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...