The past few weeks in Cape Town

Since I haven't posted in over a month, and for my parent's benefit, I would just like to say that things here are still great. We're going on less crazy adventures, but in a way that's good because I kinda actually feel like I live here now. I can spend weekends catching up on life and relaxing by the beach and not feel guilty that I'm not off exploring some new part of Cape Town.

This post is also to try and get ahead of the game before I leave on my next crazy adventure (yes I realize I just said I've been going on less of them) over Christmas break. I'll be traveling to Namibia, Botswana, and Zambia, meeting up with different groups of GRS'ers along the way. This trip still doesn't feel real and I say those countries so nonchalantly right now, but if I were in the US, I would have been planning a three week trip like this for months. I just bought my plane ticket home yesterday. And I leave in 3 days. Oops. We've all just been so busy at work that trip planning has been put on the back burner. It'll all work out. I'll go over the trip more when I come back home in January, but wish me luck and hopefully I survive the Namibian sand, the Botswana delta, and jumping off Victoria Falls.  Woo!

Here's some pics of my last few weeks in South Africa.

Soweto Derby with the Joburg interns. Khosi for Life!

Halloween. Hola.

Dressing up as our line managers at work. Turned sideways to get the full effect of the beard and long eyelashes.

Beautiful Cape Town view from our 6 hr hike

Gordon House PDW - Popcorn Development Workshop 

Wine tasting in Constantia

Followed by a concert in the park

GRS Thanksgiving feast, complete with a sheep's head 

A homemade Mexican fiesta with the Joburg interns… we ran out of plates

Nomi taught me how to wrap my hair

Tata Madiba

It’s been far too long since I’ve written one of these (it seems as though I missed the whole month of November), but right now I am forcing myself to sit down and remember this occasion.

Friday, Dec 6, we lost a one of the most influential men of our time, Nelson Mandela. It’s hard to put into words the impact he had on the world and especially this incredible country that I now live in. He is the reason that there is freedom and equality in South Africa for people of different colors and backgrounds. And this all happened SO recently, I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. It is truly incredible the impact one person had on this country. 

I think the whole world knew Madiba passed away before we did here in South Africa. I was already asleep, but I think the news first broke around 11:45pm here and wasn’t widely reported until about 12:30-1:00am. I didn’t find out until the next morning, but woke up to plenty of messages and emails about the news. The GRS Managing Director sent out a very heartfelt email first thing in the morning and we had a vigil up in the office all day with a picture, candles to light, and flowers.

At lunch, most of us at the office went to a memorial service at a nearby cathedral. The room quickly filled up as the pastor spoke about Mandela’s impact on South Africa and led us all in song and prayer. Most of the songs were from the ANC movement and were widely known throughout the crowd. During the memorial, the pastor opened up the mic for people to come up and share their Madiba stories. Some had met him personally; others just spoke about the freedom they now enjoy because of him. It was pretty amazing how all these people were so deeply and personally affected by this one man. It’s also incredible how many people had personal stories about him; it really spoke to his accessibility and to the relationship he had with his people.  Those that had met him all spoke of his compassion and sincerity… how he had one of his bodyguards personally deliver an autographed photo to an admirer’s home two weeks after they met, or how he visited an HIV positive man sick in the hospital and wore an “I am Positive” shirt to show his support. One of his former bodyguards spoke of how all he used to want to do was kill, and Mandela taught him compassion and forgiveness.

It’s been very surreal being here for such a momentous and emotional day. It’s hard to describe the mood around Cape Town at the moment. Everyone knew this day was coming, and the media and local businesses have obviously been preparing judging by the banners and paraphernalia already posted around town.  While his passing was not a shock, there was still a very somber and sad hush around Cape Town. Although Madiba had a tremendous impact around the world, he was so so important to the people of South Africa and I somewhat felt as though I was intruding on their mourning. You could tell how personal everyone took his passing; it was as if all South Africans lost a family member and friend.

There are a few memorials happening this next week and I hope to attend whatever I can. It is truly a once in a lifetime experience to be in this country to honor Nelson Mandela and I am so lucky to be a part of it.

I Survived: Snorkeling with Seals

I would like to preface this post by saying that I survived... obviously. But leading up to it I wasn't so sure what the outcome would be.

So it was Anna's birthday and being the swimmer that she is, she decided that she would like to go snorkeling with seals. At first thought, this sounds great and happy and fun. Seals are cute, right?

The week leading up to our adventure, I wasn't so sure about participating since it was supposed to be cold and rainy... but most importantly because sharks like seals. And being in a wetsuit, me and a seal would be pretty difficult to tell apart. I voiced my fears, but was made fun of and was signed up with the company before I even said yes. A few days later, this picture was taken, easing my fears of becoming shark bait.

Fast forward to Friday afternoon (we were scheduled to snorkel on Sat) when I told my boss what we were planning on doing for the weekend, and his first response was, "You know someone just got eaten by a shark this morning off the coast, right?" No, no I did not know that. His second response was, "Why would you want to swim with seals? They're mean and they bite you. There's a picture of a lady in Hout Bay with half her face eaten off by seals with a sign that says Seals are Wild Animals, Keep your Distance." Why was I doing this again? Here's the article in case you don't believe me.
Shark Attack: Snorkeller killed in South Africa

Saturday morning came too quickly, and during breakfast our house decided to celebrate the day we may die with a soundtrack mimicking our emotions. Songs on the playlist included, "It's a Great Day to be Alive" "My Heart will Go On" "Arms of an Angel"... you get the picture.

We arrived in Hout Bay to a beautiful day, squeezed into our wetsuits, and were ready to face whatever was hiding in the water. Shockingly, it turned out to be so much fun and I didn't think about being lunch for a shark once! There were SO many seals and they swam really close, but not close enough to eat my face. They also have really big eyes underwater and will just stare at you as they swim by. Such cool animals. I guess I'm glad I went...

Yes, I realize how ridiculous and dramatic we were... but come on, how scary does snorkeling with seals sound?

Becoming a Local

Contrary to my blog post title, I'm still very far from actually becoming any where near a local, but these past two weeks were a start.

Heritage Day was a few weeks ago and we had the day off work. I'm not positive exactly what heritage we were celebrating, possibly Zulu, but it happens to coincide with National Braai Day so we concentrated more on that. Added bonus, it was also Chris Barba's, another GRS employee, birthday. A big group of GRSers went over to Kloof and relaxed on their astroturf roof while Jeff cooked us up some delicious braai meat. It was a beautiful day to be outside, eat good food, and sit around with friends. We ended the night playing the South African version of Taboo, which was semi-challenging given the different cultural/political/geographical references I have no idea about, but also funny bc there was a lot of random American pop culture references. Side note: I'm still good.

I got to go out to Khayelitsha to see a SKILLZ Street Holiday camp graduation. As previously mentioned, SKILLZ Street is our female-only intervention that educates about HIV and empowers girls to challenge gender norms . Since it was a holiday week and all schools were on break, GRS did a week-long program ending on Friday. Walking up to the classroom all you could hear was a chorus of voices singing and feet stomping; it was overwhelming happiness. It proceeded with each group of girls and their coach putting on a skit or singing a song they prepared. Some were lighthearted songs, while others showed skits of domestic violence or parents shunning their kids for being HIV positive. As the program went on, girls would spontaneously stand up and share stories about their experience with HIV or gender-based violence, some even burst into tears. While the topics were heavy and the message extremely powerful, the coaches made sure to keep it up-beat with lots and lots of signing and dancing. After a busy week in the office, getting out and seeing something like this puts it all into perspective and makes you realize exactly what we're doing it all for. 

"What if HIV isn't here to kill us, it's here to challenge us"

South Africa played Australia at Newlands Stadium in Cape Town and I got to go!! Yay rugby. I was initially pretending that it was fall in the US and I was getting ready for a football game, but a rugby game in the spring turned out to be a ton of fun.  We journeyed out to Newlands and explored tailgating here in SA.... pretty similar, with lots of braais and drinks. We had standing-room only tickets (they were only $10) and were in this weird section under a huge overhang, but we could see the field just fine and made a few new friends. It was definitely a good time and hopefully next time I'll understand the game a bit better. Here come the Boks! or in Afrikaans, "Hier kom die Bokke!"We started (brunch), and ended (dinner) the day at one of our favorite restaurants, Clarke's. The waiters laughed at us.

Got our game faces on

Not the best photographer... sorry Kat, I think he cut you out

On Sunday we went and saw the wildflowers in West Coast National Park. They were so beautiful and calming. The only slight downside was we rented a tiny car that is intended for 4 people and barely fits 5... and we squeezed in 6 for the hour and a half drive. It was definitely not the safest thing to do but we survived. I either sat on the floor on top of the cup holders, or when we were driving slowly through the park I had my feet out the window to make more room inside. It was that crowded. The flowers were worth it and the good company made the car ride bearable.

Our miniature car

Flamingos!!

...and pretending to be flamingos!!

Just showing off our sweet new socks of the Big 5

My attempt at a heart-shaped rock. Always thinking of you mama T <3

This past weekend we went to the music festival Rocking the Daisies. It was out in the winelands and is kinda like a mini-Coachella. Four interns from other sites drove out for it so it was also like a mini-reunion. It was so good to see them and catch up on all our GRS experiences, they're all so different and unique. Rocking the Daisies was really fun and a lot of great music (Alt-J woo) but it was freezing and super windy which was kinda a bummer. We also squeezed 4 people in a 3 person tent so there was not much sleeping at all. I "slept" with my arms folded bc there was no room to put them by my side. Despite the weather and sleeping situation, it was still a great weekend with great people. (Here's a link to some good South African music I'm listening to now)

Tent city

Part of the crew 

I had a pretty exciting and successful week at work. Since I first got here I've been working on coordinating a visit with the CEO of MAC Cosmetics and two other very important MAC women. MAC AIDS Fund is a big donor to GRS. The visit finally happened this past Friday and it went smoothly and everyone was very satisfied afterward. Julie, the head of BD for GRS, flew in for the meeting and we also had 4 coaches attend and tell their personal stories and then lead an activity for the women to participate in. It was exciting to be a part of but I'm definitely glad it's over. The second exciting thing was that we found out that a grant we submitted got accepted! I got to work a lot on the proposal, so this was especially exciting for me since it's the first one I've ever worked on and submitted. It's not a huge grant, but it's to implement a programme I really like in a new site, Alexandra. I'm pretty happy about it. 

My desk. Julie gave me some treats for a successful MAC visit

Yay it's Friday and the week is almost finally over!

But why are we still at work...

That's all for now! I'll try to make them more frequent and less ramble-y, but we'll see how that goes.

Birthdays and Flat Tires

Well I’ve really sucked at blogging lately, sorry mom and dad. It’s way too much to catch up on everything that’s been going on, but here’s a little snapshot of my new life.

Cape Town is just like the US except sometimes the doorknobs don’t work and the roofs leak.... Maybe that gives you a little snapshot of what it's like here.

My birthday (almost a whole month ago) was so much fun and I got to spend it with some great people. 12 of us rented a bus and went on a wine tour through Stellenbosch, which is an area about an hour outside Cape Town that has a ton of wineries. We went to 5 wineries, spent the night at a hostel and then celebrated another GRS intern, Scott, and his bday on Sunday. I would call it a very successful and shenanigan-filled weekend.

The gang

The damage

Sadly, one of the former interns, Jeff Devereux, left us a few weeks ago so we obviously had to have a going away party/week. We hosted it at Gordon House and Nath cooked us a delicious meal from scratch. Our kitchen isn't quite up to par (the burners choose to work or not work on their own accord) and the food was very labor intensive, so we didn’t end up eating until around 10:00, but it was well worth the wait and we found plenty of ways to occupy ourselves.

The delicious feast

Using the winking self-timer on my camera

Surprising Dev with silly string and kazoos

The weather has kinda started to get nicer here, minus the random hailstorms, so we finally made it out to Camps Bay. This is a beach about 20 minutes from our house and is one of the more ritzy areas of Cape Town (Beckham has a house here). Being on the beach and then looking around at the mountains was one of those, “I actually live here?” moments. It's so beautiful now, I can't imagine what summer is going to be like. We followed the beach day by a girls’ night out watching the sunset with Italian food and wine. Can’t complain.

This past weekend we went to a Whale Watching festival in Hermanus, a city about an hour and a half outside of Cape Town. This trip was a true adventure. We had two cars full of people heading out there, when the first car that left a little before us calls and says they're pulled over on the highway with a flat tire. We found them in the pouring rain and it ended up taking us about 45 min to get the tire changed. Two cop cars pulled over next to us but never got out of the car to help… not sure what was going on with that, maybe they were bored? Anyway, we finally got the tire changed, the cops left, and then we realized that the battery was dead. We obviously didn’t have jumper cables, so we had to try and push-start the car. Again, it’s still pouring rain. This took about another 30 minutes of pushing the car forward and back, but luckily it finally started. If only we had Triple A...

Real-life Little Miss Sunshine

We finally made it to Hermanus and it was worth the trek. Apparently this is when the whales migrate from Antartica and come to South Africa to mate. It was pretty incredible how many whales we saw just standing from the shore. They were so close and were everywhere you looked.

Random people jumping in our pic

Those are some of the big things that have happened, but life in general has been good. There has been a lot of family dinners/parties and even some baking going on. I’m proud to say I brought Slutty Brownies to Africa. Work has been really busy but still great. I’m definitely learning a ton and love getting involved in new projects with different groups of people... And as you can see in the pics below, the office environment is pretty cool.

I think I’m finally starting to realize that I live here and don’t have to be doing something at all moments. These past couple weeks have been nice though just exploring the city or laying in the park in the sun.

Juggling in the office

Ratatat! Everyone dresses up or gets something to make noise with and parades around the office when we have something big to celebrate. This one was to celebrate one of our papers getting into a big conference in SA. Go GRS!

8 of us watching New Girl on my comp...