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!

Friday, August 9, 2013

TO THE MOUNTAINS

"I'm gonna blog about that." is all we've laughed for the last 2 days, about things I can't quite remember now. After a day of good food and good people I don't really have a point to this post other than the feeling the need to write about it. We keep repeating the fact to one another that we need to start making videos in conjunction to the blog posts because our emphatic and spastic nature cannot be contained by descriptive words alone. "TO THE MOUNTAIN" is a constant and obnoxious chant we repeat over and over as we cackle about the noisy and strange "kiwi" wannabe birds that fly to and from the mountain everyday. "KAWKAW!!" We're almost positive the cleaning staff here hate us, as we are awake at 2am every night yelling bird noises.

Today we had sexy water. "Very sexy water." as the ginger-bearded waiter at Cafe Mozart put it. He brought us a pitcher of water with sliced cucumber, mint, and lemon. It tasted like summer which, in the chilly morning of Cape Town's winter, was a welcome and refreshing taste. I've been vegan for 5 years, recently converting back to basic vegetarianism for practicality's sake. I've decided the omelets here in Cape Town are mind-blowing. Hangover curing, greasy, yellow fluffiness of the gods good. I never really liked eggs or dairy at home in Wisconsin considering they always destroyed my intestines, but here I eat all this good, wholesome, local dairy and eggs like its going out of style. I can't stop myself! "Hey dudes" Our waiter said awkwardly with a surfer hand shimmy, "How's team USA doing over here?!" Is it that obvious we're American? We busted out laughing, "We've crossed over, team South Africa!" Really though, don't make me go home.

After finally getting a hair cut (apparently I need to chop off all my hair every time I come to South Africa?) we decided to go eat dinner at Rafiki's. This is by far the coolest place I have been to thus far in Cape Town. The art work on the walls was so captivating and intriguing I couldn't focus on anything else.
I mean honestly how could you do anything other than study these? They were everywhere. 


What did we get? 1 margarita pizza, basket of fries, onion rings, 4 beers, and 12 shots of whiskey... We bonded, laughed, cried, got mad, and left, skipping our merry feet down the way towards Kloof street.

We've been drinking since 6pm. It's 12:30am right now. You know, living in Wisconsin since birth always made me feel, intrinsically, that I could drink. We live off beer and cheese. It's in our blood. But these South Africans, man, they are destroying my liver (Their $3 rosé wine has 10% alcohol. WHAT?!). After toppling our way into the door of the apartment we decided we were STILL hungry and that we must get food. The asian place across the street didn't have bamboo rolls OR pad thai (blasphemy) so we managed to get ourselves to DaVinci's up the block in search of pizza. Caz knows everyone that works there. Everyone. Which by default means they all know me? Everyone I've met so far has been so outgoing, nice, and sociable. At home I consider myself a complete introvert. Here? I just inherited like 9 friends. I met James. James made me feel like a sad excuse for a global (or even American) citizen. A native of Zimbabwe, James knows American politics better than I do. It's actually incredibly embarrassing (See Caroline's post about Mugabe and Zimmerman for more details). He spent a good 2 hours feeding us more drinks, like a proper gentleman, and discussing the happenings from Cape Town to Zim, from Zim to Egypt, and all the way to the US. I'm drunk, and I feel like a terrible person for not being on this man's level. Apparently I've got to get it together if I'm gonna hang with the South African population. Get my head out of my ass. If they can down 12 shots and still coherently tell me why Zimmerman was acquitted and George Bush re-elected, then I am an AMATEUR.

"Pants." Caz keeps saying, "The vehicle of the oppressor!". She can't seem to find not-pants (leggings) anywhere as the jeans we wear are a prison. We haven't stopped singing We Three Kings in honor of Muslim Christmas, even though its a Christian song. "TO THE MOUNTAIN" was the last thing Caz yelled at me before collapsing in her bed in response to the "KAWKAW KAWKAW" screech of the strange bird, who was apparently left behind by it's fellow weirdo bird friends. I cannot wait to go to Melissa's in the morning for more red latte's and omelets. For now it is my turn to find not-pants.

- Mandy
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)