School starts this week! It’s been a hilarious process, we tried to register for classes a couple days ago and it took about 4 hours of our time and we accomplished nothing. My school, UKZN, is a very good school but things aren’t quite as efficient and accessible as I’m used to in the U.S. Registration is all on paper, and we need signatures from the head of the department for each class we want to take. So the day of registration, we all gathered in a room, chose our classes and wrote them down. As easy as this sounds, it was so stressful. Credits are different, and its not easy to convert UKZN credits into Miami credits. Our next step was to go to each department, I needed Psychology and History, and obtain a signature. Not knowing my way around the campus made this step pretty difficult. Luckily for me I got both signatures I needed, but a lot of the other head of departments were “gone” for the day (funny that they chose registration week to leave) so a bunch of the other international kids didn’t get the signatures they needed. So these first steps took about 3 hours, but we finally got everything we needed and the last step was the have the Dean sign our paper. Get this—the Dean was out of the office. So everything we did that whole day didn’t count because the Dean was gone. So I start class tomorrow without being registered! It’s pretty comical to me, I kind of enjoy how different the educational system is so far. In America, everything is almost too efficient, but here everyone and everything is a little more laid back, less stressful.
Last night, Sunday, it was our friend Melanie’s birthday and it was a blast! We went to a place called Joe Cool’s, this restaurant turned bar at 7 pm right on the ocean, such a sweet venue. It was so much fun because our entire group of foreign exchange students came! All 20 of us, plus our good friends Tubs, Lunga, Thando, and Clarence. We took up the entire dance floor! Sunday nights are big nights here, its pretty funny. It’s so interesting to see all the different crowds out at different places. I talked about “Cool Runnings”, the crowd was a lot more laid back, but at “Joe Cool’s” it was such a funny scene! It’s pretty popular to have a faux-hawk going on in a lot of guys, and this is exactly the kind of crowd that was at this place. All the guys were dressed with Ed Hardy shirts, greased mohawks, and dressy shoes. I snuck a picture so I’ll upload it to this post! And the girls that were paired with these guys looked pretty hilarious, ratty looking straight hair with the shortest dress you’ve ever seen, showing as much cleavage as possible. Another fun thing about this place was the outside part. There was the bar/dance floor, then a porch area outside. We hung out on the porch when we were tired of dancing and we looked out by the ocean and saw a group of little boys dancing their ass off!! I kid you not these kids could show up anyone from any dance movie ever. I took a video I’ll upload onto facebook because my words wouldn’t do it justice. These kids could moonwalk better then Michael Jackson. I was sitting with Clarence (Tubs’ friend) and he just said to us “Welcome to Africa!” Made me smile pretty wide. My favorite part of the night was when the DJ played the World Cup song, by Shakira. Every single person you’re around goes crazy when that song is played, it is an absolute blast. “This time for Africa!” Ah, such a good one. I don’t think I’ve had more fun dancing to a song in my entire life. It feels so good to be here after the Cup, every South African has such pride knowing their country hosted the biggest sporting event. Thando was explaining how it felt to watch SA score their first goal, he was out at a bar and everyone’s glasses dropped to the floor and the bar erupted with screams. Part of me would have loved to be here for that, but it feels pretty amazing being here in the aftermath of it all, such pride and accomplishment is felt for this country. The Durban stadium is outstanding! Liz and I watched a club rugby match the other day right next to it!! So spectacular.
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