Marguerite Is My Name in French!

Alright, so I admit it, I’ve been a little scared to jump on this blog bandwagon, so I apologize to all of you would-be loyal fans of my writing for putting off on putting up my very own post. But, here I am world. Love me. Plus I figure it must be time to hear from someone other than Allie. Plus right now I am alone in Cocoa Wah-wee-woo-wah-wahoodle (our totes fave café with free internet and terrible coffee) uploading pictures from Stellenbosch (go look on facebook, they are finally there!) so I need to feel somewhat connected to other people. Through blogging. And the impersonal internet community. That facebook play really got me thinking. Anyway! I will start with last night. We had our 3^rd (4^th? who knows) class with Sibs, the Trinity professor, which we lovingly call Oprah’s Book Club. Last night was a real step down from the week previous, which included 3 2-litre jugs of margaritas and a lot of laughter. Instead, we sat in our living room at Devonshire and actually discussed readings we had done for the week. I’m pretty sure we were being punished for getting so drunk every other class (and maybe because Emily spilled wine on her…) Anyway, we had all read books on theories or historical studies on apartheid and the rise of Afrikaner ethnocentrism, and it was interesting to compare racism and policy in South Africa with that in America prior to the Civil Rights movement. It was also interesting and wonderful to eat the pasta puttanesca that Mama Claire had made for us, it quickly became her specialty the first time she made it and we beg her for it all the time. Sous chef just might be her dream job of the week. (Sibs told her hotel management was just not worthy, and crushed her dream job of 3 days last week.) After class was over we went down to our favorite spot in Rondebosch, the video store, and picked up Cold Mountain which we were craving pretty hardcore. It was tragic and beautiful and I love love love it…and so did all the roomies last night, I think we must be feeling pretty romantically deprived. Oh except for the lurky men sitting outside the video store who called us beautiful women…or something that kind of meant that. I just love nighttime on Main Road! But we carry our Viper Spray everywhere and I’ve been practicing tactics like the chi-slice (which actually sounds like a delicious snack…) so we’re pretty confident about defending ourselves from now on. Plus, Claire and Whitney have become sort of freakishly dedicated to Bikram yoga. Allie and I have until Saturday to use the rest of the 5 classes that we paid for…somehow we didn’t get so caught up in the joy of group sweating. But we are resolved to hike Table Mountain again, maybe lots of times! I wish I had pictures, it was such a beautiful view, but we had been told muggers like to hide out on the mountain so unfortunately didn’t take a camera along. And now, I am about to run off to African dance, my exercise of choice here. Allie and I freaking love it. We even ran into “Teach” (he prefers it to his name, Maxwell Xholani Rani) last Thursday night on Long Street – and he told us about how he usually ducks into hiding when he sees students outside of class. So I’m taking that as a good sign for us doing well in his class. Allie and I also like to see how the moves we learn in class can be applied to contemporary music, which we often show off in public when we go out.

Alright, so I guess this was not the best debut blog it could have been, but Allie pretty much covered all of our activities so far. I just needed to take this step. Thank you for coming along with me. I promise to write again after our “plastics research” this Thursday night (my mean girls will understand)…we are returning to Tiger Tiger (rawr!), but this time, per Jill’s suggestion, we are first dressing ourselves up in costume, in Mr. Price’s finest “going out” dresses and heels. We will fit in much better than last time when I wore a sundress and my canvas flats. Goldfish, apparently the premiere band in South Africa (we had planned to see them on Sunday at the Kirstenbosch concert but they were sold out!) is playing at the club so we’ll see how it goes. 

The rest is still unwritten. (A special Hills shout-out to you, Katie, you are, I am pretty sure, our one avid reader.)