So real life continues after spring break which felt like it’s own abroad experience. As much as I miss galavanting around Botswana and sleeping in tents every night, having some normal time back in CT has been really nice.
On Tuesday night, we went to dinner to celebrate Alyssa’s birthday. Idk if you’re an avid reader of my blog Alyssa but if you’re seeing this Happy Heckin late Birthday! It was great but things got kinda awkward cuz first we ordered nachos to share and the chips used in the nachos were legit Doritos which I know sounds amazing but idk sometimes you just want a normal chip uk? And then a bunch of us ordered this mushroom pasta which is literally all I eat here and I’m not mad about it but then we got real bad food envy about this pesto pasta Amanda and Jen got. And then the waitress accused Jen of lying about her order. And then I was talking to Alyssa and asked what dessert sounded good to her and she said she was in the mood for chocolate. So then when Alyssa was in the bathroom and we were trying to order her a dessert I asked the waitress which was most chocolatey and then Alicia shouted “Hannah it’s not for you!!!” not knowing that I was asking cuz Alyssa wanted chocolate. The bar for my behavior is literally on the floor. Oh well!
Something new I’ve been doing for a class project is meditating every day. Turns out I’m really awful at it. My mind is like a 5 year old boy I’ll be like NO STOP THINKING THIS THOUGHT and then it’ll be like WATCH THIS IMMA THINK IT 50X HARDER NOW!
Shart I legit think the kid sitting next to me in the library just got up and moved cuz I started eating almonds. This library is very strict about eating which is very different from Howie T where people will literally bring entire meals to last them the whole day. Just another thing I hate about UCT!
Thursday I went to Baphumelele (the orphanage I volunteer at) and an older kid put his arm around me and said “you’re my dwarf” which was real sweet of him. I don’t think I’ve ever had a conversation with a tween boy that didn’t involve him making a comment about how he’s taller than me. Well guess WHAT lil dudes it’s not that hard to be taller than me!
OH I FORGOT Wednesday was one of the best nights I’ve had here so far. Our RA slash CIEE organized an activity for our floor called “Food Jam”. You know those places like painting with a twist where you go with a group of friends and people help you paint something really good and you drink the whole time. Food Jams is basically like that but with cooking. We got split into teams and each team had their own dishes that they made from recipes and ingredients that the Food Jam people had laid out for us. They play music and people get SHWASTED and it’s a time. Amanda, Zoe and I were team Magic Mushrooms aka the most involved dish ever, we made pasta from SCRATCH like WHAT and made a veggie/tomato sauce, a mushroom cream sauce, and meatballs. Here’s the thing Amanda and Zoe I love you but I was def the backbone of the team and was very much running around between the pasta and sauces like I was in an episode of Chopped. It really did turn out beautiful and from that moment on I have been a little too confident in my cooking abilities. The mushroom sauce was a total crowd pleaser lemme tell you. As a result of my focus on our food, I did not have time to get very drunk. This is contrary to popular belief because I did post a questionable snapchat story where people assumed I was forked up but lemme tell you sometimes I get drunk by osmosis from the people around me and I think that’s what happened cuz I maybe had 5 sips of wine.
So then Friday night I was like YO LET’S MAKE THE MUSHROOM PASTA AGAIN cuz I remembered the recipe and it was sooooo delish and we each only got to eat a tiny bit cuz uk small portions n stuff. And Jen and Rebecca and Rachel were like heck yes and then I got in a big cooking mood and really started channeling my inner Bobby Flay. We made a really nice Shabbat dinner together including: garlic bread, mushroom pasta, soy chicken fingers, brussels sprouts with yummy sauce, hummus and veggies, chips and guac, and sweet cooked carrots, and tiramisu for dessert. It was our most successful Shabbat dinner yet and on a BUDGET too! We ate in the common room and lit candles and talked about life and I once again was like dang I love my life and my friends here tooooooo heckin much.
I watched a weird movie on Netflix that night called 6 Balloons. It’s with Dave Franco and Abbi Jacobson from Broad City but it’s like a serious drug addiction movie which was weird to see Abbi in but it was good I think?
Saturday was pretty buring, I went with Liv to do work at my fav place Starlings and we saw like all of CIEE. That’s when you know it’s bad - when all of CIEE is doing work on a Saturday morning. I had a chai latte there that I can’t stop thinking about.
Then everyone was going out at night and they were like HANNAH COME OUT YOU NEVER COME OUT and i was like hell yeah I never come out and I am so happy about that so I stayed in and facetimed with my sweetie little Rachel whom I love. I was missing Rachel especially then because I really wanted to see the new John Krasinski horror movie but my friends here aren’t really into horror movies and I knew Rachel would’ve seen it with me.
Sunday murning I ate hella eggs and toast with Jen who really normalizes and shares my love for eggs and toast and I love that about her, and then we went to Vida to do work. But unfortunately I spent less time doing work and more time watching old videos from my CIT year because I think it’s crazy that I’m a CIT counselor this summer when I remember my own CIT year sooo well like it was yesterday. Ok I’m just gonna say it I can’t stop thinking about camp and it’s really heckin annoying because I just wanna be present in my time here but then the staff facebook group is POPPIN and my only form of entertainment and I’m seeing posts from all these people I love and I just can’t wait ok!!
Then I did a spontaneous thing and was like yeah I have a lot of work to do but I’m gonna do a hike because I wanna start out my week positively and wow I sureee did do that with the hike. It was probably my favorite hike I’ve done here (ok fine I’ve only done like 3 hikes but still), it wasn’t too too hard but also did wind me and the destination was this beautiful cave called Elephant’s Eye. At some point we took a pic and I looked at it and was like lol I look like an oompa loompa and then Jen was like “haha you’re such a stubby human” and I was like wow thank you jen that is so kind and then to try to make things better she said “you’re like a corgi!” Moral of the story is Jen is not good at digging herself out of bad situations. We brought food and sat in the cave by ourselves just taking in our surroundings. It was a different view than ones we had seen before on Lion’s Head and Table Mountain, which was really cool. It was remote and not crowded and whenever we did see people, they were with dogs and there’s really nothing better than that. It was just pretty and a beautiful day and perfect idk I love it here!
I have a problem where I’m obsessed with soups from Woolworths and feel compelled to buy one every single time I go in there and Sunday was no different. Curiosity really killed the cat aka me and I ended up buying SWEET POTATO AND ORANGE soup like lmk. It was gross and I was sad cuz that’s what I had bought for dinner.
Oh boy. I’m not sure I’m ready to write this next part yet but I’m going to attempt. Anyone who knows me well knows that my OG and forever and always celeb crush is John Krasinski. Like in 8th grade my dad photoshopped him into a picture with me for my birthday. And I’ve obviously really missed him since the Office so when I heard he was making this new movie The Quiet Place I was like ooh ok John let’s see what you got! And I really didn’t expect it to get such good reviews but it got 95% on rotten tomatoes like what???? AND it starred him and his wife Emily Blunt and i lurrrve them as a couple so yeah I needed to see it. I convinced Nicole to see it with me so we headed out to see it Sunday night.
I.Can’t.Even. Favorite movie I’ve seen in a long long time and you know I watch a lot of movies. It’s hard to say a lot without giving spoilers but it’s like a horror movie and a love story and a moving family story and everyone has so much personality but doesn’t even talk in it and MY BOY JOHN IS LOOKING BETTER THAN EVER AND HIS CHEMISTRY WITH EMILY IS PALPABLE AND HE DIRECTED AND WROTE AND STARRED IN IT LIKE TRIPLE THREAT WHOOOOO??? Nicole and i were squeezing each other’s hands literally ⅔ of the time like I had to take breaks because my hand hurt and then at some point she had to physically hold me while I cried it was the scariest and best acted and most moving movie I’ve seen in so long EVERYONE GO SEE THIS MOVIE I CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT IT AND DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT OK ALSO JOHN SAYS HE WROTE IT AS A LOVE LETTER TO HIS KIDS AND ALSO HE PUT HIS NAME AAAAFTER EMILY’S IN THE CREDITS LIKE GET YOU A HECKIN MANS I HAVE NO WORDS EXCEPT I ACTUALLY HAVE A LOT OF WORDS SO MANY WORDS SUCH GREAT WORDS. The end of the movie prompted this reaction photo which pretty much sums it all up.
I just wanna stress again how bad I am at not napping. That’s all.
Last night I went for ice cream with Jen and Alicia and it was the best ice cream I’ve had here. I had a flavor called burnt white chocolate and also had a lot of Alicia’s “lemon lime basil” sorbet which was wild. Sometimes it’s ok to go get ice cream instead of doing work.
This week was hard, I had 2 big essays due and one test and it was not the best time I’ve ever had. I wrote the most pretentious essay I’ve ever wrote and I wanna tell you about it a little because I worked really hard to write it and think I deserve for someone else to see it besides my TA. So it was for my medical anthropology class and basically there’s this big concept we learned about called embodiment, which explains how we have some knowledge that’s just so ingrained in us that we don’t even question how we know it or how it affects our lives. A simple example they use to teach us is that when we walk through a door, we know to walk right through the center, not too close to the side, and we do it without even thinking about it so that’s embodied knowledge. Also like we have embodied knowledge about what constitutes acceptable food to eat, like why we’re ok with eating chicken but not dog. It’s basically just questioning how and why you know how to do everything that you do. So for this project assignment we had to try a new activity for 5 days and journal about it and take away something about embodiment and idk all of the assignments here are vague as heck so I don’t even know how to say more than that about the prompt.
So I decided to do meditation for 5 days and I discovered that it was really hard for me to “clear my mind” and control my thoughts like when the voice would say “let your thoughts come and go” I’d be like HOW WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN and my thoughts would just get stronger and stronger the more I tried to let them go so my sessions turned into like anxiety central. But I realized then that I have this embodied knowledge about a mind-brain split where we think our brain is separate from our mind and that we can have conscious control over our thoughts when in reality it’s just a construct and you can’t separate your mind and body. Like when you’re stressed about something and people tell you “just don’t think about it” like we assume we have psychological agency when we really don’t and that’s why I got so frustrated with meditation, because I had really unrealistic expectations about my ability to control my mind! Know what I mean?? Me neither! This class is a radical hippie’s dream. EVERYTHING’S A CONSTRUCT!!!! Lol when I was on birthright our tour guide who I’m in love with s/o Ayal he would be like “ok everyone remember time is a social construct and has no meaning but that being said meet back here in 30 minutes” that was funny i miss him.
I’ve been going to do work at Vida e Caffe (like South African Starbucks) every morning this week and they’ve finally started to recognize and get friendly with me. They’re so fun there but they also kinda bully me for my coffee order which I think I’ve talked about before but really like all I asked for was an americano with milk and caramel syrup and this dude stared at me like I had 2 heads like OK SORRY I DON’T LIKE BLACK COFFEE BUT DON’T WANT A LATTE!! Oh yeah that’s the other thing you have to ask for milk because they don’t have the milk station like they do at starbucks. Isn’t this riveting?? I do really like their coffee I admit it and their croissants are BOMB I’ve become such a croissant girl here. The other day I was doing work in the back area and this mans brings in a whole desktop computer monitor to plug in at a table it was wild.
Yesterday I went to Baphumalele again and I can’t emphasize enough how mushy these kids are. I was nervous to hang with little kiddos because I’m not that good at finding creative ways to entertain them, but I swear these kids are so happy to just sit on your lap and smush you with hugs for an hour. Only issue is I always leave sore and dirty cuz these kids have legit no concept of personal space and think I can carry two of them at once for the whole time and play with my hair while their hands are sticky from juice it’s really a time.
After volunteering, we went to dinner at this ramen/poke place and I got poke cuz idk why but ramen always disappoints me!! Something I really miss here is pho - they have it everywhere in nola and nowhere here. And none of my friends here know what it is which is so sad and just another reason they gotta come visit nola!
Then I went to see A Quiet Place again with Maddie and Rachel 1 because i did love the movie a lot and 2 because I wanted to see their reactions esp bc Maddie is a scardycat. It was just as great the second time, i did cry again but didn’t need someone to hold me like the first time. Maddie is so annoying like I can’t give anything away but she likes for movies to end in a neat bow all happy but like cmon Maddie sometimes it’s more impactful when that doesnt happen and she really just missed the point of the movie!! I think we have to accept that we don’t have the same taste bc she didn’t like Lady Bird or La La Land and loved Three Billboards so just add it to the list of things we don’t have in common ha ha love u girl.
And THEN Rachel and Alicia and I went back to Unframed for ice cream bc Alicia’s new thing is trying to get people to go get ice cream with her at this place every single night since she found out it has vegan flavors. But I have the worst news ever and it’s that they were OUT of vegan vanilla!! So Alicia had to choose between having dairy (GASP), not getting ice cream (when she was the one who convinced us to go in the first place) and getting matcha flavor, turmeric flavor, or coconut raspberry flavor which were all very much ew. She ended up getting the coconut raspberry and was a very sad gal. Pur Alicia can’t catch a break.
This weekend we stayed in an Airbnb in Stellenbosch (wine country) for Amanda’s birthday HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMANDA SWEETIE BOO!!! On Friday we piled into a van and went to 2 tastings. The first one was quite the experience. We learned the 4 S’s of wine tasting - see, swirl, sip, and savor. Personally I think wine tastings are one of the most absurd things in the world. First of all I just don’t like wine that much so I guess I’m biased against it but second of all what the heck like we would never do that with any other food or drink so why wine?? Like cool it takes a long time to ferment and has alcohol but what about like hot chocolate or mac n cheese tastings??? I think those would be a lot more interesting. Either way I had a good time pretending to like wine and pretending I could tell a difference between the taste of different ones.
Um also this thing happened halfway into the tasting where our tasting guy was like “oh the duck parade is now if you wanna go watch” and happening right next to us was exactly what it sounds like - a parade of hundreds of ducks. Apparently these ducks have been doing this for generations and just KNOW to do it at the same time 3 times a day??? I actually cackled it was one of the most ridiculous and amazing things I’ve ever seen. These ducks just like stampeded past us and everyone acted like it was normal like OK!!!
The second place we went was really boujee and beautiful but I was hangry af so I don’t have much to say about it. I think I blacked out the rest of the night until I ate some really good pasta mmmm. After we ate we did the thing where we went in a circle and each said a nice thing about Amanda and everyone kept interrupting me when I was in the middle of saying my nice thing and one of my LEAST favorite things in the universe is when I get interrupted in the middle of saying serious stuff so thanks for NOTHING abroad friends!!!
The airbnb/bed and breakfast we stayed at was like BEYOND. I still can’t get over the fact that a family actually owns that property. It was HUGE with horses and pear trees and a main house and guest house and 2 gates and everything like I literally didn’t deserve to be staying there I actually felt guilty about it. Nicole and I stayed in the “Hippo Room” which had an ELECTRIC HEATED BLANKET LIKE OK!! The next morning the nice owners served us breakfast including a CHEESE PLATTER which YES THANK YOU i will no longer accept breakfasts without cheese platters.
We did the wine tram the next day which is where there’s a tram that takes you to 5 different wine tastings throughout the day and you stay at each tasting for an hour and then get picked up and taken to the next one. I really did not think I would last all 5 considering I don’t like wine but low and behold I somehow did. Listen like I did only get served 1 moscato the whole time which was sad as hell and I was the sober babysitter for the majority of the time but it was worth it for the views. I’m so tired of hearing myself talk about the views and how pretty stuff is like trust me I know I’m annoying but WOW THESE VIEWS. It’s crazy because it’s not even like you leave Cape Town and the mountain views are gone - it’s literally just like anywhere you go in the general area you’re guaranteed to have an unreal view. We just kept looking at it and being like nope this isn’t real.
At the third tasting place, their whole thing is that they do wine and cheese or wine and chocolate pairings and I couldn’t decide which to do because I love both cheese and chocolate very much. The wine on the other hand I did not care much about. But THEN Sammy my savior asked our waitress person if she could do a CHEESE AND CHOCOLATE PAIRING with NO WINE and I almost peed myself laughing but also was like yA ME TOO and so Sammy and I got cheese and chocolate with no wine. We really did beat the system.
We made some friends at the last place and by “we” I mean Jen and Amanda and Alicia and Olivia who all got very friendly with various men at this place and my sober self just sat watching like smh girls. And then morale went down a lot and we all got really cranky and we legit had to wait for transportation back to our airbnb for 1.5 HOURS AND THAT’S NOT A JOKE. We couldn’t get an uber and all of our phones were dying and we finally had to call a cab yeah that’s right a CAB what the heck is that I don’t know her!! Even when we ate morale was still pretty low cuz everyone was hungover except for me bc it’s hard to get drunk off wine when you don’t drink the wine :/ But yeah finally we got an uber and had an angsty night drive home. I love angsty night drives. Sometimes when I visit Potomac I’ll purposefully stay there until really late so I can do a night drive home blasting my emotional music and pretending I have lots of things to be emotional about.
Oh YEAH I forgot to shout out myself for winning the Campiesdt award for the second year in a row! TBT when Hannah Hauptman won campiesdt my freshman year when shes NEVER EVEN WENT TO CAMP. I’ll never let that one go. Eff that forreal. On that note also shoutout to Em and Rachel and Hannah for our win for tightest family!! Now that we won that I can finally stop hanging out with you losers!
Today I slept until 1pm because i COULD and I’m not gonna say it was the best decision of my life but also definitely wasn’t the worst. I watched John Mulaney’s SNL which I’ve been meaning to furever bc I love John Mulaney. And then Rachel Sammy Jen and I went to Seapoint to walk around and eat some good food.
Ok I need to talk about Seapoint for a real hot second. Seapoint is a part of Cape Town that’s like a 20 minute drive from where we live and it is where I would love to raise my family. It’s known to be the Jewish part of Cape Town, like lots of religiousish Jews and synagogues and stuff. In addition, it’s right on a beach, has a perfect view of Lion’s Head, and has TONS of incredible shopping and restaurants. WHAT. MORE. COULD. YOU. WANT. I swear if my mom saw it she would up and move our entire family there now. I love it there so much.
We walked on the promenade for awhile and people/dog/child-watched. Soooo many cute dogs. And babies. We walked out onto the beach rocks and watched the waves crash. Then we went to Mojo market where we were surrounded by insane food and maybe took 30 mins to decide what we wanted lol. I settled on tuna shawarma like WHAT it was crazy. Then we went to watch the sunset while sitting on this elevated surface on the promenade and we played River by Leon Bridges and watched the sun go down and all the colors change and I swear it was such a beautiful moment I almost cried. Yeah I hate myself too. Then we got soft serve at The Dairy Den and I got some cone with “honeycomb crunch” on it and I think I developed multiple cavities in the span of 5 minutes oh well!
Life goes back to not-normal this week as we go to Afrikaburn on Thursday! More on that in the next blog post but say goodbye to communication with me from Thursday to Sunday as I will be camping in the dessert with no money and only trading and watching statues burn to the ground! Mommy and Daddy don’t freak out I promise it’s safe, text me and I’ll explain everything :) And with that, my time abroad is officially more than halfway over. Brb blasting my angsty night drive playlist.
On Tuesday night, we went to dinner to celebrate Alyssa’s birthday. Idk if you’re an avid reader of my blog Alyssa but if you’re seeing this Happy Heckin late Birthday! It was great but things got kinda awkward cuz first we ordered nachos to share and the chips used in the nachos were legit Doritos which I know sounds amazing but idk sometimes you just want a normal chip uk? And then a bunch of us ordered this mushroom pasta which is literally all I eat here and I’m not mad about it but then we got real bad food envy about this pesto pasta Amanda and Jen got. And then the waitress accused Jen of lying about her order. And then I was talking to Alyssa and asked what dessert sounded good to her and she said she was in the mood for chocolate. So then when Alyssa was in the bathroom and we were trying to order her a dessert I asked the waitress which was most chocolatey and then Alicia shouted “Hannah it’s not for you!!!” not knowing that I was asking cuz Alyssa wanted chocolate. The bar for my behavior is literally on the floor. Oh well!
Something new I’ve been doing for a class project is meditating every day. Turns out I’m really awful at it. My mind is like a 5 year old boy I’ll be like NO STOP THINKING THIS THOUGHT and then it’ll be like WATCH THIS IMMA THINK IT 50X HARDER NOW!
Shart I legit think the kid sitting next to me in the library just got up and moved cuz I started eating almonds. This library is very strict about eating which is very different from Howie T where people will literally bring entire meals to last them the whole day. Just another thing I hate about UCT!
Thursday I went to Baphumelele (the orphanage I volunteer at) and an older kid put his arm around me and said “you’re my dwarf” which was real sweet of him. I don’t think I’ve ever had a conversation with a tween boy that didn’t involve him making a comment about how he’s taller than me. Well guess WHAT lil dudes it’s not that hard to be taller than me!
OH I FORGOT Wednesday was one of the best nights I’ve had here so far. Our RA slash CIEE organized an activity for our floor called “Food Jam”. You know those places like painting with a twist where you go with a group of friends and people help you paint something really good and you drink the whole time. Food Jams is basically like that but with cooking. We got split into teams and each team had their own dishes that they made from recipes and ingredients that the Food Jam people had laid out for us. They play music and people get SHWASTED and it’s a time. Amanda, Zoe and I were team Magic Mushrooms aka the most involved dish ever, we made pasta from SCRATCH like WHAT and made a veggie/tomato sauce, a mushroom cream sauce, and meatballs. Here’s the thing Amanda and Zoe I love you but I was def the backbone of the team and was very much running around between the pasta and sauces like I was in an episode of Chopped. It really did turn out beautiful and from that moment on I have been a little too confident in my cooking abilities. The mushroom sauce was a total crowd pleaser lemme tell you. As a result of my focus on our food, I did not have time to get very drunk. This is contrary to popular belief because I did post a questionable snapchat story where people assumed I was forked up but lemme tell you sometimes I get drunk by osmosis from the people around me and I think that’s what happened cuz I maybe had 5 sips of wine.
So then Friday night I was like YO LET’S MAKE THE MUSHROOM PASTA AGAIN cuz I remembered the recipe and it was sooooo delish and we each only got to eat a tiny bit cuz uk small portions n stuff. And Jen and Rebecca and Rachel were like heck yes and then I got in a big cooking mood and really started channeling my inner Bobby Flay. We made a really nice Shabbat dinner together including: garlic bread, mushroom pasta, soy chicken fingers, brussels sprouts with yummy sauce, hummus and veggies, chips and guac, and sweet cooked carrots, and tiramisu for dessert. It was our most successful Shabbat dinner yet and on a BUDGET too! We ate in the common room and lit candles and talked about life and I once again was like dang I love my life and my friends here tooooooo heckin much.
I watched a weird movie on Netflix that night called 6 Balloons. It’s with Dave Franco and Abbi Jacobson from Broad City but it’s like a serious drug addiction movie which was weird to see Abbi in but it was good I think?
Saturday was pretty buring, I went with Liv to do work at my fav place Starlings and we saw like all of CIEE. That’s when you know it’s bad - when all of CIEE is doing work on a Saturday morning. I had a chai latte there that I can’t stop thinking about.
Then everyone was going out at night and they were like HANNAH COME OUT YOU NEVER COME OUT and i was like hell yeah I never come out and I am so happy about that so I stayed in and facetimed with my sweetie little Rachel whom I love. I was missing Rachel especially then because I really wanted to see the new John Krasinski horror movie but my friends here aren’t really into horror movies and I knew Rachel would’ve seen it with me.
Sunday murning I ate hella eggs and toast with Jen who really normalizes and shares my love for eggs and toast and I love that about her, and then we went to Vida to do work. But unfortunately I spent less time doing work and more time watching old videos from my CIT year because I think it’s crazy that I’m a CIT counselor this summer when I remember my own CIT year sooo well like it was yesterday. Ok I’m just gonna say it I can’t stop thinking about camp and it’s really heckin annoying because I just wanna be present in my time here but then the staff facebook group is POPPIN and my only form of entertainment and I’m seeing posts from all these people I love and I just can’t wait ok!!
Then I did a spontaneous thing and was like yeah I have a lot of work to do but I’m gonna do a hike because I wanna start out my week positively and wow I sureee did do that with the hike. It was probably my favorite hike I’ve done here (ok fine I’ve only done like 3 hikes but still), it wasn’t too too hard but also did wind me and the destination was this beautiful cave called Elephant’s Eye. At some point we took a pic and I looked at it and was like lol I look like an oompa loompa and then Jen was like “haha you’re such a stubby human” and I was like wow thank you jen that is so kind and then to try to make things better she said “you’re like a corgi!” Moral of the story is Jen is not good at digging herself out of bad situations. We brought food and sat in the cave by ourselves just taking in our surroundings. It was a different view than ones we had seen before on Lion’s Head and Table Mountain, which was really cool. It was remote and not crowded and whenever we did see people, they were with dogs and there’s really nothing better than that. It was just pretty and a beautiful day and perfect idk I love it here!
I have a problem where I’m obsessed with soups from Woolworths and feel compelled to buy one every single time I go in there and Sunday was no different. Curiosity really killed the cat aka me and I ended up buying SWEET POTATO AND ORANGE soup like lmk. It was gross and I was sad cuz that’s what I had bought for dinner.
Oh boy. I’m not sure I’m ready to write this next part yet but I’m going to attempt. Anyone who knows me well knows that my OG and forever and always celeb crush is John Krasinski. Like in 8th grade my dad photoshopped him into a picture with me for my birthday. And I’ve obviously really missed him since the Office so when I heard he was making this new movie The Quiet Place I was like ooh ok John let’s see what you got! And I really didn’t expect it to get such good reviews but it got 95% on rotten tomatoes like what???? AND it starred him and his wife Emily Blunt and i lurrrve them as a couple so yeah I needed to see it. I convinced Nicole to see it with me so we headed out to see it Sunday night.
I.Can’t.Even. Favorite movie I’ve seen in a long long time and you know I watch a lot of movies. It’s hard to say a lot without giving spoilers but it’s like a horror movie and a love story and a moving family story and everyone has so much personality but doesn’t even talk in it and MY BOY JOHN IS LOOKING BETTER THAN EVER AND HIS CHEMISTRY WITH EMILY IS PALPABLE AND HE DIRECTED AND WROTE AND STARRED IN IT LIKE TRIPLE THREAT WHOOOOO??? Nicole and i were squeezing each other’s hands literally ⅔ of the time like I had to take breaks because my hand hurt and then at some point she had to physically hold me while I cried it was the scariest and best acted and most moving movie I’ve seen in so long EVERYONE GO SEE THIS MOVIE I CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT IT AND DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT OK ALSO JOHN SAYS HE WROTE IT AS A LOVE LETTER TO HIS KIDS AND ALSO HE PUT HIS NAME AAAAFTER EMILY’S IN THE CREDITS LIKE GET YOU A HECKIN MANS I HAVE NO WORDS EXCEPT I ACTUALLY HAVE A LOT OF WORDS SO MANY WORDS SUCH GREAT WORDS. The end of the movie prompted this reaction photo which pretty much sums it all up.
I just wanna stress again how bad I am at not napping. That’s all.
Last night I went for ice cream with Jen and Alicia and it was the best ice cream I’ve had here. I had a flavor called burnt white chocolate and also had a lot of Alicia’s “lemon lime basil” sorbet which was wild. Sometimes it’s ok to go get ice cream instead of doing work.
This week was hard, I had 2 big essays due and one test and it was not the best time I’ve ever had. I wrote the most pretentious essay I’ve ever wrote and I wanna tell you about it a little because I worked really hard to write it and think I deserve for someone else to see it besides my TA. So it was for my medical anthropology class and basically there’s this big concept we learned about called embodiment, which explains how we have some knowledge that’s just so ingrained in us that we don’t even question how we know it or how it affects our lives. A simple example they use to teach us is that when we walk through a door, we know to walk right through the center, not too close to the side, and we do it without even thinking about it so that’s embodied knowledge. Also like we have embodied knowledge about what constitutes acceptable food to eat, like why we’re ok with eating chicken but not dog. It’s basically just questioning how and why you know how to do everything that you do. So for this project assignment we had to try a new activity for 5 days and journal about it and take away something about embodiment and idk all of the assignments here are vague as heck so I don’t even know how to say more than that about the prompt.
So I decided to do meditation for 5 days and I discovered that it was really hard for me to “clear my mind” and control my thoughts like when the voice would say “let your thoughts come and go” I’d be like HOW WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN and my thoughts would just get stronger and stronger the more I tried to let them go so my sessions turned into like anxiety central. But I realized then that I have this embodied knowledge about a mind-brain split where we think our brain is separate from our mind and that we can have conscious control over our thoughts when in reality it’s just a construct and you can’t separate your mind and body. Like when you’re stressed about something and people tell you “just don’t think about it” like we assume we have psychological agency when we really don’t and that’s why I got so frustrated with meditation, because I had really unrealistic expectations about my ability to control my mind! Know what I mean?? Me neither! This class is a radical hippie’s dream. EVERYTHING’S A CONSTRUCT!!!! Lol when I was on birthright our tour guide who I’m in love with s/o Ayal he would be like “ok everyone remember time is a social construct and has no meaning but that being said meet back here in 30 minutes” that was funny i miss him.
I’ve been going to do work at Vida e Caffe (like South African Starbucks) every morning this week and they’ve finally started to recognize and get friendly with me. They’re so fun there but they also kinda bully me for my coffee order which I think I’ve talked about before but really like all I asked for was an americano with milk and caramel syrup and this dude stared at me like I had 2 heads like OK SORRY I DON’T LIKE BLACK COFFEE BUT DON’T WANT A LATTE!! Oh yeah that’s the other thing you have to ask for milk because they don’t have the milk station like they do at starbucks. Isn’t this riveting?? I do really like their coffee I admit it and their croissants are BOMB I’ve become such a croissant girl here. The other day I was doing work in the back area and this mans brings in a whole desktop computer monitor to plug in at a table it was wild.
Yesterday I went to Baphumalele again and I can’t emphasize enough how mushy these kids are. I was nervous to hang with little kiddos because I’m not that good at finding creative ways to entertain them, but I swear these kids are so happy to just sit on your lap and smush you with hugs for an hour. Only issue is I always leave sore and dirty cuz these kids have legit no concept of personal space and think I can carry two of them at once for the whole time and play with my hair while their hands are sticky from juice it’s really a time.
After volunteering, we went to dinner at this ramen/poke place and I got poke cuz idk why but ramen always disappoints me!! Something I really miss here is pho - they have it everywhere in nola and nowhere here. And none of my friends here know what it is which is so sad and just another reason they gotta come visit nola!
Then I went to see A Quiet Place again with Maddie and Rachel 1 because i did love the movie a lot and 2 because I wanted to see their reactions esp bc Maddie is a scardycat. It was just as great the second time, i did cry again but didn’t need someone to hold me like the first time. Maddie is so annoying like I can’t give anything away but she likes for movies to end in a neat bow all happy but like cmon Maddie sometimes it’s more impactful when that doesnt happen and she really just missed the point of the movie!! I think we have to accept that we don’t have the same taste bc she didn’t like Lady Bird or La La Land and loved Three Billboards so just add it to the list of things we don’t have in common ha ha love u girl.
And THEN Rachel and Alicia and I went back to Unframed for ice cream bc Alicia’s new thing is trying to get people to go get ice cream with her at this place every single night since she found out it has vegan flavors. But I have the worst news ever and it’s that they were OUT of vegan vanilla!! So Alicia had to choose between having dairy (GASP), not getting ice cream (when she was the one who convinced us to go in the first place) and getting matcha flavor, turmeric flavor, or coconut raspberry flavor which were all very much ew. She ended up getting the coconut raspberry and was a very sad gal. Pur Alicia can’t catch a break.
This weekend we stayed in an Airbnb in Stellenbosch (wine country) for Amanda’s birthday HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMANDA SWEETIE BOO!!! On Friday we piled into a van and went to 2 tastings. The first one was quite the experience. We learned the 4 S’s of wine tasting - see, swirl, sip, and savor. Personally I think wine tastings are one of the most absurd things in the world. First of all I just don’t like wine that much so I guess I’m biased against it but second of all what the heck like we would never do that with any other food or drink so why wine?? Like cool it takes a long time to ferment and has alcohol but what about like hot chocolate or mac n cheese tastings??? I think those would be a lot more interesting. Either way I had a good time pretending to like wine and pretending I could tell a difference between the taste of different ones.
Um also this thing happened halfway into the tasting where our tasting guy was like “oh the duck parade is now if you wanna go watch” and happening right next to us was exactly what it sounds like - a parade of hundreds of ducks. Apparently these ducks have been doing this for generations and just KNOW to do it at the same time 3 times a day??? I actually cackled it was one of the most ridiculous and amazing things I’ve ever seen. These ducks just like stampeded past us and everyone acted like it was normal like OK!!!
The second place we went was really boujee and beautiful but I was hangry af so I don’t have much to say about it. I think I blacked out the rest of the night until I ate some really good pasta mmmm. After we ate we did the thing where we went in a circle and each said a nice thing about Amanda and everyone kept interrupting me when I was in the middle of saying my nice thing and one of my LEAST favorite things in the universe is when I get interrupted in the middle of saying serious stuff so thanks for NOTHING abroad friends!!!
The airbnb/bed and breakfast we stayed at was like BEYOND. I still can’t get over the fact that a family actually owns that property. It was HUGE with horses and pear trees and a main house and guest house and 2 gates and everything like I literally didn’t deserve to be staying there I actually felt guilty about it. Nicole and I stayed in the “Hippo Room” which had an ELECTRIC HEATED BLANKET LIKE OK!! The next morning the nice owners served us breakfast including a CHEESE PLATTER which YES THANK YOU i will no longer accept breakfasts without cheese platters.
We did the wine tram the next day which is where there’s a tram that takes you to 5 different wine tastings throughout the day and you stay at each tasting for an hour and then get picked up and taken to the next one. I really did not think I would last all 5 considering I don’t like wine but low and behold I somehow did. Listen like I did only get served 1 moscato the whole time which was sad as hell and I was the sober babysitter for the majority of the time but it was worth it for the views. I’m so tired of hearing myself talk about the views and how pretty stuff is like trust me I know I’m annoying but WOW THESE VIEWS. It’s crazy because it’s not even like you leave Cape Town and the mountain views are gone - it’s literally just like anywhere you go in the general area you’re guaranteed to have an unreal view. We just kept looking at it and being like nope this isn’t real.
At the third tasting place, their whole thing is that they do wine and cheese or wine and chocolate pairings and I couldn’t decide which to do because I love both cheese and chocolate very much. The wine on the other hand I did not care much about. But THEN Sammy my savior asked our waitress person if she could do a CHEESE AND CHOCOLATE PAIRING with NO WINE and I almost peed myself laughing but also was like yA ME TOO and so Sammy and I got cheese and chocolate with no wine. We really did beat the system.
We made some friends at the last place and by “we” I mean Jen and Amanda and Alicia and Olivia who all got very friendly with various men at this place and my sober self just sat watching like smh girls. And then morale went down a lot and we all got really cranky and we legit had to wait for transportation back to our airbnb for 1.5 HOURS AND THAT’S NOT A JOKE. We couldn’t get an uber and all of our phones were dying and we finally had to call a cab yeah that’s right a CAB what the heck is that I don’t know her!! Even when we ate morale was still pretty low cuz everyone was hungover except for me bc it’s hard to get drunk off wine when you don’t drink the wine :/ But yeah finally we got an uber and had an angsty night drive home. I love angsty night drives. Sometimes when I visit Potomac I’ll purposefully stay there until really late so I can do a night drive home blasting my emotional music and pretending I have lots of things to be emotional about.
Oh YEAH I forgot to shout out myself for winning the Campiesdt award for the second year in a row! TBT when Hannah Hauptman won campiesdt my freshman year when shes NEVER EVEN WENT TO CAMP. I’ll never let that one go. Eff that forreal. On that note also shoutout to Em and Rachel and Hannah for our win for tightest family!! Now that we won that I can finally stop hanging out with you losers!
Today I slept until 1pm because i COULD and I’m not gonna say it was the best decision of my life but also definitely wasn’t the worst. I watched John Mulaney’s SNL which I’ve been meaning to furever bc I love John Mulaney. And then Rachel Sammy Jen and I went to Seapoint to walk around and eat some good food.
Ok I need to talk about Seapoint for a real hot second. Seapoint is a part of Cape Town that’s like a 20 minute drive from where we live and it is where I would love to raise my family. It’s known to be the Jewish part of Cape Town, like lots of religiousish Jews and synagogues and stuff. In addition, it’s right on a beach, has a perfect view of Lion’s Head, and has TONS of incredible shopping and restaurants. WHAT. MORE. COULD. YOU. WANT. I swear if my mom saw it she would up and move our entire family there now. I love it there so much.
We walked on the promenade for awhile and people/dog/child-watched. Soooo many cute dogs. And babies. We walked out onto the beach rocks and watched the waves crash. Then we went to Mojo market where we were surrounded by insane food and maybe took 30 mins to decide what we wanted lol. I settled on tuna shawarma like WHAT it was crazy. Then we went to watch the sunset while sitting on this elevated surface on the promenade and we played River by Leon Bridges and watched the sun go down and all the colors change and I swear it was such a beautiful moment I almost cried. Yeah I hate myself too. Then we got soft serve at The Dairy Den and I got some cone with “honeycomb crunch” on it and I think I developed multiple cavities in the span of 5 minutes oh well!
Life goes back to not-normal this week as we go to Afrikaburn on Thursday! More on that in the next blog post but say goodbye to communication with me from Thursday to Sunday as I will be camping in the dessert with no money and only trading and watching statues burn to the ground! Mommy and Daddy don’t freak out I promise it’s safe, text me and I’ll explain everything :) And with that, my time abroad is officially more than halfway over. Brb blasting my angsty night drive playlist.
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