Adrenaline-Gavin Rossdale

I have spent so much time recently doing things that are not work. If I was at Gettysburg, I would be drowning in work and staying up till depressing hours of the morning, functioning on little sleep, and generally being stressed. However, I am at Rhodes, I only feel a little bit guilty, I am mostly pleased with myself for finding things to do, and I plan on spending most of the weekend not on campus or doing any school work.

Granted, it’s not that I am slacking off exactly… it seems like most people here spend similar amounts of time working, and some of them are genuinely surprised how frequently I tell them that my plans are to go study or something. Of course, it is early in the semester, and the general mindset seems to be “go out every night you possibly can while finals are a long way off, and when exams get here, then we will all freak out and get stressed and study.” This is an interesting perspective, and I expect it is heavily influenced by the fact that the final exam counts for 60% of the grade for most courses. Anyway, I have been thoroughly conditioned by two years at Gettysburg, and still rigorously attend every lecture for my classes (except on Thursday, when I have a clash between two classes and have to pick one) and make lists of work I should be doing to keep on top of things. So why am I not doing them?

Well, at the moment, it is simply the result of a lack of foresight… I forgot to factor into my plan for tonight the fact that after I went rock-climbing, my fingers would not properly hold a pen. Thus, I am not creating a journal that summarizes and responds to my ethnomusicology readings (which, when you factor in the fact that the teacher wants it to be handwritten with lots of colors and pictures drawn in it, honestly sounds like an elementary school project. Could I really claim to be working even if I was creating my journal?) but am instead reveling in the fact that I skipped work to rock climb! There is a mountaineering society on campus that on alternate weekends goes hiking or rock climbing, and the walls are open in the center for them every Tuesday and Thursday from 6-8 (at least, I am pretty sure that is how it works...) so I went tonight with M.E. and Eva, who are both interested in hiking. I really want to climb (and hike, to a lesser extent), but I am so out of shape… and my poor hands are so sad right now. The metal content—or perhaps the chlorine, although there can’t be that much in the water—has been making my hands peel, and the combined effect of the chalk tonight didn’t help things. I should be used to it, because chlorine in the pool will do the same thing at the beginning of the summer, but it is making me crazy. I have been rationing my hand lotion since I got here, because who doesn’t want to keep the ability to make your hands spell like lemon furniture polish at will? However, I think I will be moving into plan B, which is use hand lotion all the time and buy more (albeit, non-lemon furniture polish) lotion if necessary. Important deliberations, I know.

Other that that, I went to the Real Curry restaurant today with Jill (we met so that she could lend me a sleeping bag and some stuff for this weekend) and got some Bunny Chow. I rarely eat Indian food at home… actually, I never eat Indian food at home, I don’t even know where to find Indian food at home, so it was a fun experience. Also, due to my lack of US Indian food expertise, I am not positive, but I think that Bunny Chow is unique to South-African-Indian food. Apparently, there is a pretty big Indian population living in Durban, where the owner of our restaurant is from, and Bunny Chow is said to have originated from there as a way to eliminate the need for a bowl or utensils for people getting take-away (or carry-out) food. Vendors could sell it on the street; just hollow out a ½ or ¼ loaf of bread and fill it with beef or lamb or chicken (or whatever else you want) curry. Also, the bread from the center of the loaf makes a nice little lid. Think bread-bowl, but curry. Yum.

I also went shopping today and picked up The Racist’s Guide To The People Of South Africa.  (Confused? Think Stuff White People Like. Still confused? Meditate on the phrase ‘satirical comedy’ and if you really don’t get it, go to Wikipedia or something). I probably should wait for a while before I read it, as I won’t fully appreciate all of the stereotypes yet, but I really went to the bookstore to buy a notebook for the previously-mentioned Ethnomusicology journal, and how much fun is that? So I augmented the trip with one more thing I can keep in my room to distract me. Jill lent me African Women: Three Generations, which is a really good read about the life of a Grandmother, Mother, and Daughter (the author’s Grandmother, Mother and Sister) but I have finished it. I found it really interesting, not only because it talked about life during Apartheid for black women in the townships, but because it really helped me to understand these women’s point of view about their rights as women, and the way that they resisted the male-dominated culture within the bounds of that culture. I am also reading a book called The Sunburnt Queen, which is (almost) totally legitimate because I am writing a history paper about the subject of the book… a young English girl who was shipwrecked on the “Wild Coast” of the Eastern Cape and ended up marrying two Xhosa princes in the course of her lifetime. So its like I am doing work. Sort of. Almost.