Happy Birthday, Mom! / Happy World Wetlands Day! / Happy Groundhog Day! (Feb, 2nd)

howzit, guys?  i'm sorry i've been m.i.a. for a while.  it's been a busy couple of weeks, but i have started a few different draft of blog posts, so expect a surge of updates soon!  i just thought i'd give a short one now, though, so i can also use this post to publicly wish my mom a happy birthday. :-)

anywho, here's some more fun slang for you:

• "average" actually means "bad" ("i fell and skinned my knee today." "that's average.");
• people say the word "hectic" here to mean a lot more than just "chaotic", sometimes they even turn it into an adverb ("hectically"), and it seems like it's often used as a variation of "awesome"; 
• "ja" (pronounced "yah"), instead of our "yeah"; 
• a "jol" is a party (i think); 
• people do tend to say "epic" a lot, too; 
• "chilled", instead of our "cool" or "OK" (e.g. "i'm running a little late for our date." "don't stress, it's chilled."); 
• "vibes" is used a lot, and i think it can refer to music or just a general groove; 
• "sms" instead of our "text" (as in text message); 
• "varsity" refers to university; 

University of Cape Town
Ja, my varsity is hectically beautiful.  I know you oaks are jealous.

• "oak" i think is equivalent to our "oaf" or "doofus"; 
• ketchup here is called "tomato sauce" -  if you say "ketchup" you get laughed at.  we americans get laughed at even when we say "tomato sauce", because it's supposed to be pronounced toe-mah-toe (not toe-may-toe).  but then if we try to say toe-mah-toe, we get laughed at anyway, because people know we're American, and Americans don't say "tomato" that way; 
• "sloshed" means very drunk; 
• upon going to club together one night, one of my South African housemates said she hoped she didn't look like a "Tiger girl" (Tiger Tiger is the name of a very popular club here), which made me laugh, because it reminded me of how my friends in the US don't want to look like a "Monte Vista girl", a prep-school girl from Greenwich, a "lax-itute" or "Drinker girl", or even a Bryn Mawr girl (i'm sorry to my friends from Bryn Mawr, i think the stereotype/judgment is horrible, and i don't endorse it);
• people say "as well" more often than "too" or "also", and when they say it, they say it with the emphasis on "as", instead of "well". (say it out loud, and you'll notice that it's quite different sounding.)

and to give you a sneak peak of the things i will be writing more about soon, here's some of the things i've done and seen over the past week and a half:

• last week we went to free-drinks night (from 8-10) at Tiger Tiger one night (quite an epic jol), and into Obz the next night (a.k.a. Observatory, a neighborhood near Mowbray, which is where i live) for half-priced pizza and two-for-one beers, where we also ended up seeing a community Shakespeare group perform while a guy played some African instruments in the background. it all felt very nice and culturally diverse;
• i saw the Cape Cobras (the Western Cape province's cricket team) beat the Nashua Titans by one run in a 20/20 cricket match last Friday.  i think i understand the rules of cricket now;
• i went to a beautiful beach called Camp's Bay last Saturday (someone told me Cape Town is supposed to have the second most beautiful beaches in the world, after Barcelona.  i'm not sure who came up with that ranking, though.);

Sunset at Camp's Bay

• i went to the Cape Town aquarium on Sunday, and saw some cute penguins and hungry sharks;
• we've had international student orientation all week this week, which included a "drumming circle" on Monday night (it was interesting...), and a short visit to an elementary school in one of the townships this afternoon with SHAWCO (Students' Health and Wellness Centres Organisation, the biggest student-run NGO in Southern Africa), which i will probably volunteer with during the semester;
• on Saturday night we had a braai at the home of the EGS (Environment and Geographical Sciences) department head, Mike, at which we all got thoroughly sloshed, none more-so than my current than my current professor, Peter - the evening included a Michael Jackson dance-off among a few of us students and Mike's wife and son, and it ended with a few of us jumping into his pool fully clothed (yes, including me);
• if i'm going to die in South Africa, it's going to happen by being hit by a car - people drive on the left side of the road here, and i'm still not used to looking right then left, instead of left then right (also, on a side note, everyone here drives manual, instead of automatic cars);
• in the US, a common form of sexual harassment is honking at someone or calling out to them from your car while they're walking down the street - when that happens here, people are just trying to offer you a ride in a mini-bus taxi, which is one of the primary forms of "public" transportation.  it's kind of funny, because i'm still not entirely used to it, but i do appreciate that it's not sexual harassment.  i still have yet to take a ride on one, though;
• not to brag to you east-coasters or anything, but i would also like to mention that i am getting quite tan and blonde.  boy, do i love summer :-).

so i must go now, because i still have a presentation to finish preparing for class tomorrow.  i will be writing about our field trip to the Kalahari, as well as a few more personal impressions of the general culture within the next few days.

Oh, you know, just a lion walking next to our car.
More to come...

and once again, happy birthday, Mom!!  i love you, and i hope you are having a great day!
cheers guys,
kelley