From the Beach to the Arts

Hello from Grahamstown!

We are here for entire weekend for the South African festival of the arts. There is an impossible amount of plays, concerts, dances, comedy, and art shows. We are trying to take ity all in, and see as much as we can. I just spent a few hours wandering through, what we thought was a craft market, but was more of a crap market. Wall to wall with clothing, weird little nicknacks made in china, fake African stuff, and all the people buying, selling and just passing through. There were a llot of children trying to make money as living statues. They paint their faces white and try to stand very still. It doesn't work so well, but one has to smile at the effort. It feels very warm today, I am hot in jeans and a short seleved cotton top, but the locals are totally in a winter mindset. All of the women are wearing skinny jeans or tights, boots, scarves... definately cute, but my body would be screaming sweat in protest to such a get up. Meanwhile, they look at us like we are crazy! Whenever we ask to sit outside to eat here, we get the strangest looks: "Are you sure?!" It's funny...

Before we got here, we spent two days in the countryside on the Indian Ocean. The first night, the women of a fishing village made us a traditional meal. It was amazing. Now that Xolani, our graduate student and guide is along, we have all started to try to learn Xhosa. It is a clicking language, that has four distict clicks in it. I can click, but it is so hard to click seamlessly within the words. You can't pause to click. I am determined to learn something though!

The next night was spent in oceanettes in the Tsitikamma National Park. When the air blows here, it feels so warm. It is a weird sensation, you can feel that you are in a tropical environment. We watched the waves crash at night at were entertained by some otters. The morning brought a whale, a pod of 25 dolphins playing in the surf, and a hike to a crazy suspension bridge. We were all sad to go.

Well, I am excited about all the art and culture that we are witnessing here, I can't wait for our upcoming shows!