Babies and Dancing (not together)

So, dinner at Nathalie’s was amazing.  We had very good food, my pie turned out well (despite my surprise to learn that “pie pan” means something entirely different in Europe), and her baby is so cute.

Me and Indigo, Nathalie's daughter

She is also very photogenic, as you can see.  This child has a sense for the camera, you point it at her and she smiles.  So cute.  Everyone loved her, even Yan played with her (and then shook her hand at the end of the night).

Besides bonding with a baby, Fed and I found a great place to go dancing for free.  A bar near the central square turns into a dance club around 11pm, and they play oldies, rock, house, and some new music.  It’s so much fun!  The first time we went thinking it was just a bar and were frustrated when the bartender kept taking away our chairs, but it ended up being really fun.  We went back this weekend and took Mishal and Zaina and Jamie as well.

Valentine’s Day was also very fun.  Mike surprised me with flowers and chocolate, and the boys surprised all the girls with Valentine’s place settings and bouquets of tulips!  Jamie made excellent Thai food with bon bons for dessert.  Mishal was my Valentine.  She got me a card and I gave her three roses (and gave everyone else one rose).  I danced with her to the Beatles.  It was romantic.

Next weekend is Carnival!  My outfit is almost finished.  I’m just sewing feather boas onto a dress that I have and then dressing in Carnival colors.  People here get really into Carnival, so I’m going to take a lot of pictures to post.  It should be very fun.

Alright, I have class in the morning and would really like to finish the chapter I am on in my Globalization and Inequality book.  Goodnight!

I’m applying for a residence permit for the library

Second week of classes has started, and I’m in the library.  As per usual.  I have settled into a routine of spending most of my day here.  Problem Based Learning (the UM pedagogical method) requires a lot of independent study time.  It’s fine, I am enjoying my classes, but it also means I spend a lot of time in the library.

Today we (the Macalester group) are having dinner at Nathalie’s house!  Nathalie is one of our program coordinators in the Center for European Studies.  She is really nice, and we finally get to meet her daughter Indigo!  Indigo is a baby, and super cute.  Also, she has an oven, so I finally get to bake.  I’m making a plum pie.  This is also good news because it means I get to leave here at 3:30 at the latest so I can drop my books off at the Guesthouse before going to the store and Nathalie’s house.  Lelde is helping me bake.

Alright, I really want to get all of my reading done before 3:30 so I only have to write out notes tonight after we get home from dinner at Nathalie’s.  There is no end in sight.  Perhaps the weather is just getting me down, I haven’t seen a proper summer in over a year.  Today the weather can’t decide if it wants to rain, snow, or be sunny.  Either way its cold, and I hope it isn’t precipitating while I am biking home from the library.

Until next time…

First week of classes

Well, first I apologize for being so horrible at posting.  The January seminar was, as advertised, intense, which left almost no free time in which I wanted to think.  Intense, but completely worth it.  After the seminar ended, I went to Florence to visit Catie, who is there studying art history until April.  Now I am back in Maastricht, just starting my classes at the University.  I’m taking two classes this block, “Globalization and Inequality” (G&I), which is my required course that all the other Mac students are in as well, and “Globalization, Environmental Change and Society”(G&E), which is my elective with no other Mac students in it.  G&I was good yesterday, we had an interesting discussion in tutorial in the morning, and the lecture wasn’t bad either.  It seems like it will be a lot of work though, since we have group papers and presentations due every week.  The jury is still out on G&E.  I had the introductory lecture this morning, and my first tutorial is this afternoon.

Besides classes, life is good.  The nine of us still eat dinner together with a rotating cooking schedule.  Mishal cooked for the first time, and did very well!  She made us tacos.  I made Channa Masala with rice on Jamie and Krista’s birthday, and yesterday Jamie made tortilla soup.  We eat better and cheaper from cooking together, so I think (hope) that it will continue.  I’m also beginning to see the difference between American and European university life.  In American University life (at least at small schools like Mac) your schoolwork and your social life get very jumbled.  You live with your classmates, you can’t go out so you socialize in your dorms.  Here, academics and social life have more distance.  The library closes at 6pm on Fridays and weekends, almost forcing the students to do something besides study.  It’s not like studying is an option at the guesthouse.  Most of the international students just have to pass their classes since their grades don’t transfer, so it seems to be a constant party.  It makes sleeping difficult for those of us who are actually here to study.

Speaking of studying, I have a paper due on Monday and I am trying to get it done early(ish).  Until next time!

Cheers,

liz

Maastricht madness

Greetings from beautiful Maastricht in the Netherlands!  I have been here for three days and just now got access to the internet.  Apparently Europe does not support Macs, but it worked out.  And I am so happy.

So, update!  My trip to the Maastricht University Guesthouse was uneventful in the sky, but exciting on the ground.  I took two flights (Boston to London, London to Amsterdam), and three trains (Amsterdam-Eiendhoven-Heerlen-Maastricht, everything was in Dutch, it was confusing, I fell down the escalator in Eiendhoven), and a cab before arriving here at the guesthouse.  I have a single, which is great.  It is really nice, well-lit, with a bed, desk, comfy chair, bureau, bookcase, and a sink in the room like at Mac.  I live right next to the kitchen / common room.  Almost all of the Mac kids live on my floor, except Lelde, Helinna, and Fed live upstairs for some reason.  We have agreed to eat together and take turns cooking / buying groceries, which really saves time and money.

The first day we got here we got our rooms and met the program coordinator Nathalie.  She is really awesome and nice!  Her husband is American, so she speaks perfect english and understands where we’re coming from.  She took us to the close mall / super market, Brusselport.  We got some food and essentials and came back to the guesthouse to recuperate.  The next day a professor from Maastricht University gave us a tour of the city, and then Nathalie showed us some good restaurants and other places we might like.  We went out to dinner together at an Italian restaurant on the Virtjhof (I think that is how it’s spelled), which is the main square.  Yesterday we were free and we all went exploring downtown and across the river.  I cooked dinner.  Today we had library orientation, signed our visa applications, and said hi to Professor Samatar.  Afterwards I got my internet working, my phone working, and got a used bike.  However, my bad luck with used bikes continues on a second continent, and the chain keeps falling off.  So I have to bring it back tomorrow to either get them to fix it or exchange it.  We’ll see.  Basically, I’m exhausted.  So that is the short version of what I’ve been up to!  I’ll be more specific when I only have one day to write about instead of four.  I hope everything is well with everyone, and I’ll let you know how the seminar goes tomorrow!

cheers,

liz

T-minus two days…

Not even.

Soon I will be off to Maastricht.  I am excited, but also nervous, and also a little sad.  Sad to leave Mike for so long, I’ll miss him a lot.  He’s coming to visit me over his spring break though, so at least we won’t go all six months without seeing each other.  This experiance will be very different from Cape Town, and I am looking forward to it.  I find freedom in structure, and I had no structure in Cape Town.  I’m looking forward to a little Samatar-style writing and all that.  “Structure is like the bones in your body!”

Sharon e-mailed me again about the Brower Youth Awards.  This is the second year that she has tried to get me to apply.  Last year I couldn’t do it because I was going to be in Cape Town over the awards week.  She tried to get me to do it anyway, saying that they would fly me from Cape Town back to San Francisco.  For obvious reasons, I ended up not applying.  This year though…I have no real excuse beyond “I don’t think I would win”.  That’s never stopped me before.  I applied for the Goldman Sachs Global Leaders Program even though I didn’t think I would win.  I’m just not sure if this award (in the unlikely event that I win) would help me or bring me into a whole new world of hurt that is Think Outside the Bottle.  I love the project, but I also want to move on to other things.  It’s also a hard project to organize, especially with MacCARES the way it is.  Perhaps with MPRIG I would have better luck, but I want to focus on school, trial, and law school applications for my senior year, not get bogged down in TOTB.  Oh well, I’ll think about it.  It could also be a great opportunity.  I could take a year off before law school and work on eliminating bottled water from popular consumption.  We’ll see.

Right now, I should go to sleep.  I’m trying to get on a regular sleep schedule to mitigate jet lag once I get to Maastricht.  It promises to be a mission getting there.  I’m packing smarter this time, and only checking one bag.  A big bag, but single nonetheless.  See you in Maastricht.

Cheers,

Liz

Swells

I’m in Wellesley, Massacusetts.  In my room in my parents house.  There is nothing particularly exciting to report about my time at home…I got my computer fixed, cleaned out my room, got my eyes checked (yes, my vision continues to deteriorate), and ran errands.  Mike and I see each other every day, although usually only for a meal or an episode of Top Gear since he is working and studying for the MCAT.  I’ve started studying for the LSAT, which I am taking in September.  I visited my friends in Minnesota and my family in California.  Overall, it’s been relaxing.  I’m glad I had time at home and time to see my friends at school.  I was afraid that being abroad for a year would alienate me from them, and seeing them alleviated that fear.  Macalester became my home, and my friends my extended family.  This year has been and will be about not belonging, being an expatriate and out of my culture and comfort zone.  It was nice to be welcomed back and be somewhere comfortable where I felt at home.

It’s late here.  Tomorrow I need to run some errands, and I’ll probably finish my last book for Maastricht so I can read some fiction before going abroad again.  I might update again before Maastricht, but if not…see you in the Netherlands!

Cheers,

liz

Possible last post in South Africa

I am done with exams!  However, my computer also choose this time to take a break.  The hard drive has died, and it needs to be replaced.  I took it to the istore (SA apple store) on the Waterfront, and they said they could replace it but they didn’t have a universal version of Leopard, so my files wouldn’t transfer.  Or something like that.  What I took away from it was “you should get it fixed in the States”.  So that’s what I am going to do.  What this means though is that Mike and I are sharing his laptop, and I probably won’t get another chance to post before I get home.  My parents are here for another three days after today, and then Mike and I are going to a game reserve on the Garden Route.  We have two days to pack after we get home and then we’re off to Boston!  So we’re only in South Africa for another 9 days anyway.  The next few days will be hectic, and I can’t believe how fast it’s gone by.

At the same time, I am ready to go home.  Mostly I’m ready to see everyone again.  I had a great dream last night about visiting Macalester (as opposed to my usual “I’m being attacked by wolves or something or other dear god why did I come here” dream).  After five months Cape Town is familiar, I’m getting used to not always understanding and the taxi service that I use is starting to know me, but it will be nice to be back in my own culture.  I am bringing home some South African slang though.  They say “hectic” a lot, and I like it, so look out Mac, it’s coming home.

Alright, I need to go down to Main Rd to get more airtime before my Mom gets here.  We were going to go to Kirstenbosch this afternoon, but it’s raining, cold, and windy, so the aquarium looks like a better choice.

Until my hard drive is replaced…

Cheers,

Liz

The global response

I have never been more proud to be an American.  It’s amazing the positive response here and around the world.  While I wish I could have been in the states to volunteer and vote in Minnesota, it is amazing to watch the elections from afar and see the South African response.  Mandela and Tutu have both come out and congratulated Obama, everyone is heralding today as a new day for the world.  Here are two articles that discuss the international response:

The Earth Times – Obama wins a coup for audacity of hope: Mandela

The Washington Post – Around the World, Praise for Obama

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to study for my law exam.  If Obama can be elected, I can be a lawyer, right?  We’ll see.

Exhuasted from my civic duty

Yesterday, while the world watched, Barack Obama was elected President of the United States!  Really, the world did watch.  At least South Africa did.  A large number of American expatriates and South African students gathered in Cafe Sophia, a cafe on main road, to watch CNN all night in a UCT-sponsored event.  They hung up American flags and had a big peice of paper with a map of the US on it to color in as the states were called.  The party went from 12am-6am, and we stayed for almost the whole time.  Mike and I left a little before 6 because I was falling asleep at the bar.  I had been up since 6:30am to take two finals.  It was hectic, but worth it.  Mike has a prac exam today, but he stayed up anyway.  It was great to be there, with everyone cheering whenever Barack took a state.  Motlanthe congratulated him as well.

I might sleep more now, I’m still exhausted after six hours of sleep.  I only have one more exam, and that is law on Friday morning.  Which means I need to study today.  After Friday morning I am done!

Breakfast time.

Cheers,

liz

South Africa for Obama

Tomorrow is November 4th, so please remember to vote!

South Africa is following the elections.  Obama is all over the streets in graffiti and news headlines.  They’re really pulling for him to win.  At the same time, almost no one knows who McCain is.  Harry would talk about the elections during lecture and always had to ask an American who the Republican nominee is.

Tomorrow is also my first day of exams.  I’m prepared (or will be by tonight) and starting to get nervous.  I have two in the same day, so it will not be pleasant but at least they’ll be over and I can give my complete attention to law.  Tomorrow night I’m going to Cafe Sophia at midnight to watch the election results come in with other UCT students.  We’ll be there until 5am, so my study materials are coming with me.  And a lot of coffee will be consumed.

Alright, back to IPE.  Wish me luck!

cheers,

liz