June 2009
19 posts
Blogging at tublogulosis.tumblr.com
Pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/samwing
Dar is awesome. We are looking for housing. Check both blogs for updates.
How is everyone doing back home?
First night out on the town in Dar. Met some interesting people along the way. There is the occasional crazy who is strung out and wants some money, but they aren’t mean about it. The vast majority of people are really really nice and will say hi to you on the street (either in Swahili or English). I’m thinking that we won’t have any problem getting along with people here.
The...
Tom and I made it safe and sound to Tanzania at about 730 local time (thats 10 hours ahead of West Coast USA time) this evening. As we left the plane and got onto the jetway we were greeted with a wall of humidity and heat. It is uncomfortable here at best, and it’s winter time. Yeesh.
We cleared customs with ease (getting a visa before we came saved us a solid 30 to 40 minutes waiting in...
We will be having a team blog for our TZ experience. I will probably still be blogging at this page, but if everything goes as planned, there will be good coverage of what’s going on at the other one as well.
Check it out at tublogulosis.tumblr.com
(not yet though, there’s nothing there yet)
Tom and I have been living the good life in CT in our little break before heading to TZ. We’ve been living with a friend of our professor who has been so hospitable and accomadating, opening her doors to complete strangers. Good people do still exist!
We’ve been getting around the city a fair amount, doing variety of different things. Spent the day in the Kirstenbosch Botanical...
This was my (overly obvious) theme song before we...
Things I’ve mastered here thus far:
Not having my camera with me when I want it and having it with me when I don’t want it.
Napping in broad daylight.
Being able to pallet instant coffee.
Using Afrikaans pleasantries (“How are you,” “Thanks,” etc.) and having it lead to people mistaking me as a someone who actually speaks the language. I awkwardly have to...
Pack it up, pack it in, let me begin…
Just about packed up here in the dorm. Tom and I will be having a last meal with the group and then will be motoring into Cape Town to our new digs for a few days.
It’s sad to bid Stellenbosch adieu, but it’s great that we are still staying in SA. We’ll have a few days to relax, gather our thoughts and prepare for the next leg of our...
On a programming note, I’ve been really quite miserable with keeping you fine people updated on my life. I’ll blame it on finals because for a time I hadn’t left my room for days at a time.
Additionally, internet will be hit and miss not only for the next few days, but for the next few months. But please keep tuned though, and I’ll keep you updated on what’s going...
In some wondrous Christmas miracle, I still have internet. The result? Got confirmation that Tom and I have had our flights changed and will be staying in SA until this coming Friday rather than leaving Sunday. Still no confirmed lodging yet, but it’s good to know what country we are going to be in this week.
On a different note, went out to dinner with David Bunn and Jane Taylor, the...
I’m senior now. Oh dear, that is scary. I’m feeling a tad bit old.
We are scheduled to leave for TZ on Sunday, but still trying to stay in SA for a few extra days. Our travel agent is incommunicado still though. My whereabouts for the next few days is wayyy up in the air.
Our internet is being cut off by the University at 1PM today. Unlike many modern men, I can survive without internet. Unfortunately, our travel plans haven’t been finalized yet. The result? There will be a lot of running around to internet cafes to make sure we have a bed to sleep in for the next few nights and a flight out of the country and into Tanzania.
Here’s to flying by the...
Finals: Equally stressful in the southern hemisphere.
Tom and I are trying to work out the logistics of staying in South Africa few days longer before we ship off to Tanzania. John doesn’t get there until the 22nd anyways, so we’d be living there for nearly 2 weeks before we met up with him.
Instead, we are now planning on maybe staying 5 more days here, while still having 5 days of lead time in Dar before John arrives.
Tom might also...
It should be noted that study abroad programs actually include some studying. I know I did a lot of traveling, site seeing and excursioning early in the trip without much in the way of books, pens or learning.
AU CONTRAIRE.
My weeks of seeing the country have come to an abrupt end as the quarter here comes to a close. Less than two weeks till this program is over. Unreal.
I’ve had to...
To bed at 3 AM and up by 7:30? The feels a little to much like Northwestern to me…
http://geography.about.com/od/physicalgeography/a/2... →
Let’s hope they don’t make it to 18.
Here’s to global cooling!
May 2009
15 posts
Went out to Cape Point on Saturday
Located south of Cape Town, Cape Point is where the Cape of Good Hope is located. It is almost the Southern most point on the African continent. It’s also where the Indian Ocean and Atlantic Ocean meet, at least in theory.
Click here to get a better idea of what I’m talking about.
The day began with a random boat cruise to check out Seal Island,...
In memoriam:
Good Weather: March 29th, 2009 - May 10th, 2009.
We knew you for too short a time.
The weather here has really taken a turn for the worse. As seen from wine tasting today:
Perhaps on the bright side, the wine estate where I took this was stunning.
It’s gone so quickly from 70s and sunny to 50s and rainy. Let’s hope this change isn’t for good because it is really reaking havoc on our ability to do outdoor activities.
Things I learned from wine tasting today:
1. Sauvignon Blancs are well known for their garden vegetable notes, commonly green pepper, and hints of cut grass.
2. Cabernet Sauvignons are robust and full-bodied with a lot of tannins. They pair nicely with red meat.
3. Pinotages aged in wood-fired oak barrels can assume strong notes of mocha from the smoke in the wood of the barrel.
4. Dessert...
Also went to a rugby game on Thursday. We say the (Cape Town) Stormers and the Western Force of Perth, Australia. It was a game in the Super 14 league. Made up of teams from SA, New Zealand and Australia, this league can be compared to the NFL of rugby. It can be pretty much classified as the best club rugby in the world.
Having followed rugby the past few years, it’s pretty exciting to be...
Last Saturday we headed into Cape Town to climb Table Mounatin.
As is evident in the above photo, Table Mountain is this enormous, flat-topped mountain that shadows Cape Town. Also, I didn’t take this picture. Winter is setting in here, more to come on that.
The hike up was grueling. Lots of steps up and over enormous boulders. It was like doing thousands of squats and lunges. Great for...
Fox News, you are so right!
How dare Obama eat dijon mustard! I always knew he was a socialist…
Happy Mother’s Day from the top of Table Mountain.
I’m being lazy.
Look at some pictures.
April 2009
19 posts
request-a-blog
Anything specific you want to know about South Africa? Burning questions about the way things work here?
Send me an email at samwing@gmail.com and suggest something for me to write about. If the request is reasonable and I can write with some level of knowledge about it, I’ll get it up on the blog ASAP.
I’m leaving tomorrow for a week-long trip to Kruger Park, a game reserve in the Northeast corner of the country. After a two-hour flight to Johannesberg, we embark on a 7 hour highway drive. After that, we trade our vans for landrovers and do some sweet night offroading to get to our final destination. It’s looking like this will be an incredible experiences that includes sleeping in...
The election seems to be fairly settled as the ANC looks to have locked up well over 50% of the vote. Though all the votes haven’t been officially counted, Zuma and his comrads are gonna run away with another one.
Cricket: surprisingly fun
Last night, despite serious threats of rain and mean parking attendants, we made out to a cricket match in Cape Town.
Cricket as a sport is well known for it’s week-long matches chalk full of catnaps and tea times. However, this was an Indian Premier League game with special rules that limits the game to about 3 or 4 hours.
I’ll refrain from explaining the game of cricket in detail...
A discourse on accents
South Africa is a place of many different accents. Much like the US, several different cultural and ethnic groups are coming together in one place, not all of them speaking English as their first language. Though virtually everyone here has the ability to communicate in English in some manner, their version of my native tongue can vary widely
Let’s break it down:
There are three major...
All seems to be running fairly smoothly as far as elections are concerned. The candidates pose as they drop their votes in the box. Mandela’s vote is met with cheers, media scrutiny. There are some rumblings of a shortage of ballot boxes, but that seems to be a fairly minor issue.
Actually, there do seem to be some long lines (queues, if you will) people are facing at the polls. This is...
Today is election day here in South Africa.
There won’t be much of this:
but there is definitely a bit of buzz in the air.
It’s looking like Mandela’s party, the ANC, is going to take the election. Despite the fact that the party leader, Jacob Zuma, has been charged with rape, been implicated in a shady international arms deal, and has had several corruption charges leveled...
This morning I was forever disenchanted with South Africa as a country.
It rained a little bit. And was kinda chilly.
I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to recover.
So the rest of our trip on the Garden Route was entirely tourist oriented.
We got to do some really great things and got to do a couple of dubious things.
First, the not so great:
Monkeyland
Like the name indicates, it’s a big monkey pen. Interestingly, of the reported 300 monkeys there, only one is from the continent of Africa. A let down to begin with. You go in and there is no...
WatchDo toilets really flush in the opposite direction in the southern hemisphere?
You be the judge.
The first two days of our trip were spent in Knysna, a sleepy coastal town.
This was the academic portion of the trip where the public health students got some hands on experience with different organizations in the area.
Day one was split between Die Werkswinkel (The Workshop) and MAD About Art.
Die Werkswinkel (pronounced dee verks-vinkle) is project for the physically and mentally disabled,...
By the way, I’m posting all of my photos to my picasa webalbum at http://picasaweb.google.com/samwing
You can see all the extras that didn’t get posted into the blog.
This past week I’ve been on the road, cruising the famously beautiful Garden route that stretches along the southern coast of the country. The drive offered a wide variety of scenery ranging from this:
to this:
and this:
Though we did a lot of different activities during the trip (health clinic visits, bungy jumping, osterich riding, cave diving, etc.), my favorite part of the trip...
Sorry for the lack of posts in the last week. I forgot to mention that I’d be taking a roadtrip along the Garden Route along with the rest of my fellow NU study abroaders. It was an incredible experience that included some lions, some bungy jumping, some indian ocean and some elephants.
Details to follow, but shower and bedtime for now. There certainly wasn’t much of that in the last...
if you beat 'em...
…use Obama’s marketing scheme.
The national elections are on April 22nd here in South Africa. It’s a national holiday (as it should be in the US) and everyone is gearing up for the finish. The campaign sign from above is for the Democratic Alliance, a sort of centrist party from what I gather in talking to locals and reading campaign coverage. Along with the Congress of the...
more bars in more places, kinda
I turned on my cell phone when I got to my flat with interest in seeing sparks fly and my screen explode as my phone struggles to understand the South African system. But with shock and awe, this was the result instead:
So I get 1 bar at home in Chicago, 3 bars at home in Seattle and 5 bars at home in South Africa. That makes sense.
But, please don’t call or send texts to my phone. To...