Sorry for the hiatus! I am safely home from term vac, and I have so many adventures to share that I don't think it's a good idea to try to write it all out in one post. Plus there are those pesky things called classes that I have to go to and I receive more work, which cuts into my blogging time :) So, I will give you a quick overview of "Adventuretime with Kristen and Christiana" (aka term vac) now before my history class, and hopefully I can ramble later about things like minibuses, markets, and malls (all things I encountered frequently in the past week) at a later time...
Saturday morning, Kristen and I headed to the center of Grahamstown to catch a bus to Durban. We left at 8am and got to Durban sometime after 7pm... making good time, actually, as it is basically a 12 hour trip by bus. We spent our first night in a hostel in the Berea area, and ventured out to a street festival at the advice of our friendly hostel staff in time to see the band Napalma. Sunday we switched to Tekweni Backpackers, a hostel right off of Florida Road in the Morningside area... not much like the Morningside I know, but it was a nice area, and we could safely walk to places on Florida Rd at night, which was great. We spent part of Sunday and most of Monday on a quest to get Kristen's broken laptop fixed, which entailed several additional adventures. Tuesday was a beach day, and we were supposed to leave Durban on Wednesday, but ended up staying for the rest of the week when car rental issues couldn't be sorted. Thursday we went to Ushaka, which is a massive water park/marine world by the beach in Durban. Friday we were back at the beach, as well as an Indian trade fair at the racetrack. Saturday we mostly explored some markets, and Sunday we hit the beach for some perfect weather before forcing ourselves to get everything packed up and catching a bus overnight back to Grahamstown. We got back at 5:30am, and I managed to drag myself and my huge suitcase (I only brought big suitcases here, which makes it appear that I extremely overpack when I go on weeklong trips) from the center of town up the hill and back to my room by 6am. At this point it seemed like it would be stupid to go to sleep and then get up in 2 hours for my classes, so I headed off to play some drums for my ethno class in a slightly delirious state...
Thats basically a mad oversimplification of our week. I promise I will elaborate (hopefully not too much) at a later date. I will just finish for now with a sad tale...
On Sunday, the temperature in Durban was like 32 degrees Celsius, and I was walking around in shorts and a bathing suit. When I got back to Grahamstown, it was in the teens, and Monday I wore long sleeves, a sweater, a scarf, and a jacket basically all day. Devastating. It reminds me a bit of deceitfully warm spring breaks in Nicaragua, only to return to Gettysburg and discover that in reality, March is just not warm. In this case, I am pretty sure that Grahamstown is just being spiteful, since it is warmer basically everywhere else. Perhaps it will motivate me to stay inside and catch up on my work?
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