"if you feel good, you do good"

 So, I believe I left off on Monday, when we were working on our ISP proposals. Tuesday was a rough day, considering we all had a late night the night before, but we had no lecture scheduled for the afternoon, so we got to go home at 2! I finished my assignment and then obviously headed straight to the beach before dinner, Generations, and bed before 9:30!

Erin made me "21" pancakes for my birthday breakfast!!!

Wednesday was definitely one of the most interesting birthdays of my life along with one of the best: not the way I had imagined my 21^st birthday playing out. We woke up and went to school as usual, except instead of normal class we got dropped off at University of KwaZulu-Natal for a body mapping activity!!! It was so much fun! I haven’t really had a chance to draw here, so getting to paint, draw, color, and get messy was a nice stress reliever and break from normal classes. We started with a large piece of paper and had a partner trace the outlines of our body onto it. We were then taken through different steps to reflect on our selves, our lives, our goals, and what means the most to us.

beginning of the body mapping process

hard at work

my final product!!! (I'm supposed to be running,
but its hard to pose on a narrow piece of paper.
i think you can get the general idea though...)

Afterwards we walked back to the SIT house. I stopped at Debonaires to get some pizza for lunch, and then we had a lecture on sanitation. I went from body mapping to talking about poop. We learned all about the different kind of toilets and improved pit toilets and how long it takes poop to dry… it was very interesting, but the lecturer was pretty entertaining and kept us laughing, so that was good! I also learned that the cheapest way to purify your water is to put it in an old coke bottle (or something similar) and leave it on the roof in the sun. The sun will kill all the yucky things in it, so all you have to do is shake it up and drink it! Or I guess you could refrigerate it first to make it cold. But that’s besides the point.

Then, after my day of body mapping and learning about poop, I went home and immediately went to the beach. My only complaint was that it was kind of cloudy, but who am I kidding, I really can’t complain at all because I was at the beach in South Africa body surfing and flipping in the waves on my 21^st birthday. I had to take a moment to remember that I was turning 21 and not 8. Also, yes I do actually mean flipping. Seth and I have a new favorite hobby, which is that when a big wave comes we plug our noses (very essential – I would also plug my ears if possible but I don’t have enough hands), and stick our feet into the air out of the water. The wave, if powerful enough then flips us upside down and all around until we pop right side up out of the water with huge smiles on our faces! Its so exhilarating!

Anyways, after that we showered and got ready to go out to dinner. I realized my jeans are very tight (I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to wear them). And then we walked down the street to a hotel with a Japanese restaurant downstairs! It was SOOO good. I got edamame and a deepfried tofu dish with teppanyaki-don for dinner. My goodness. Considering I haven’t had Japanese food in  the longest time, it was pretty spectacular. Also. This next sentence is more addressed to my grandparents, but for a split second I thought it would be a really good idea to make teppanyaki in my apartment, then realized that was, in actuality, a very bad idea and virtually impossible for two reasons: a) the size of my kitchen and quality of my stove (see picture below), and b)the availability of Japanese food/ingredients in this country.

part of my delicious dinner! YUM

My stove. No I am not kidding. I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.

After dinner we went back to the apartment. Erin made me delicious cupcakes and everyone sung happy birthday, and then my brother and his friend came and picked us up in a minibus taxi to take us to his house in Chesterville.

Singing happy birthday :)

Now, this is where things got interesting. All of the sudden we see police lights behind us. That in itself wasn’t concerning, we actually didn’t think anything of it at first. It wasn’t until they started yelling at us to pull over via the intercom that we realized they were after us! First of all we had a few too many people in the car than it was registered for (but that’s a common occurrence in this country. We didn’t know why we were pulled over though. So we were all kind of freaked out. The driver and my brother got back in the car and we started to drive to chesterville, but the cops followed us. Suspicious. They followed us the whole way to chesterville. Escort? It turns out the car wasn’t supposed the be on the road and the driver could have gotten arrested and we would have had to find our way home from the police station, but luckily that wasn’t how the night turned out. We made it safely to Lungelo’s house, where we kicked off my 21^st birthday party South African style!

Becky, Bhuwa, and Crazy Cara getting down

Thursday morning we slept in! by that I mean I stayed in bed until 9. We didn’t have any class, so we got to do whatever we wanted! I went to the beach for a little while in the morning, but it was cloudy and windy so I didn’t stay for too long. I came back up for lunch, and then at 2 we walked to the movie theater at the Suncoast Casino. We saw The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. (sorry guys, you can’t see it until May, although I guess you guys got to see The Hunger Games before us, soooo you actually get the better deal.) Anyways, it was SO good. So cute. So many old people. All star cast. All that jazz. I shed a few tears and we all really wanted to go to India by the end of it. Actually it was only about 2 minutes into the movie when we realized that.

After the movie I went back to the beach with Seth again. We met this interested Indian man in the water. He really liked my haircut. Weirdly enough he was the 4^th person to comment on it on my way from my room to the beach. Sorry. Off topic. SOOOO he asked us where we were from, we said America, so he brought up Martin Luther King! He asked if we knew of him, we answered yes, he asked us if we knew what his dream was. I said it was something to do with people of all different races coming together as equals and he flat out told me I was wrong, proceeding to tell us that his dream was for the children to rule. Interesting interpretation. He also gave us all sort of life advice and even offered to buy us dinner, because when he went abroad people helped him out! (when he found out I was part Japanese he was all excited about telling me how he went to japan when he was younger). We politely declined. He also went on a rant about how kids these days only play with guns and electronics, saying how no one plays badminton anymore. Shame. As he left with his two sons he said “How do you say it in America? Good-bye? Adios? Or I guess that’s Mexico.” Seth and I both just laughed and said “Yeah, its good-bye.”

It certainly was a fun birthday. I was so glad to spend it with all of my friends and my brothers. They all helped to make it such a great day. I’m also so glad I’ve had the opportunity to go on the trip and meet all of these people. I couldn’t have asked for much more! Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would go from body mapping, to a poop lecture, to the beach, to Japanese food, to a run in with the cops, to a braai in Chesterville all in one day, not to mention my 21^st birthday… and not to mention in SOUTH AFRICA! Man, do I love this country.