My Life as an Ambassadorial Scholar

amasango-gadra

2008-06-13T13:25:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time since I've written in my blog. My camera ran out of batteries about a month ago and it took me a while to get some. The past few weeks I've had exams as well so times have been "hectic" as South Africans would say. Nonetheless, I've established a semi-routine here in Grahamstown between studying and doing some stuff in the township. I took all these pictures today.

This is me and Mama Jane. Mama Jane runs the Amasango School. Amasango is a small school on the edge of the township that consists mostly of street kids. The grades range from 1-7 and the age of the children ranges from around 10 to 17. The kids at this school have been given the least amount of opportunity as I've ever seen. Even with this school, these kids are born into a life where they have little chance for social mobility, as a mixture of poverty, unstable home lives, lack of education (even by township standards) and an atmosphere prone to drug and alcohol abuse make it difficult to achieve any kind of normalcy. The school is run by extremely low paid teachers, perhaps around 40$ a week, and volunteers. I am a volunteer, and I go there on Tuesdays and Fridays to read to a student named Nonturro. His given name is Sebunga, but I've never quite figured out what his real name is, as he has around 4 of them yet only goes by nicknames that highlight his mischievious qualities. He is unruly and starving for attention, good or bad. Today he was asked to take out his ear rings, as the board of education has made the rule that students cannot wear jewelry. When asked to hand them over, he swallowed them, rather than give them up. If I see him wearing them next week, we're going to have a talk.

Mama Jane created this school, and makes a living as the principal of about 60 kids. I'm sure she's paid barely anything. She has truly devoted her life to a cause, and she does a wonderful job, a job that few people on earth could do.

This is a picture of me and Mango. I would like to have a picture of Nonturro, but he doesn't make it to school everyday, and today I was taking pictures. Mango is about 15 and trying to get through grade 7. He's often on the main street begging at night and today was the first time I'd seen him in 3 weeks. He's a smart kid, he speaks and reads English well, which is rare. There are a few kids that are extremely bright and he's one of them, as well as Nonturro.

I've been going to the Amasango School for around 2 months now or so. It's a good experience for the students to have someone that they know cares about them, and a volunteer from the United States is rare. Its also good for me. I live in a city with a massive unequal distribution of wealth, and to be at this school a couple times a week reminds me of South Africa in its entirety and prevents me from becoming numb to the issues that made this country interesting to me. Its easy to ignore the township as a student, or not ignore, just cast it aside as an everyday reality that is normal. But its not normal, its the largest unequal distribution of wealth I've ever seen, like an enormous Memphis. Its still shocking.

Recently, I've been visiting another school called Gadra. Its right below Amasango, so on Friday's I make my rounds between both. Gadra is a school for the blind. Lots of the folks here are blind due to curable illnesses, and only now that they've made it to the school are the people at Gadra beginning to identify the causes of their blindness.

I got in contact with a one of the Gadra volunteers, Pauline, a Rotary member, because for a Rotary presentation I played some blues songs on my guitar and harmonica. People in South Africa love stuff like that. She asked me to come by and jam with the blind folks, and I thought that sounded pretty interesting so I did. These folks can really play, despite not being able to see. Their instruments are marimbas and drums, and they can all play them well. I just walked in, told them what key the blues tunes were in, and we were off, like a real blues band. It was fascinating. Music is an amazing thing, its something everybody can enjoy, whether they are from different cultures or don't have all the capabilities that most people do. It works every time.

This is Richard. He plays the bass marimba, and when we play blues he does a legit walking bass line. He's on fire. He likes to dance when he plays. He's very talented and learns very fast. He's going skydiving this weekend, so apparently he also has no fear.

Anyway, I will try and write more soon, I'm just not that good at keeping a blog.

Pictures

2008-04-28T14:15:00.000-07:00

Luderitz

2008-04-17T08:13:00.000-07:00

We finished our trip by going to Luderitz, a small German colonial town on the coast of Namibia. By this time we had driven around 5,000km, which is somewhere around 3,500 mles. Luderitz is home penguins, sea lions and dolphins and you can see them all around Diaz Point.

This was probably one of Bartolomeu Diaz's last stops before rounding the Cape of Good Hope.

While in Luderitz, we visited a ghost town. The town experienced a diamond rush similar to the gold rush in the States in the 1840's, but as with the gold rush, when the diamonds dried up everybody left. The houses are still preserved and are full of furniture and all kinds of stuff. Also, if you are caught inside the fenced in area where there is still diamond mining there are serious penalties, like getting shot.

We went inside the houses which are supposedly haunted. The atmosphere was very Texas Chainsaw Massacresqe. You can see that me and Rosa are scared, and some say the little white dots in the picture are ghosts.

Outside of Luderitz there are fields full of wild horses. There are many rumours as to how they came to be, one being they are royal horses from the German monarch that visited Luderitz hundreds of years ago that escaped and have survived in the wilderness.

From there, we made our way back to Grahamstown.

Bumper part 2

2008-04-16T09:36:00.001-07:00

When we got to Windhoek we went to all the dealerships looking for a solution. It seemed as if we were going to have to face the music and call the company, until we spoke with a guy working at the dealership who knew this guy in the picture, Rhiner. Rhiner is a German swimming pool lining repair man. It just so happens he's able to mend/repair plastic items with his equipment, so when we drove to his pool place and saw the bumper, he knew what we had come for. We met the next day to see what he could do. Upon arrival the following day, he ripped the bumper and lights off the car - plastic was flying everywhere and he seemed to have little regard for the general well being of the car, or our emotions. However, he put it all back together after he fixed the bumper, and when we returned the car we didn't hear anything about it. It cost 40$ as opposed to the 500$ it would cost for the new bumper and labor, not to mention any surcharge the company would put on it. We really dodged a bullet on this one.

In Windhoek we met another scholar and had supper, it was very German. We ate at Joe's Beer House, all it had was beer and meat, which I think is all German people eat. I had a pig and the girls had an array of meats like zebra, ostrich, kudu, oryx and some others. It was delicious.

And I got a sunburn.

Sossusvlei

2008-04-16T09:02:00.000-07:00

From Windhoek we went to Sossusvlei, which is a large collection of sand dunes, and supposedly has the largest sand dune in the world. We climbed the big one, dune 45, as well as other large dunes. It was about 100 F outside and we had to walk most places, but we started at about 5am to get in as much time as possible before the heat got too bad. The dunes were amazing and as well as the biggest dunes I'd ever seen. We saw sunrise and sunset at Sossusvlei, which were both beautiful

This is a picture of the Deadvlei (dead lake). The Deadvlei is a little enclave in the middle of the desert that has some dead trees. A group of people from the States were filming a movie in the Deadvlei, its called Samsara, potentially narrated by Callista Flockhart. Its expected in theatres this summer. They didn't let me in the movie, which was a big mistake for them.

Whenever you finally made it to the top of a dune, it was an accomplishment, because it usually took up to an hour.

You can get an idea of how high up the dunes are from these pictures. It took about an hour to get up, but about 75 seconds to run down. I almost fell on my face running down, which would equal a non total success.

Bumper

2008-04-02T03:17:00.000-07:00

On our way to Windhoek we came across our first stretch of dirt roads - little did we know we would spend hours on dirt roads going about 40 miles an hour. The roads were generally pretty good, with the occassional hole or series of bumps. In case anyone would like advice about renting a small Nissan and driving it through Namibia, I have some. Don't do it. Our bumper bottomed out in a dip in the road, and it broke. We inspected the damage and it appeared a little piece of plastic that held the bumper to the frame of the car had shattered, basically making the bumper unrepairable. We stopped in a little town where there were probably more goats than people and they were very excited to help us. This is a picture Haley took from inside the car when all the guys were looking at the bumper. There was a lot of looking and talking about the bumper in different languages, but really no one had the tools to mend it. You can't see all of them, but there were at least 20 guys striking this exact same pose and shaking their heads in disappointment.

We took off from there pretty upset and trying to come to terms with the first major roadblock in our trip. We decided we would wait until we made it to Windhoek before we would make any big decisions, like calling the rental company (which is what you're supposed to do) or trying to find someone to fix it.

We had to get the car to Windhoek without causing any further damage, so we had Brenda sew the bumper back on with kite string. It actually worked quite well, but we knew the rental company wouldn't buy it, despite how good it looked.

We left there and spent the night beside a beautiful lake, which made everybody feel better. Right beside the lake was a tract of land full of amazing animals like oryx, zebra and giraffes. We saw the sunset over the lake with all the animals running around, it was awesome. It was desert for hundreds of miles and then all of a sudden it was full of green grass, trees, and wildlife!

Fish River Canyon

2008-04-01T11:42:00.000-07:00

From Cape Town we made our way north to see the Fish River Canyon, suppossedly the Grand Canyon of Africa. However, we ran into some car trouble along the way.

Sadly, this would not be the last time we ran into car trouble. However, in about 5 minutes we had 4 cars stop to help us and we were soon on our way again.

Right before we crossed the border into Namibia we stopped at a small cemetery off to the side of the road. The graves were around 5o years old and there were jars of blood sitting on top the rocks. There were lots of flies, it was a bit scary.

We had to stop for the night and set up camp soon after we crossed the border. This is pretty typical of our camping scenery and equipment. Brenda made us food most mornings and nights, which consisted of a lot of eggs, vegetables and tuna because we could keep them all in the car. She is quite the cook.

We made it to the Fish River Canyon for sunset the next day and it was stunning. We also made it the next morning for sunrise before setting out for Luderitz.

And then we were on our way again, only a few days into our trip but already seeing many amazing things. The roads in Namibia are actually quite amazing, as you can see. We did over a 1000 kilometers on dirt roads similar to this one. It was hectic.

Namibia

2008-03-30T02:13:00.000-07:00

For the past two weeks I've been travelling around Namibia in a rental car with my 3 friends Brenda, Haley and Rosa. I'm going to write a few stories about my experiences along the way, they include everything from penguins to car remodelling. Overall the trip was a total success, in that everybody lived.

This picture is of Sossousvlei, a large group of sand dunes in the central Namibian desert. Namibia's landscape is very diverse, but this picture best represents the desolateness of the country. In total, we drove over 4,000 miles in 2 weeks, and for hundreds of those miles we saw no cars or people. Most of the roads are dirt in Namibia, and some how we never got a flat tire, which is good, otherwise we would still be in Nambia, and the trip would quite possibly not be a total success.

The first stop we made was in Cape Town for a couple of days. We stayed with Jeannie, a friend of ours who studies at the Univeristy of Cape Town and also met up with Haley's fiancee Victor, who also studies at UCT. The first order of business was to go hang out with penguins. They're quite nice and seem to want to hang out as well. There's a huge penguin colony in Cape Town, which blows my mind. The penguins were great, but they were not the most impressive animal we saw in Cape Town.

Since I've been in Africa I've been waiting to see some baboons. I've always thought that baboons deserved more respect, and my experience with them has strengthened this idea. They are geniouses. We were driving to the Cape of Good Hope and there were loads of baboons hanging out in the road, so we pulled over and watched them. We took a lot of pictures and were bearing our teeth at them, and then another car full of Europeans pulled up in front of us. They rolled down their windows to take pictures of a family of baboons, a large male, female and baby. The baby and female moved away from their car so they got out and followed them a little to get a better shot of the baby, and immediately when they were a good distance from the car the male baboon walked across the road, jumped into their car, sat in the seat for a minute, went through all of their stuff, and then grabbed a backpack and jumped out of the car. He walked back across the road and casually unzipped the bag and start pulling clothes out and throwing them to the side like a kid on Christmas morning opening a box full of underwear. He then found some toothpaste and what looked like tylenol and ate all of it. Then a cell phone in the bag rang and the baboon answered it. Baboons 1, Humans 0. I'm going to write about the rest of the trip, but really this was my favorite part.

Letlapa Mphahlele

2008-03-04T01:34:00.003-08:00

This is Letlapa Mphahlele, the current President of the PAC, The Pan African Congress. He spoke at the University last night and I went to listen...it was very interesting.

This guy came to talk mostly about the TRC, The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was created in order to identify and reconcile crimes committed during Apartheid. Loads of crimes were committed during the conflict between freedom fighting organizations and the government, and Mphahlele was basically the leader for the guerrilla forces of the PAC during apartheid, and as a result he ordered the killing of many people. Last night he described to us how he openly admits what he has done and claims responsibility for all violent actions during the struggle. This is the idea behind the TRC, to get everything out on the table so people can start getting over it. He actually finds the families of individuals he has had eliminated and explains to them the circumstances of their death. He spent 7 years in prison for his crimes and now actively is trying to guide South Africa in a direction of healing. For someone who ordered the deaths of countless people, he was an extremely nice man and very well spoken. It was easy to see he regretted what he had done but believed it was still necessary. He said a few things that were very interesting, one being the idea act of ritual after violence. He says that whether violence was committed for a just or unjust reason, violence is always bad, and to move on people have to experience a type of ritual to give closure or understanding to what has happened, and to try and prevent it from happening again. The TRC even tried to refuse his application of admittance of his crimes based on his role as a leader and not the actual human who "pulled the trigger." So his petitioned this, and is in an argument with the TRC about his role. He wants to be recognized as the mobiliser and executioner of policy, and wants to be accepted as guilty. I think I know why he does this - because his goal for everyone to admit what they have done wrong on both sides so reconciliation is possible. If a government military official releases HIV positive prisoners into townships with a pocketful of cash in order to spread HIV, this is something that official must bear responsibility for. But thats the worst part, there is a large lack of responsibility in South Africa, but this guy is owning up to every crime he believes he committed and wants to bear responsibility for them.

Safari

2008-03-01T08:37:00.001-08:00

So I didn't really go on a safari, but me and about 7 other students rode about 10 minutes away from campus and all of a sudden there were zebras, wildebeasts, giraffes, kudus (big eared dear) and rhinos.

We also saw a wildebeast fight, which was especially rowdy.

Its pretty awesome that I barely have to leave campus to go see animals that I normally can only find in a zoo.

This is one of the kudus. They just hang out by the road side, they didn't even run away when we pulled up. The zebra as well, they just kinda cross our paths and don't pay us much attention.

The picture of the giraffe isn't great, but he was a bit far away.

The only thing that is making my trip here a bit bland is the lack of baboons. Everyone here has such a negative mindset towards baboons, but they're so close to people that humans here describe them as being "rude" and other adjectives they use for humans. Baboons deserve some more respect than that I think.

Cape Town

2008-02-28T00:13:00.001-08:00

This past weekend I went to Cape Town for a Rotary Orientation, and it totally changed my outlook on my time here in South Africa. Cape Town is amazingly beautiful in so many ways - the weather, the people, and the overall vibe it gives off. There is so much in Cape Town, I don't even know where to begin explaining what its like.

I met all the other scholars soon after I arrived in Cape Town, there were about 20 - it was quite an interesting group consisting mostly of Americans but some from Europe and Africa. We immediately went to a township outside of Cape Town and visited a school. The school has done a 180 since the end of apartheid, and now has things like a playground and computers and such, but the main thing that was so striking about the school was how happy the kids were. They were the happiest kids I've ever seen, we played games and just ran around for a few hours. I'm still waiting for pictures that were taken by the coordinator, Trevor, who did an amazing job creating activities that we all loved...if you see these pictures you'll see what I mean, you can see how happy they are by looking at their faces. There is a lot of hope in South Africa, people are very optimistic, even when it appears like there is not much to be optimistic about. This picture is of a dance some students did for us, but it wasn't a lame 3rd grade cutesy little dance, it was a rowdy drum beating screaming dance where the girls wore rattles around the shins and jumped around screaming and feeling it.

We visited the Chamber of Commerce and listened to some lectures before leaving for Lions Head Mountain. We hiked up the mountain and stopped in a cave to drink some champagne and enjoy the view of Table Mountain and the rest of Cape Town, it was spectacular. We then came down the mountain to find that Trevor had gotten a drum instructor to bring us all drums and give us a lesson. We beat on the drums while the sun went down and had a big time. The day was packed and I had only gotten 4 hours of sleep the night before. As it turned out, there was just too much stuff to do so I got about 4 hours of sleep every night I was in Cape Town.

The next day we had about 9 hours of lectures on everything from South African politics, social service, stories of pre-apartheid, a guy who had lived with a Xhosa tribe for 8 months to become a medicine man and law. It was really interesting and I learned more in one day than I've probably learned in my whole time here. That night we went out to Long Street, the Bourbon Street of Cape Town, and stayed out dancing and hanging out on rooftop bars until late, only to come back and talk until 4 or so in the morning, even though we had to be up at 7.

The next day we went to the dock and had a dragonboat race. The race was cool, but the best part was there were seals hanging out all over the docks, just being lazy. They're like big cats, and you can walk right up to them.

We then went to a winery/dairy farm that was modeled after an old colonial winery, it was beautiful. We had a braii (bar b que) and just hung out all day talking and enjoying the end of the weekend.

From there we went to Kirstenbasch where we saw a concert before heading back to our place. Here is a picture of the concert, and my friend Haley eating.

It was an awesome experience and soon I'll put up loads of pictures that can describe everything I saw better than I can with words.

International Dinner

2008-02-16T23:53:00.000-08:00

Last night the Sunset Rotary Club of Grahamstown had an International Dinner. There were about 10 tables and each table represented a different country, like France, India, Thailand and many others. Someone from each table was nominated to cook a traditional meal from their respective country (mine was Morocco) and it was delicious. They played music from each nation and everyone gave a little speech about what they were eating and such. Mainly it was an excuse to sit at the table for nearly 4 hours and hang out, so I learned a lot last night.

Most of the people at my table spoke Afrikaans during the dinner unless they were addressing me, so I was a bit out of the loop at times. However I learned that "Eben" is an Afrikaans name, pronounced "Yeben" kinda. Afrikaans is of Dutch origin but is like a mix of Dutch, German, and English that is unique to Southern Africa and spoken mostly by the Afrikaner and Coloured populations of about 6 million people. From what I've gathered most white people speak Afrikaans either because their family is native speaking or they learned it in school. I'll probably learn some Xhosa and instead of Afrikaans because Xhosa has all the cool clicking noises.

This is Geoff Antrobus, the head of the Economics Dept.at Rhodes. He's been so helpful with everything from answering questions about housing or academics to just being a cool guy to hang out with. I went to his house last weekend and saw his speckled cattle that are native to South Africa. Each has a distinctive colored pattern all over their body, some look like Dalmations and some look like they were dipped in chocolate, they are beautiful. Prof. Antrobus lives on a farm outside of Grahamstown and on a clear day you can see the ocean from his hilltop. Its kinda the way I pictured people living in South Africa. He also was a conscientious objector when conscripted to fight in the army and refused to carry a gun. When the apartheid was reaching a critical point the government pulled together an army to help quell the rebellion. However, the army was made of ordinary citizens who were supposed to fight against other citizens if need be, a civil war. Prof. Antrobus was forced to sign a paper that he couldn't fight on religious grounds (even though that wasn't the case) and got stuck with crappy army jobs like working in the cafeteria or something. From what I can tell he has always been opposed to the apartheid, which is strange because most whites probably weren't. You can't help but think about it when you see older white people, just the same way you can't help but think that before 1968 people were actively supporting segregation. The crazy difference is African-Americans were segregated from the rest of the country and made of about 15% of the population. Here the segregation was more harsh i.e. blacks were made to carry little booklets that kept track of where they had been and where they were going, getting pulled over by a police officer without a book could mean going to jail. But here nearly 3/4ths of the population was segregated from society and stripped of citizenship, which I can't understand.

It was pretty lively, there was lots of wine and dancing when the dinner was over, its a bit different from Rotary get togethers in Smyrna.

The 3 Ladies

2008-02-12T03:35:00.000-08:00

There are four Ambassadorial Scholars here from the States this year, myself, and three wonderful ladies. I walk around town with these ladies, eat with them, have coffee with them...I look like a stud. I'm the guy who's always got a bunch of girls with him, and this is earning me serious street cred here in Grahamstown.

It was nice to know someone when I arrived (we had been talking with one another through email for months) but they are all three very interesting and intelligent young women that I enjoy spending time with. Our homes, lives and experiences span from one corner of the United States to the other, and each of us have had many travelling/working/living experiences outside of the US. They are as follows.

This is Haley Fletcher. She's from Idaho and went to Rice for her undergraduate studies. She doesn't say her O's as funny as I'd hoped, but she does have something very interesting about her....she is engaged to a Nigerian prince, and therefore will become a Nigerian princess one day! Her Nigerian Prince is also in school at UCT in Cape Town. She's in the Master's program in Political Science with me so I will hopefully be looking over her shoulder during test time.

This is Alicia Verhage. She's from Chicago but has been studying in California and recently been working with an organization that's committed to ending human trafficking In Brussels, Belgium. These pictures were taken on her birthday at a small restaurant on the High Street called the Yellow Piano. She's also in the Master's program for Political Science. I have two shoulders to look over during test time.

This is Rosa Terlazzo. She's from Pennsylvania and went to Bucknell for her undergraduate studies. Shes been living in New York City up until she came here. Rosa is studying Philosophy in the Master's program here, so I can't look over her shoulder during tests but I can ask her if it's right or wrong to do so after I do it. She's going to be upset when she sees this picture but its the only one I have of her right now. This is her Marylin Monroe face...

Also, that's Brenda in the back. She was an Ambassadorial Scholar last year and is back this year finishing her thesis. She's from Washington and went to George Washington University. Her personality can only be described as "BOOM." She's in your face.

Together the five of us are called Team America. I'm not sure if the nickname is endearing.

Revolution!

2008-02-08T06:46:00.000-08:00

I am now settled in to my dorm which houses around 30 post graduate males. I am the only one from the States and one of the few white students in the dorm, which is a different atmosphere for me. I came to study the different cultures and ideas of the people in South Africa and soon will compose a thesis for a Master's degree that I will work on for the entire year. I already believe that my experiences in the dorm will allow me to become friends with the type of people I need to learn from and give me a special insight into the lives of many different types of South African people.

Last night, I walked into the TV room at about 11pm with a pizza. It was full of students and they were watching a futball game (soccer), at least the game was on, not many people were actually watching it. There was one student standing to the side giving a fierce oration, so I came in quietly and sat down without greeting anyone and ate my pizza like everything was normal. The guy was giving a speech that sounded rehearsed about the situation of the Africans in South Africa. He said being called black was an insult and refused to let anyone get away with calling themselves black because his argument was that all natives of Africa are brothers and needn't be called anything but Africans. This infers that white South Africans are not Africans. Strangely, I had to agree with the guy in my head a little because ever since I got here I thought I was in England with beautiful weather. The accents, the drinking habits of the students, the futball, the cricket, its all here. Of course, this culture only makes up a smidge of Grahamstown, but many students you see walking around are white. Anyway, he describes the inequality of education and gave interesting examples. He was focusing more on the education itself, how African science students from small townships are made to examine the trajectory of a cricket ball, when they don't play cricket where they're from and have possibly never seen a cricket ball. This, he said, was an education designed to educate the white man, cricket is a "white man's game." He kept on with examples and had the attention of the other students to some degree because he was making real points about the cultural circumstances that whites and blacks share. The crux of his argument was that whites had what they didn't deserve in terms of power and capital, and blacks continue to accept their place as the oppressed due to puppet leaders like Mandela and the ANC as well as a defeated mentality and lack of unification. However, he descended into speaking about a Communist state and a United States of Africa and lost nearly everybody, except for a couple that were keen to argue. The others became only critics and laughed at many things he said. It sounds like an uncomfortable situation for me as the only white guy in the room, but as he was speaking he made a point to the effect of "we are the natives, we lived here and governed ourselves for centuries, and these white men invaded us. They don't belong here, this is not their land, they weren't born here like us, they came on the boat." And I said the first and only words I would say for the entire hour "I came on the plane." They all laughed at this and it was fun. The vibe is different. I wasn't uncomfortable. In the States, I believe I've never been in a room full of black people, especially not one where the people are discussing how to take power away from white people. Strange.

I've heard this rhetoric before from Malcolm X, Dubois and Marcus Garvey, but it was interesting to hear it in South Africa. My thesis will be focused on these ideas somehow, I just haven't figured it out yet....

Arrival

2008-02-06T07:12:00.000-08:00

I have finally arrived in South Africa! After a year of waiting its finally here, and it is a bit overwhelming. South Africa is truly a diverse place. My University is about 50% white and 50% black, and the people come from everywhere, especially neighboring African countries like Zimbabwe. There are many different langauges spoken by all the people here, I feel a bit lacking in the langauge department, since the first person I met on campus spoke perfect English but grew up speaking Xhosa. I also found out that when you say Xhosa, you click the X in the back of your mouth, one of the famous clicking langauges people joke about in the States so much. The language actually doesn't sound that bizarre compared to the other 10 langauges spoken hear. Nearly everybody speaks something besides English, and they do not expect you or anyone else to speak their language so all communication is done in English for the most part. Its exciting.

The University is a normal University, I feel in a strange way I'm back in college in the States. However, there is a different vibe, I think because there are so many different people from different places. My first few days were spent in a little apartment type dorm about 30 minutes from town, on top of a hill, so I've felt a bit out of the loop with the campus and the town, but as of today I've moved to a post-graduate building right in between the town and the school, which is perfect and a lot less walking. The University is the town basically, but Grahamstown has a population of about 80,000 so there must be a lot more people out there that I haven't encountered yet. I've become good friends with two other scholars that I met on the first day, Haley and Rosa. It's nice to know someone here already who is sharing the same ideas and such as myself, but we all seem really excited about all the different people and opportunities this scholarship has to offer. Now that I'm settling in well and I'm about to start studying things will pick up even more...I'm really excited.