pikkewyn

That means penguin. Okay this week...Well on Sunday I made myself some rice with corn and tomatoes and carrots and cheese of some sort. But anyway we had 2 cans of corn open in the fridge and so I took one out and put a scoop in the skillet but the scoop was like corn in gel and so I was like this doesn’t look right so I threw the rest of it away and used the other can. I will add right now that I didn’t remove the corn from the pan. So anyway in the middle of that night I threw up multiple times and didn’t get very much sleep. So I decided to skip classes that day, Monday, because I wasn't feeling so well and on Tuesday I had an exam and a prac which attendance is required. So all of Monday I spent in my bed reading and doing stuff on my computer. So that was a pretty stinky start to the week but that is okay. Tuesday I had my prac and then worked on a group project for my biodiversity class. That night I had my wine course exam, which was pretty difficult. The professor of the course had told us that things that weren’t going to be on it which turned out to be on the exam and things just to skim through which actually required memorization so that was pretty stinky. Wednesday was an ordinary day. Thursday I only had one class, which is amazing. After that class I went for a hike/walk around the base of Stellenbosch Mountain. Here are some pictures that I took.









Friday night I stayed in and watched some TV on the computer with my roommates. Saturday morning I went to Kayamandi and did a trash clean up with some peer educators, international students and a bunch of the youth in Kayamandi. If you guys think that you have done a trash clean up you have done no such thing. It is crazy I picked up bones and condoms and trash that had been there for months. The smell at some points was very intense. The youth though, kids teenagers were amazing they were all so kind and really want to make Kayamandi a cleaner place. It gives me hope that things will change in Kayamandi. That night I went over to Rita's where we baked brownies for our Afrikaans teacher because it was her birthday on Monday. I also helped them braai and Katy brought me over a slice of rum cake, which was delicious. I hung out over there for a while then Katy and I went to a bar/restaurant where we watched the first half of the rugby world cup semi finals between England and France. England won the game. Then I came home talked with Katy for a while and went to bed. Today, Sunday, I went to Cape Town to Robben Island, which was very interesting. This is where criminals and a bunch of political criminals were held during apartheid. Also it is a place where they put anyone who they believed to be infected with leprosy. Anyway we learned some about the history saw some penguins and all in all it was very interesting although I got a little seasick on the boat, which was surprising because usually I don’t.

on the boat ride over

at the enterance

i am handcuffed



Nelsons Mandela's court yard

Nelson Mandela's cell







After that we went to Boulders Beach where there is a penguin colony. This was kind of disappointing. There were penguins in the shrubs on the way to the beach but on the beach there weren’t any. You had to pay extra to go to the penguin-viewing place, which is where you can see them on the rocks. But that is okay I just didn’t get to hear them. Here are some pictures from that:









On thee way back we passed khayletisha, which is the oldest township in the western cape. Oh my goodness it was so huge it went on forever like it was awful. I couldn’t believe it. It was as far as the eye could see it was so sad.

Okay you may want to end here if you get queasy over dead stuff. If you do then I hope all is well and cheers, you aren’t missing anything. This is your warning.




Okay, so anyway. On the back we were driving past the township and then cars began slowing down and we were like what is going on then they were swerving towards the side of the road as if avoiding something. It was a dead body, of a person! A car was next to it with its window smashed. Now I don’t know what happened but the person I think it was a woman (I was right beside it like on the side of the car that drove right past the body) there was a wrap on her head and she had a white shirt and red bottoms. Anyway there was clearly a hole where there was white puss/matter coming out of with a blood trail running down the top of her head and a pool of it on the pavement. The person was sprawled on the pavement. It looked as though a small rock was stuck in the head where the wound was. This is what we speculated what happened. So in South Africa people do this thing called "smash and grab" where if you are stopped (this is where it doesn’t make sense because the car was clearly on the road and not by a stop sign) someone will smash the windshield and either grab for a purse or something valuable in the car or they will try and hijack the car. I don’t want you guys to worry about me this was the first time I had heard about it. But anyway is we think what happened is the wife was sitting on the side where this happened and the dead person did this and wither tried to take something or tried to harass the wife and the husband pulled the gun out and shot the dead person in the head. So I am not sure if this is correct but I could not get this image out of my head for the longest time it was and still is crazy. So that was the ending of that excursion. I hope that your weeks are going much better than the people involved in that.

Please don’t worry about me.

Have a good rest of the week.

Cheers