Impressions and Interpretations

As you may be able to tell from my previous posts -- they have been very descriptive and have had very little interpretive quality. This has been mostly on purpose because as I have mentioned before, I do not want to make hasty generalizations or interpretations about my experiences here. I have also not posted for a while. Partly because i'm busy with schoolwork, partly because my life is becoming more routine and less post-worthy, and party because I am taking time to really interpret all that I am experiencing here so that I can share it in a much more meaningful way than I have been able to thus far. I have grown so much in the past three months (yes, I have already been here that long, more than three months actually! :). When reading an email from my granny, she said that most everything at home had stayed about the same. I should have expected this, but when I thought about it and contrasted the "sameness" of home with the change that I have experienced and growth that I am still going through -- I am so glad that I am here and have had the opportunity to be here. I don't think I could have ever achieved this level of growth at home. More on all that later! In any case, thanks for bearing with me as I synthesize all that I am experiencing and allow myself time to interpret and share it!

Knysna

As I may have mentioned before, one of the women who interviewed me for the scholarship, Anne Matthews also knows some lovely Rotarians in Cape Town. Even before I got here, she emailed some people and got me well connected with Rotarians in Cape Town – in fact, the way that I got connected with the club that’s hosting me (Sea Point) is because of a contact she has down here – Rodney Mazinter and his lovely wife Mavis. They invited me for a long weekend in Knysna (you should google it – this place is beautiful). I thought I would be unable to go because of class commitments, but I was able to book a bus back to Cape Town and will only miss one class. Anyway, Rodney and Mavis were coming here as part of a tour of the UCT Dance Team (Mavis teaches Spanish dance at UCT). Two of the nights here we went to see them perform, they were quite good. We also explored Knysna and saw the beautiful coastline, the Knysna forest, the lagoon, and an elephant park.

We also went to an amazing Saturday morning market in the town next to Knysna. I found it strangely reminiscent of home. Browsing through the stalls of vendors selling everything from cheese to meat to vegetables and everything in between, I was serenaded by none other than Alan Jackson whose music was broadcast throughout the market.