Happy Shark Week :]

It's strange how things can be so foreign and so familiar all at once. Most of the time everything feels different here...but then there are moments where I can't believe I am half way around the world. My bus rides home from school are more incredible than any other drive I have ever been on. The view of Table Mountain and the surrounding landscape is unreal, I feel like I am in a movie. I can't get over the way the clouds move around the mountain and make it look completely different almost every day. I'm sure this is boring to read about, but seriously...it is the most incredible thing I have ever seen, and to see it every day makes me feel so spoiled.

On a more interesting note...I have done a few fun things in the last week. On Friday afternoon I had lawco training for my upcoming volunteer work. I am going to be teaching 10-12th graders about equality and xenophobia this week. When I first heard the word "xenophobia" it was a vocab word in the 8th grade; the fear of foreigners. I didn't really realize how real the word was until coming here. In the townships many South Africans reject foreigners who come into this country as poor people looking for work. Hate crimes (as extensive as burning people alive) have been committed against refugees here and so that will be one of the issues addressed when I visit the township this week. I am so interested to see how the topic is received.

On top of my readings for lawco I have about a million pages of reading to do for my classes. It is pretty extensive here, and a lot of it in on the internet, which is really annoying considering I have to pay for the internet when I'm not in a computer lab on campus. We also have tutorials here, which are small groups that we have for each class that we are. They meet once a week and are mandatory to attend. If you miss more than two you're not allowed to take the final exam for the class. Most of my classes here are huge, one has 600 people! It makes me miss Albion so much. Sometimes it's nice because I don't feel like I always have to participate, but most of the time it is kind of overwhelming. The classes here are only 45 minutes and every time the kids in my class start packing up their things when there is still like 10 minutes left! It's so weird, the professors don't even seem to mind though. Things are definitely more relaxed here, I never felt high-strung at home, but sometimes I catch myself getting so frustrated with how laid back everyone is academically here. It is definitely a learning experience.

Ok, now...the house. There are 16 of us in our house and we somehow decided to have a house party Saturday night. It was insane, there were at least 100 people in our house. We all had door duty and I was basically standing there with my mouth hung open during my shift because I could not believe how many people were coming in. My shift was with Kasey, and since we are both girls we had Herman help us. It was so funny he kept telling all the ugly guys he saw "no ugly people allowed" and in a German accent it was soooo hilarious! The people looked so confused, it was kind of mean, but I just couldn't stop laughing. The DG I met, Betsy, was there as well. It seemed like every person studying abroad was at our house along with UCT's rugby team. Al and Kurtis (two of the guys in my house) are on the team and invited them all over...apparently mullets are in here amongst the rugby crowd because a lot of them were rocking them haha. I basically felt like I was living in a frat this weekend.

So the party ended at like 3am, the cops came multiple times (I was in bed thank God), and at 4am the bus came to pick up the 5 of us in the house that were going shark diving. So Kasey and I ran around waking up Herman, Kurtis, and Alicen while the bus driver waited. The guys actually got up pretty quickly, but Alicen couldn't get out of her room! The bus driver ended up having to kick the door down! It was sooo ridiculous lol her entire door frame is busted...I didn't even know people could really break doors down! It took about 2 hours to get to the bay where we went out on the boat. Once we got on the water I wasn't so exhausted though. On our way out to the sharks we hit a whale! It was so cool haha we saw a couple of them out there. Once we got to Shark Alley we got into our wet suits and got into the cage 5 at a time. The water was about 52 degrees and I thought my hands were going to fall off. The great whites were the coolest thing I have ever seen though. They got so close and every time one would swim up it just came out of no where! Their size was just massive, but while I was underwater with them I wasn't scared at all. The way they moved was so beautiful, I just felt at awe of how they moved. One caught a seal near us and jumped out of the water while tossing it around. I basically felt like I was on the Discovery Channel. I loved every second of it!

So now that I have written a novel...I suppose all that I have left to tell you about is that today is one of my housemate's birthday so we are going out to dinner for that. Kind of a boring Monday, but it is so welcomed after that weekend. I'm glad that it's August now, I want all my Albion people back at school so I can feel like this semester is moving along! I am really loving it here, but I just can't wait to be reunited with everyone. I'm already missing everything Albion wayyy too much. I'm kind of happy about that though, I think I'd be more worried if I wasn't missing my friends and family :]

Sorry for spelling mistakes, no time to edit, off to international politics!

<3 Carly