My internship at Christel House

So these past three days have been crazy. My inernship at Christel House is going all right, so far. I've been in a first grade class and a third grade class

South African children are adorable

A letter that I got from a 7-year-old student at Christel House today, in perfect cursive, who I barely even remember meeting:

"Dear: Miss Ruth
I love you very much and you my best teacher. You are a star. Thank you for the love you share with us. We will love you and think of you were evey you are. Love learner: Janicia Miller"

These kids are too cute. Other things they talked about:

"I want to go to America when I grow up. In America, everyone wears nice clothes and dresses like a model."
"You live near New York? Which movie stars have you seen?"
"I like white people. Are you a white lady? I've never seen a white lady."
"Do you live in a 2 story house? You're from America, you must have a 2 story house."

Living in a foreign country

Some fun things about South Africa I've discovered:

-Traffic lights are called robots, and they're all on posts on the street corners, not hanging above
-Currency is in rand. We divide by seven to get the American equivalent, so if a sandwich is R30, it's really only about 4 US dollars.
-The general taxis are called minibus taxis. We took out first one the other day--a pretty interesting experience. All the drivers try to haggle you into taking their bus instead of someone else's. They cram as many people as they can into this van-type thing, and stop and get out every few blocks to try and haggle other people. We went from downtown Cape Town to our suburb town, about a 15 minute drive, for only R4--less than a dollar!
-There are places called townships out on the Cape Flats, which are primarily informal settlements that blacks were forced into during apartheid. They are now slums, made up entirely of black people, often housing 10 people in one little shack.
-This country LOVES curry. There's a high Indian population here. I wish I liked spicy foods more!
-I still have not gotten used to driving on the wrong side of the road. It's hard to cross streets when we're so used to the American way. I also got thrown off by the "LEFT turn on red."
-I'm slowly learning some Xhosa, which is one of the eleven official languages here. It's one of the tribal languages and is spoken by many, along with English and Afrikaans. The x signifies a "click," which is really weird to hear. The langauge is full of clicks, as is Zulu. I'm pretty sure I'll never be able to click! (We just pronounce it "Koe-sah," without the click.)

Things are slowly starting to become natural to me, so if I think of anything else that I haven't realized, I'll add it. Still no internet at home, but we're working on it!

First blog ever.....I am not a blogger

Hi everyone!
I've been busy here and we still don't have internet in my house, so I doubt I'll get to this regularly! I haven't been able to post
any pictures yet either, but hopefully I will soon.

Cape Town is great! We've already been to so many museums and beaches and great
places--our first eight days were all orientation. These next few days
we'll spend visiting our internship sites, I'm working at a school called
Christel House (check out their website: www.christelhouse.org). Then we
begin classes on Thursday. I have three: Politics of South Africa, Global
Women's Studies, and a seminar to go with our internship. We've decided to
hold all three classes on Thursday, instead of Thursday and Friday, so
we'll have a nice three day weekend that we can hopefully use for trips.
Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday we work at our internships. So far, it
really has just felt like a vacation here, but I'm sure soon once we start
work and class it'll really hit me that I'm actually living here.
Believe it or not, I've actually drawn some parallels between ZA and
Haiti, despite how far away they are. I'm glad I have that experience to
help me adjust here. Two days ago we visited the townships, which are
informal settlements on the edge of the Cape, it's just rows and rows of
shacks. I think already having been to Haiti prepared me for seeing that
though, because I think I would have been shocked if I hadn't. Most of the
houses are just made of tin nailed together, and usually house an average
of 7 people. It's crazy here, the disparity between the wealthy and the
poor--just blocks away from these townships are mansions and really nice
properties with gated yards and BMWs. Very interesting to see.
I actually just got a couple pictures up on Facebook, if anyone can get to
that. I'll definitely update this more when I can! Hope to talk to you all
soon!