Who are we?

This blog is an agglomeration of the thoughts and experiences of two American girls who packed up and moved to South Africa on a whim. Caz from Fairfield, Connecticut and Mandy from Milwaukee, Wisconsin first met as roommates in 4127 on Semester at Sea in Fall of 2010.
In the interim, Caz returned to finish her Bachelor of Science with a double major in Biology (concentration in Microbiology) and Geography with a minor in Chemistry at the University of Miami in Florida, while Mandy took a hiatus to rediscover her real passion working with pregnant women, advocating for home birth and delivering babies outside of a hospital environment. We reconvened to follow both of our fields of study (read: hopes, dreams, asiprations, life goals, etc.) outside of the United States. Hello South Africa?

We are both here for at least a year and a half, though the more time we spend falling in love with South Africa, the more we'd like to think it'll be longer. We are both starting jobs in November/December: Caz working with infectious disease at a hospital clinic and Mandy beginning her training to become a certified midwife. Before then, we are both writing a book about our experiences leading up to this adventure as well as the multitude of serendipitous happenings that led us here.

As always, feel free to comment or ask questions. If you have an interest in a topic, let us know and we will surely oblige you (within reason). Enjoy!

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

On being Territorial.

Anyone who watches Arrested Development will appreciate this.

The other night Caz and I sat at the bar and a woman flagged down Muda (her South African "man friend") in the middle of her conversation with him. Our strange and instant response was to start doing the chicken dances? From Arrested Development? Caz fluffed her not-feathers and scratched the ground with her not-talons like a spastic peafowl and purr/growled at the other woman from our place across the bar. You know we're close friends and completely insane when we both did this without discussion or prior planning. Nope; spontaneous clucking and head bobbing. I don't in my right mind know what the hell is wrong with us, but it was pretty damn funny. The regular patrons, for sure, thought we were nuts. We were able moderately compose ourselves from debilitating laughter just as Muda returned to the conversation and wondered why we looked so suspicious/deranged. "What are you guys doing?" he asked hesitantly. "...We're being territorial." Caz said with a wide eyed dead-pan face. No explanation. He's learned to accept our strange manners. He's never going to take us out in public again after reading this.

So, of course, since then we can't stop doing our territorial chicken dance everywhere we go. Down the street, in Checkers, in the taxi, test driving a jeep, and walking Buddha. None of it seems complete without marking our territory, avian-dance-style.









Literally. Identical.

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