Weekend, Finally

If I’d ever move to Cape Town, I’d go live in Llandudno. I’ll explain later.

Tuesday I worked out my time-table. Time-tables here are odd; they’re for ten days, so one Monday you have different subjects than the next. The following Monday you have the same as on the first Monday, though. Anyway, the subjects I’m taking here are Maths, English, Science, Biology and French. I’ve got 1-3 frees each day to do my own homework. During Maths and Biology I also do my own work. The annoying thing is that we’ve got each subject every day.

Anyway, I signed up for “JUMP,” that’s basically teaching Maths to young Afrikaans (I think) children, or at least “underprivileged” children. I’m starting Tuesday, well, we have a lesson about how to teach Maths to children then. The actual teaching starts the Tuesday after that.

Last Tuesday I went to Cavendish again, this time with Gail, to buy shoes. I didn’t have any for the Met yet. I also tried to get my laptop connected to the internet, but it doesn’t work. Up until now I’ve had to use other people’s computers to get access to the internet. Also, here the internet is extremely slow. It’s really starting to get on my nerves…

Thursday I started “lifesaving” together with Kirsten and Katherine. Most people (including me) thought it would just be having fun in the school’s swimming pool, while learning how to drag someone out of the water. Wrong. We started with swimming 400 metres in eight minutes. No one managed to finish in time. That’s when the trainers decided that we needed to do some serious work. It was exhausting! Especially after half dying that day because of the heat (38 degrees!)…

Something else I noticed Thursday: Many girls at Herschel have a “long lost twin” walking around at home. It’s really weird how similar some of them look to some people at home…

By the way, Monday isn’t the only day there’s assembly. There’s also assembly on Friday, only this one’s led by the prefects. In the afternoon I went to Cavendish again. I do seem to spend a lot of time there. This time I went there with Kirsten, Kath, Pascale (who went to America) and Megan (one of the American exchange girls). We split up quite quickly, though. Kirs, Kath and I went to the MacDonalds. I was pleasantly shocked to find that they have Oreo (!!!) McFlurries there… Delicious!

After Cavendish I went out for an early dinner with the Thompsons in Hout Bay. On the way there, Murray (Kath’s dad) decided to drive through Llandudno. Seriously, the beach and the houses there are absolutely stunning! Anyway, when we were at the restaurant, which was at the harbour, we spotted a seal. Shame I’d left my glasses in the car, though. I could only see a vague grey blur…

After dinner we went back to Herschel, to watch a show by someone named Allen Committee. Or at least, that’s what his name sounds like, I might have got the spelling wrong. Anyway he’s a stand-up-comedian. He was brilliant! At one point he asked if there were any foreigners around. I surprised myself by actually raising my hand. What was really funny was that when I told him I was Dutch he started talking Afrikaans to me. It’s really weird to hear people speak Afrikaans, because it’s so easy to understand and yet so completely different from Dutch. Anyway, he said things to the “Hollandse meisje” sporadically during the show. Many of the things he said to me made the crowd laugh, but when he spoke Afrikaans half of the crowd didn’t, though, because they could hardly understand him. The funniest part of the whole show was when he asked this guy in the front what his name was: Ed. However, Ed had a very low voice, so Allen Committee started walking around on the stage as if he were a Neanderthal, grunting “Ed, Ed! ED!” He repeated this a few times throughout the show. It was really funny.

Saturday was the big day everyone had been looking forward to; the J&B Met. First Ash did my make-up (she really needs to teach me to do it myself) and then we went to Bronwyn’s house, to get dressed and do our hair and stuff. One of the girls (ok, I’m getting really annoyed about my inability to learn names) did my hair for me. She managed to make curls into it by using a hair straightener… It looked pretty good. Then we managed to fit nine of us plus Bronwyn’s mum into one car (and some more people in another car) and we drove to the Met. The Met is a big horserace, and it’s apparently one of THE social events of the year. It’s for eighteen and up, though… We were kind of scared that we wouldn’t get in, because we’d heard that they were very strict, but it turned out to be very easy. We just took one of the side gates. Only at the main gate did they really check age.

The Met is extremely overrated. It was nice, yes, but it’s far from as special as everyone makes it out to be. I heard more people say that. I think everyone talked so highly about it, because none of the people I’d talked to had actually been there before (and all were under eighteen). It was pretty funny to see what people wore, though. The dress code was black/white and many people really do anything to stand out. I’ve seen some beautiful outfits, but also really weird ones. There was for example this one guy dressed like a zebra and someone else wore bright pink hot pants with pink fishnet stockings and a really weird wig (this was also a guy, by the way). I also met many of the boys from Bishop’s, but once again, I don’t remember names…

At the Met, this one guy, Jason, invited many people (including Ash and via her, me) to his house for a party that evening, so after the Met we went to Bronwyn’s house again and around nine we were off to Jason’s (don’t ask me to pick him out of a crowd, though, I’ve really no idea who he is). This time it was eleven people plus Bron’s mum in the car. I met even more people there. Some remembered me as the “Hollandse meisje” from Friday. What was weird, was that at one point, when I was talking to Bron, this one guy came up to hug me goodbye (everyone hugs each other all the time here). It took me a good ten minutes before I remembered talking to him earlier that evening… Anyway, when Bron had to go home I sat down with Ash, Kyle and Lloyd (yay! Someone whose name I remember!). Lloyd is really nice and pretty damn funny, so it was nice talking to him. It was odd, though, because when I went over to them there were some twenty people still there, but when I turned around at one point there were only five others left. We left there around 12:15, I think. I had fun there, but according to most people I talked to it was really small and boring compared to most other house parties… Of course, that got me curious to the other parties.

Sunday I went to Smitswinkel Bay, together with Kirsten and Kath’s mother and grandmother. Smitswinkel Bay is impossible to find if you don’t know where to go. You can’t get there by car, so at one point we had to park the car at one of those parking spaces along the road, which are there for tourists to admire the view. Nothing there leads you to think that there are houses and one of the most beautiful bays in the world only 200 metres down. Even the path down is hard to find. Anyway, I took a lot of pictures. It was absolutely stunning there. There are about 25 houses in the bay. Apparently the plots of land were sold in 1916 and Kath’s great-grandfather bought one of those plots. The people who bought those plots had to build the houses themselves, so no stone was used. The houses are completely built of wood, because stone is just too hard to get down along the path. There’s also no electricity there, but that’s part of the charm.

The water in the bay is freezing cold! However, if you’ve been in it for a while it’s really nice. Kirs and I must have spent a good fifteen minutes in the water. The water is really clear. There’s no litter anywhere. Smitswinkel Bay is extremely beautiful, and yet very little people know of its existence. We also watched the few people there haul a large batch of yellowtails (a kind of fish) up onto the land. What was really sweet and yet really cruel was that there was this little girl getting seawater with a bucket and then pouring the water over some of the fish lying a bit to the side, unintentially she made the fish’s death take even longer, though.

Anyway, the fishing there is all done by hand. One man stands on top of one of the mountains, spotting fish. When he sees a large school of fish, he blows on a whistle. Then two men row onto the sea with a large net and catch as many fish as possible. Then everyone on the beach helps to haul the fish op onto the land, even the little children. Then the fish die, while everyone’s cooling off in the sea. Eventually, when all fish are dead, they are loaded into the small boat and then rowed to a ship, which takes the fish to wherever they go.

We lunched there and then Kirs and I slept for a bit on the beach. After that we drove back to Kath’s house. On the way there I saw many roads with names like “Ou Kaapseweg” and “Lekkerwater Weg.” It was really funny to see those nameplates.

Anyway, I’m exhausted. Last week was really busy and while I have to get up at 6:30 here instead of 7:30 like at home, I don’t go to bed an hour earlier, so I’m having some trouble with lack of sleep.


Love,

Ninks (as they call me here)