Cell Phones and Parasols

Hi all you lazy South Africans!

When are you going to start working and saying goodbye to all the holidays?

GOOD NEWS! I finally have a cell ph connection here! Isn't this great.......? Here, you can choose the last 4 digits of your cell ph number!

I had another eventful weekend. I suppose that's going to be the norm here. I had started feeling lonely and weepy last week. What didn't help, I suppose, was the fact that they were writing mid-term exams at high school last week, so I had a lot of free time in which to get bored and sad. This week, the middle school is writing exams. At least, I can use the time to prepare for the English camp coming up in June.

On Friday, after the exams at high school, the teachers had another team-building activity: Volleyball this time. I was extremely bored by this time and just wanted to go home. It gets a bit lonely once the novelty's worn off. The teachers who are usually confident enough to talk to me were all playing volleyball, and so basically I was sitting on my own. Quite different to the usual amount of attention and chatter going on. Basically, I guess I started feeling sorry for myself :(

That Fri night, my big-mouthed American colleague, Geoff, stopped by for a chat and ended up leaving at 01:30. This time, I received him and what he had to say with better grace.

Sat morning, I was up very early, vacuuming etc to get the place ready for my next weekend guest. Not all of you will know about Ernest, but anyway...he's a Capetonian who came over here in October last year. Dianne had met him through work, and told me about his leaving for Korea. She put us in contact with one another and he has been such a valuable source of knowledge and advice during my preparations prior to leaving SA. Anyway, so we finally arranged to meet. Had lunch at that Pakistani/Indian restaurant, and lo and behold, ended up meeting a bunch of Capetonians who were dining at the same place. We all miss our roti and curry and breyani, etc! One of the guys was a very vocal loud and proud Klora from Parow. Did he have us in stiches! True Cape Town in Korea...Cape Flats swear words and all! Need I say more?

Oh yes, and I finally own a parasol! A floral one, nogal! LOL!

And I got stalked! An elderly Korean man followed me, asked where I was from, asked me to go on a date with him, kept saying he 'loves' me. I walked away from him, only to discover 5 min later, that he was still following me, and in front of the old Korean ladies, continued propositioning me. The only way I eventually got away, was to jump in the nearest taxi. Then, at the Indian supermarket, guess what I found? Custard! And Lipton black tea. They have lentils, etc, so can make dahl, breyani, etc. And they even have dhania! (Sorry to get so domesticated on you....as fellow Capetonians, if you were here, you'd understand.) Yes, again, the Indian and Pakistani men were all smiles and winking eyes at me. On the bus back to Gunwi, a Pakistani man sat down next to me, and tried to enagage me in conversation. Thankfully, his command of English is very limited, so I was able to 'escape' most of the time.

So, in a nutshell, that was my weekend. It could have been a nice long weekend since tomorrow is a public holiday, and today is a short working day due to exams. But our school decided to start exams today. Naturally, the students and teachers weren't too happy about that! Were it not for school today, I would have gone to an International Film Festival in a neighbouring province. But the time it takes to travel there and back just for one day...it's not worth it. So I opted for a quiet day in the country, i.e. stay at home and vegetate!

Ciao for now, folks... stay in touch. Your emails keep me going....

Lots of love,

Andrea