Sunsets and the Symphony

Yesterday between 8 and 14:30 (they love their military time here) I ‘wrote’ two tests that together will account for about one third of all the grades I will get at UCT. Final exams here make up at least 40-50% of course grades, and sometimes more, so they are quite nerve wracking. Having two in one day did not help. I think my exams went fine, though, although it is tricky to tell given the grading system here.

Straight after the exam, I joined a few friends and hiked Devil’s Peak for the first time. I was quite exhausted, but it was a really nice hike. At the top it was so windy I thought I might fall over, but the view was spectacular. As we hiked down we saw an amazing sunset just behind Lion’s Head.  

I have also checked off another item on my Cape Town to-do list by having a picnic at sunset on Signal Hill. Kevin, Levi, Bri and I packed some snacks and wine and made our way up last week, just in time to enjoy the sun setting behind a perfect view of the city.  

Bri and me as the sun was about to disappear

A random woman directed us to pose like this and took our picture

Last Thursday marked the last day of classes. It is hard to believe the semester could already be over. Exams are so spread out, though, that I will not truly be finished for two more weeks. We made the evening after our last day of classes an exciting one. First we had a great dinner at Sevruga, a restaurant at the waterfront. The waterfront is actually kind of boring and touristy, with a ton of expensive stores, but the restaurants make up for that. Next we headed to the symphony, which played in City Hall. The Cape Philharmonic Orchestra was great, playing Haydn, Mozart and Shostakovich. The violinist Olivier Charlier, who was apparently quite the music prodigy based on the bio in the program, played with the orchestra for a Mozart concerto and was truly amazing.  

Kevin and I took an awesome day trip downtown to visit museums a couple of weeks ago. We went to the District Six museum, which depicts the forced removal of people from District Six, an area within Cape Town’s city bowl, during apartheid. The museum does a good job of reconstructing some of the past and personalizing the stories of people whose lives were drastically altered because they were forced from their homes. The area, including people's homes, was bulldozed during apartheid and is mainly barren still today, despite the fact that it is in a prime location near the city. A huge map on floor of the first level of the museum shows where roads were and people who lived there have come and visited the museum, writing in where their homes were.

This mural is on the wall of the District Six museum

Later, we had lunch at our favorite restaurant, Addis, a delicious Ethiopian restaurant. 

 Kevin is impatient that this picture is preventing him from digging in

Inside Addis, note the cool umbrellas on the ceiling

Our last stop that day was the South African National Gallery. The National Gallery is really neat, with an especially intriguing sculpture in the first room of the Gallery. The sculpture, Butcher Boys, by Jane Alexander, has three life size figures with human bodies but animal features including broken horns. The art is interpreted as a reference to the way apartheid dehumanized South Africans.  I was not allowed to take pictures in the museum, but here is a link to a picture on pbs.org: Butcher Boys 

There was also a huge exhibit by a man named Peter Clarke, called Listening to Distant Thunder. Clarke actually lives in Ocean View, where I did my homestay. His work is really interesting because it spans a wide variety of styles and medias. One entire wall contains a huge photograph he took of Ocean View, which was really neat to see and to try to identify different places I had been there.

That same weekend  I got to go back to Ocean View with my friend Hannah and make dinner for the family that hosted us during our homestay. It was really fun to make them dinner and to see them again. Our host mom made the most delicious food, so it was exciting to be able to make food for her, which she either enjoyed or was really good at pretending to enjoy it. We had a slight debacle making our way back home, having missed the last train, but we ended up making it fine and even trying out a new method of transport here, the bus. 

Slang Section:

Bru = Bro

Lekker = cool/great

Chips = French fries

Soapie = soap opera. One soapie, called Generations, is really popular here. It can be tricky to follow all of the intrigue as the actors and actresses rapidly switch from English to Afrikaans. 

This is not slang, but still peculiar. They write dates backwards from us, so today is 23-5-12. Seeing cheese in the grocery store that expired 1-6-12 at first really grossed me out. Now I have finally gotten used to this, just in time to come home.