Halfway

This week has been busy. As in, we did something (other than school) every day.
Saturday/Sunday: Fruit farm in Ceres
Monday: Kirstenbosch
Tuesday: Dinner at Lily’s
Wednesday: Robben Island
Thursday: Dinner at Adele’s
Friday: Penguins and Kristina’s birthday
Saturday: House party and Cupid Evening After party

We spent last weekend at Kath’s aunt’s farm in Ceres. Ceres is about one and a half hour driving from Cape Town. We went there on Saturday morning. We took quite a long time to get there, because we stopped for lunch halfway through and we hung around the restaurant we went to for a while.

The farm is absolutely fantastic! It is huge, so of course we explored everything using the four-wheeler/quad. The house is also beautiful. There is the main house, but we didn’t spend much time there. Then there’s a small round building which is basically just a bedroom, but it’s absolutely stunning. The place where we spent the night was a bit bigger. It apparently was a study first, but it had been converted to a guesthouse. When you step inside you’re in a huge room, with six beds in the back, a sofa, some huge chairs, and of course a flat screen with many DVD’s. Next to that is another room with the biggest pool table I’ve ever seen and one other improvised bed (we couldn’t let Kyle sleep in the same room as the girls, of course). We stayed in that building with seven people: Ashleigh, Kyle, Katherine, Kirsten, Alexandra (Kath’s cousin), Jamie (a friend of Aly’s), and me of course.

After riding around on the quad we just relaxed in the Jacuzzi for a bit. Aly had the wonderful idea to put bubbles in. She emptied practically the whole bottle. There weren’t much bubbles when we got out for dinner (a braai of course), but when someone turned around there was a layer of bubbles of about half a meter high! Apparently Kath went back to the Jacuzzi in the middle of the night together with Aly, and they say that the bubbles were about two metres high then. I find that a bit hard to believe…

Monday we went to Kirstenbosch (“the most beautiful garden in South-Africa”). It’s at the foot of Table Mountain, but high enough to have a beautiful view over Cape Town. It’s also right next to Bishopscourt, so I could see “my” house from there.

Debbie (Lily’s mother) had invited us (Kirsten and me) over for dinner on Tuesday. Lily’s house is a bit smaller than those of Ash and Kath, but if you ask me it’s the most beautiful one of the three.

Wednesday: Robben Island. We got to miss school for it. We went with the same group as the one we went to Kayelitsha with. We first went to the Waterfront, from where we took a boat to Robben Island. There we were given a tour around the island and after that we got one through the prison. The tour guide in the prison was an ex-prisoner himself. He spoke English, but because of his accent I could barely understand him…

In one hall there was a long row of cells, but only one cell had original furniture in it (the others were empty), so I took two photos of that cell. In another hall there was a photo in each cell of the prisoner who it had belonged to. There were stories of specific events in the prisoners’ time in the prison hanging on the walls. You could also push a button in each cell to here a recorded story, told by the prisoners themselves.

In the end we thought we hadn’t seen Nelson Mandela’s cell! I was confused about that. I mean, how can you go on a tour through the prison on Robben Island and not get to see Mandela’s cell? Later it turned out that his cell was the one with furniture in it. We just didn’t hear the tour guide when he told us, or we couldn’t understand him because of his accent…

The tour was over around 12.00, so Kirsten, Sandra, Megan, Caroline and I went looking for a restaurant to have lunch, while all the others went home. Eventually we decided to go to Nino’s. They have the most wonderful paninis there, but there smoothies… They barely taste like fruit! It’s all artificial…

After that Caroline, Kirsten and I went to the shopping mall. Caroline needed chocolate and Kirsten and I went to YDE. YDE has become my favourite clothing shop here. South African clothes are already cheap for us Europeans, but YDE is having a sale. Everything 50% off!

Then we went to the craft market, because that’s where Megan and Sandra were, and we would get picked up there. I need to get back to the craft market before I leave, because they really have every handmade African item you could think of!

Anyway, in the evening we just had a small braai at home. Gail had bought steak, but I don’t really like steak, so I just kept to the sausages (chicken) and chicken saté. Gavin’s reaction: “Are you a vegetarian then?” And he has seen me eat meat! Chicken all the time, though. Gail loves chicken. Apparently people here have the strange notion that if you eat no meat, but you do eat chicken, you’re still a vegetarian, and that a vegetarian who doesn’t eat chicken immediately doesn’t eat fish either… If you ask me, you’re no vegetarian if you eat chicken. I mean chicken is still meat…

I had Lifesaving again on Thursday. We learned how to save someone who is unconscious. Apparently I did extremely well, because the trainer said that if we’d get grades for this, I would have gotten a 100%! So then I had to demonstrate in front of everyone…

That evening I went along with the Thompsons for dinner at Adele’s (Kath’s grandmother). Adele apparently really liked us that Sunday at Smitswinkel.

Friday we didn’t go to school either. Gail and Debbie took us to Boulders to see the penguins. It rained though… Originally we were supposed to go to Cape of Good Hope as well, but because of the weather and the opening of parliament that day we didn’t. We did have lunch in Simon’s town and we went to Chapman’s peak afterwards, which was nice.

We then met up with Ashleigh and Nicole in Cavendish. I originally wanted to buy the newest Fall Out Boy CD, but as they didn’t have it anywhere I ended up buying three other CD’s…

In the evening we went out for dinner for Kristina’s seventeenth birthday. We went to an Italian restaurant, and they actually had Italian names for some of the pizzas! The pizza delivery service here knows only one real Italian pizza here: The Marguerita… I decided to order a pizza Calzone. It was funny to see the surprised faces of some of the girls when they saw a pizza that was folded dubbel.

Saturday I stroked a cheetah! I have pictures as proof! It was fun to do. I’ve been to Stellenbosch for lunch and in the evening we went to a house party at Vicky’s. I have no idea who Vicky is though. There must have been some 200 people there. Also, when I didn’t think houses could come any bigger than Katherine’s… Vicky’s is about twice the size. If you got lost in there you probably wouldn’t be able to find your way out again.

We decided to go to the Cupid Evening after party. Biiiiiiiig mistake. It was at a hired venue, somewhere downtown. We had tickets, but we had trouble getting in, because it was full. Apparently the place had been triple booked! There were two eighteen parties besides the after party… So we were standing outside, in the freezing rain, waiting to get in. We were quite happy when we eventually managed to get inside. Only, inside it was even worse. There was absolutely no space to move at all, because it was so packed. We left after five minutes. That meant waiting in the rain again for Ashleigh’s parents.

Today we went to another braai. It was a family reunion (don’t ask for their last name, I know how to pronounce it, but I’d probably get the spelling completely wrong). Only the Commins’s aren’t related to them… They are really close friends though. They have two sons: Ryan and Tim. Ryan is apparently extremely good at tennis and Tim’s quite good as well, and so are Ash, Stuart and Kyle (he came along with us)… So the five of them were playing tennis and I was sitting next to the tennis court (in the garden, of course) watching them playing a very good game of tennis… I didn’t mind being the only one who’s bad at tennis. I just talked to either Ash or Ryan, when one of them wasn’t playing (they played doubles).

So that’s what I’ve been doing this week.


Love,

Nienke