party and that I needed everything red, white and blue that they had. A broad grin spread across the woman’s face and soon my theme-party-sparkle had danced its way into her eyes as well. I ended up with tinsel, streamers, plates, cups, napkins, towels, and enough balloons to fill the Honda CRV I then attempted to maneuver back up to my house. The crowning moment was when, after a moment of careful brow-furrowed consideration, the woman working at the store snapped her fingers and disappeared, emerging with an enormous American flag. Her eager excitement caused me to laugh out loud and we threw it on the pile of patriotic vigor.

On the day of the fourth, we decorated and baked, cooked and grilled, and greeted guest after guest as our American ex-pat friends sat in the garden around the pool, drinking Pimm’s cocktails and listening to bluegrass music twanging  from the speakers. After our stomachs were full of grilled meat, and our heads were light from alcohol, several of us trekked a few blocks away to another friend’s apartment–a Yale student here for the summer. There we partied with Yale and Stanford students, listening to American pop music and playing beer pong, rather futilely, with styrofoam cups after shattering a few actual glasses. You see, ping pong balls, like many seemingly inane yet widespread items back home, are impossible to find here in South Africa. So instead the hosts had bought toy guns, loaded with ping pong ball-esque rounds, only to find them significantly heavier than their American brethren, and therefore capable of shattering glass. With the floor mucilaginous from spilled beer, and broken glasses lining the dustbins in the kitchen, we all set off for the nearby bars in Green Point, sharing our drunkenly joyous spirit with the rest of Cape Town.

The night ended with a romp in the ocean, running barefoot through the waves in the wee hours of the morning, surrounded by the stars and moon. With the hem of my dress waterlogged and salty and my feet chaffed from the white sand that had worked its way between my toes, I lay back with friends and declared this the best fourth of July ever. No, I was not in the United States. There were no fireworks. However, I was surrounded by friends and strangers, all of whom, for one night, chose to join in on the effervescent energy of celebrating my home. And I can’t thank them enough for that.

Afskeid.

I can see my pulse in my knuckles. I can watch my viscid blood rhythmically squeeze its way through the constricting tunnels of my veins over and over again. Arching wings of perspiration grow and spread across my lower back, my blue top stained dark with labor. My fists thud against the ball that is tightly suspended between floor and ceiling, and my eyes focus on a spot somewhere deep within the ball’s rubberized surface, concentrating solely on the rhythm of contact. Right. Left. Right. Left. Right. Left. As my fists and the speed ball continue their intricate dance, my knuckles blossom into garish vermillion bruises.

Each training session is run as a boxing match–in three minute rounds. A timer’s lurid numbers flashing through time, we exercise intensely for three minutes at a time, taking a 30-second resting period between each round. We begin with jumping rope. After endless three-minute intervals, sweat pours off of our faces. All self-consciousness is lost in our unceasing quest to maintain the pace of our peers. One man begins jumping in triple-time. Without saying a word, the rest of us follow suit in an unspoken nod to the competitive nature of the sport. From jumping rope to push ups. From push ups to sit ups. From sit ups to leg lifts. From leg lifts to shadow boxing. Back to push ups. More push ups. More push ups. My arms quiver, waiting for a sliver of doubt, for that momentary lapse in confidence that would grant them permission to collapse. I deny them. On the wooden floor below my face is a pool of sweat, the surface of which ripples and expands with every forceful breath I release through my tension-filled lips.

At last, after an hour and a half of cardio conditioning and strength training, we begin what made me fall in love with this sport: hitting things really hard. I begin at the speed ball, allowing my focus to develop a singularity that is both intense and assuaging. From there I strap on my black gloves, the velcro wrist bands advertising that they are “proudly South African.” With my fingers curled in the thick leather, Vince approaches me, his own hands concealed in thick round pads. He barks out numbers–punch combinations that I’ve committed to memory. My left jab is still awkward, evidence of my right-dominated world, but my punches are forceful and, at times, even land with a surprising grace. My frustrations shatter in the contact between my glove and his pad, insecurities bursting in violent clouds. I am breathing heavily, losing myself in the baroque footwork and explosions of force emanating from coiled muscles.

The timer beeps loudly and I pause, allowing my fists to rest at my side for the first time in three minutes. For 30 seconds I stare straight ahead, not wanting to lose a trace of the acute mental centralization that I’ve come to cherish. The timer beeps again. Vince raises the pads and bellows “FOUR!” I raise my gloves and launch again in the passionate automaticity of my combinations.

 

Afskeid.

Pictures of my life here in Cape Town, and of my students in the township of Nyanga at this link (you do not need to have facebook to view):

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2031977&id=10301668&l=aee691f0d4

Video of my students in Nyanga at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tY128oOlzAM

I hope you will watch this video and realize even just a fraction of the joy I feel from surrounding myself with these children.

Thank you!

The velociraptor and I spent the afternoon by the ocean. I’ve always known that I could never survive in a place far from the sea. The smell, the sound–everything associated with the ocean makes me feel at home, comforted as I am enveloped in my senses. Luckily for me, Cape Town’s waterfront is stunning. The water cascades onto the rocks that line the shore, traced endlessly back and forth by joggers and walkers, lovers and families, friends and strangers. The promenade is one of my favorite places in the city so far. A wide, flagstone-paved path cuts a wide trail along the seashore; separating the path from the busy road are wide stretches of lush green grass. On these vistas lie playgrounds, mini golf, swing-sets, benches, and sometimes nothing but the endless green of nature’s carpeting. In the afternoons the sunlight gambols across the ripples, soothing in its blinding brightness. The figures on the promenade are silhouetted against the soaring towers of sea spray and my breath slows instinctually, gently inhibiting my pounding heart as the ocean works its magic on me.

It is winter in Cape Town. While my friends and family at home in New England may scoff at South Africa’s tepid winter climate, the seasonal change is manifested in the swirling sea. I took Kay out of her stroller and held her on my hip as we stood against the railing–human kind’s feeble barrier between the power of the ocean and the perpetually intimidated promenade. I pointed to huge waves as they swelled in size, building tension and expectancy before they lashed against the dark rocks that lay a few meters below our feet. Kay was transfixed. The sea spray gently bedewed our faces and she intently studied the Rorschach-esque images that appeared and instantaneously melted away in the swirling foam beneath us. I pointed out another mounting wave, and as it flung itself despairingly onto the stones Kay blinked into the reflecting sun and stared at the immolation before us. Mesmerized by the carnage of the wave, she gaped down at the rocky shore until I once again raised my arm and pointed to another wave, at the beginning of its conception, on the horizon.

In my time of transition here I’ve had moments of gripping loneliness. I have had many more of joy, excitement, and anticipation, but as a friend told me last night, “the first two weeks are the hardest.” I find comfort, however, in knowing that the sea spray that mists my cheekbones and coats my lips is from the same ocean that touches the shores of home. I miss you all very much, but I am incredibly excited to see where this adventure takes me. In the meantime, I will simply sit on the promenade, my legs pendulous against the railing, watching wave after wave violently sooth my nostalgia.

Afskeid.

I swear that blood began pumping through my veins in time with the rhythmic cacophony of Hope’s drum. Her calloused and cracked palms smacked the hide surface of the instrument while twenty students sweated, panted, and danced across the floor in front of her. Their bare feet smacked the floor in time with her palms, creating a harmonious duet between the reverberations of the drum and collision of skin and floor. The kids, ranging in age from 14 to 17 or 18 years, were dressed in black unitards with neon orange, ruffled skirts clinging to the curves of their hips. With every dramatic pulse, arched back, and swung leg, the skirts darted and cavorted in their own intricate dance around the students’ thighs. In some moments, the dancers moved in seemingly double time, blurring their taught forms across the studio; in other moments time seemed to crawl, highlighting the precise curve of the last four vertebrae of their bowed spines or the path of each individual braid on one girl’s head.

These are the students in Dance For All’s SCAP: Senior Contemporary African Program. Chosen from among their ballet peers for their noticeable talent in African and Contemporary dance styles, these students train every day for 2 hours and on Saturdays for almost 4 hours. The energy is palpable in the studio, these kids have been dancing together for most of their lives and are clearly friends who are all engaging in one activity for which they all have the same passion. They chatter excitedly in Xhosa, a musical language full of clicks and vowels, sometimes yelling across the room to one another, sometimes bursting into raucous laughter that bounces around the beams of the studio ceiling. Hope laughs with them, jokingly poking fun at one girl who is excitedly recounting a story from her day, joining in on the jokes I can only wistfully imagine understanding. It is simultaneously soothing and electrifying to sit in the midst of the pulsating vibrance in the studio, the melodic sounds of Xhosa swirling around and enveloping me.

Hope introduces me to the students in Xhosa. I do not realize she is talking about me, until every student has turned their bright eyes to me with enormous white smiles spread across their faces. “Today you are our vistor,” Hope said, “tomorrow you are our family.” They nickname me Amis (pronounced ah-meesh), their easier and more fun version of Amanda. Each of them tells me their name and, to be honest, my own confidence in my ability to pronounce, much less remember, all of these names is very low. However the students are welcoming and happy, and are extremely excited to have a hip-hop teacher all the way from the States. As I left, Hope called out to her kids and they all raised their voices together and waved: “Goodbye Amis!!! See you soon!!!” 

Something struck me as I sat and observed the class–I knew exactly what was going on. Although the students and teacher were speaking in a language for which I have no bearing whatsoever, dance had the ability to act as a translation. When one student slipped on his leap and landed hard, the compassion in his peers’ voices rang through their well-meaning laughter. When another student could not figure out in which direction to turn, one of the advanced dancers approached her with an explanation. When a movement confounded one of the student leaders, her inquisitive look and halted movement allowed me to read the interaction between the student and Hope, who rose to elucidate. The smiles on the faces of the students as they leapt, turned, and stomped their paths back and forth across the wooden floor obliterated the language barrier–their joie de vivre radiated from every pore on their lean, muscled bodies. 

These will be my students starting the week after next. I cannot wait.

Afskeid.

My legs twitch when I see other people dancing. Yesterday I found my way through Cape Town to the suburban township of Athlone, where Dance For All’s main office and studios are located. I met with Hope, the Outreach Coordinator, a woman whose age could fall anywhere between the ages of 35 and 50 years–an increasingly familiar ambiguous age range for the women in this country whose faces are both full of aged wisdom and a youthful light. I honestly could not tell you Hope’s age, but her passion for her work and her easy laugh illuminate her office and dart around the hallways through which she regally paces. Her laughter is my favorite part. She smiles first, but as her building joy erupts, she opens her mouth wide and her tongue extends, flattening to her chin. Her eyes close and her laughter bursts forth with the kind of unbridled jubilation that people in the USA seem to have suppressed from age five or six. It is both refreshing and intimidating, but mostly it is compelling and inspiring.

I found myself somewhat flummoxed yesterday when a friend asked me what the “culture” was like here. What defines culture is, of course, an age-old debate. The arts scene, social life, normalcy of daily activity, societal norms and conduct–all of these in combination would create my answer to the question of culture. However, I find myself torn here. There are so many different aspects to life here, it is intensely difficult to describe. Part of Cape Town feels European; the architecture, the fashion, and the setting are all reminiscent of a sea-side European city. On a walk with the Velociraptor along the beach-front promenade, I passed mothers and au pairs walking or jogging with baby strollers and family pets, lounging on the grass, and playing in the playground and parks. In town there are markets where people from different backgrounds in and around Cape Town sell crafts, art, jewelry, and more. Outside of the city lie townships which are deluged by poverty and crime. Whole families live in one- and two-room houses, huts, and corrugated steel shacks. So what is the culture here? I have not been here nearly long enough to even fathom having an answer, but I’ve never been in a place where the melting pot of cultures is so dichotomous yet the multiplicities have managed to come together. Not without conflict, of course; there are still many problems with race relations, between socioeconomic classes, and with the crime that is still rampant in the city. However, to be surrounded by such a whirlwind is inspiring, intimidating, and refreshing–much like Hope’s exuberant laughter.

Afskeid.

The landscape here ambushes you. After precariously dodging seemingly suicidal pedestrians, whipping around turns, and squeezing the car into form-fitting merges on the N1 highway, we darted out of downtown Cape Town and were on our way to the Robertson Wine Valley where the vineyards play host to the Wacky Wine Weekend (charmingly pronounced in a lilting Afrikaans accents as the “wecky” wine weekend). From the urban tumult of Cape Town, the highway winds itself past the impoverished townships on the outskirts of the city, and into the open vistas that surround Cape Town. Lulled into a sense of panoramic security, with one finger in the firm grasp of a sleeping infant, my eyes scanned the countryside lazily–following the rolling hills with tufts of green and brown trees and bushes, interrupted only by the occasional house or, more often, shack. That’s when I was ambushed. All of a sudden our silver Honda CRV was engulfed by towering rock formations with toothpick-thin waterfalls streaming from crevices hundreds of feet above the road. The highway cut an attenuated and precarious path through the cliffs that were more reminiscent of the American Southwest than of the scenes I’d just passed moments earlier. Another topographical surprise greeted the car as it sliced through the mountainsides, as we entered valley after valley, each one more staggering than the last. Wide plains, penetrated by rivers and streams, surrounded by soaring mountains, each one fading into smoky blue as the eye strained to see further.

This was the glorious backdrop for Wacky Wine Weekend–a weekend full of delicious food, wine tasting, and a lot of much-needed sleep. The wine was, of course, phenomenal and makes me wonder why South African wines are not widely stocked in the US, as they are some of my favorites in the world. We spent Saturday tasting and exploring with Baby Kay (aka Babaloo and/or Velociraptor), basking in the sun and the fact that it is the beginning of winter here in South Africa, and the temperatures are in the high 60s and low 70s. The hotel in which we were staying was in the small town of Montagu, surrounded by mountains and only a few minutes from the wineries. On Friday night, Steve and I had explored a local brew pub (a rare breed in South Africa) and found a booklet about the dance program through which I will be volunteering. We spent the evening reading about the company, and enjoying truly delicious home-brewed beers, before heading over to Preston’s restaurant (yes, we got a photograph under the sign, have no fear!) for another beer, just to say we had consumed at Preston’s. 

After a gorgeous morning boat ride down a river in the Robertson Valley, on which we enjoyed a picnic of warm bread, Camembert cheese, mustard, olives and (of course) wine, we headed back to Cape Town to prepare for next week and for what is to become more of my reality here in South Africa. I’m meeting with the Dance For All Outreach Programme Coordinator tomorrow, to discuss what my role is going to look like for the next six months. I can’t even put into words how excited I am to become a part of every day life here in Cape Town. I’m joining a tennis league, a boxing gym, and I’m taking contemporary dance at the University of Cape Town, along with nannying for Velociraptor (so named for the noise she makes in her imitation of laughter–it is absolutely adorable) and teaching with Dance For All. Heaven knows I can’t stand not being busy, so my life is quickly filling up with all the things I love to do here. On Tuesday I am meeting up with Julia, a friend from Haverford who is studying here for the semester, and I hope to make many new friends here. I can’t wait for Crystal to arrive!

I find the concept of a blog to be somewhat narcissistic, but I enjoy writing and so I hope that you enjoy reading it. Know that I miss you all very much, but I am so happy here already, and I can’t wait until my life here develops even further. 

Afskeid!

(Goodbye in Afrikaans)