Getting Involved

Friday, February 26th, 2015

9:00pm South African Standard Time

Weather 75° F Sunny

I am finally over my sickness and out and about again. It was a rough and boring past 2 weeks, but I made it. I watched 3 full seasons of Breaking Bad, if that says anything. Now that I am back in the swing of things, I am becoming more involved on campus and with other students outside of class. NMMU sends out at least 10 emails a day to us students about different activities and clubs to get involved with on campus. I am impressed with how much they have to offer students and that they greatly encourage campus involvement. It has made it easy for me to find events and activities I am interested in.

On Wednesday, I attended a Beethoven Concert on campus. It was wonderful! The stage was set with 2 Steinway pianos that filled the auditorium with lovely music by excellent pianists. The program had many different instrumental combos. They started the show with a piano player and singer that performed Adelaide, a song that Beethoven composed based off the German poem by Friedrich von Matthisson. The next performance was a beautiful piano solo of the 3^rd movement of Sonate Op.81a. The third performance was an amazing piano duet of the 3^rd movement of Concerto No.5 in E-flat Major. It was breathtaking and exciting to watch 4 sets of hands swiftly glide along the shining keyboards. They were in perfect sync and executed the entire song perfectly and gracefully. The final performance was a triumphant piano and French horn duet. They performed Sonata for Horn & Piano. The French horn player was out of this world. He has the shiniest horn I have ever seen and he played it with such grace and power. I didn’t know French horns could play that loud! It was a fantastic concert and made me miss the 20+ piano practice rooms at St. Cloud State and the 2 pianos in the basement of my dorm. There are limited pianos on NMMU’s campus and none at my hotel. However, I have gotten the chance to play some piano while I’ve been here; when I was volunteering at the Cheshire home for disabled adults on Monday, I played in the dining hall for the residents. After my first song, wheelchairs were filing in to the dining like a plethora of cars on I-394 during rush hour. It was fun to play for the residents and give them something to brighten their day. Their favorite song was Ode to Joy—which just so happened to be by Beethoven.

This school is so cool! They have their very own surfing club. Surfing is the big thing here: From sunup till sundown you can spot surfers riding the waves along the beach. I looked into the club and found out that they have lessons for beginners. I think it would be a blast to learn to surf, so I signed up for their next available lessons in the end of March. I am excited to see what it’s really like and to have a whole new watersport adventure, something a bit different than MN watersports.

I am so looking forward to this weekend. On Friday, 15 of us international students will be driving out to Plettenberg Bay for the weekend. The bay is a two and a half hour drive west from Port Elizabeth, towards Cape Town. We have reserved a large room at a lodge for Friday and Saturday night. The lodge looks amazing from the pictures and has great reviews on Trip Advisor. It even has everything we need for a braai so we are starting the weekend with a good old South African braai barbeque. Over the weekend we have some really fun things planned so far. I am most looking forward to going crayoning. I’ll be able to ”Explore the river with AfriCanyon, navigate through the river shallows, jump, zip-line, swim through fresh-water mountain pools, slide down natural water slides and abseil in and around waterfalls as you dip down into the river gorge”. It sounds like a mixture of rock climbing, zip lining, a natural waterpark and walking through parts of the river. Sign me up! Another excursion we have planned is to go swimming with seals. They are soooo cute!!! In Florida I swam with dolphins and had a blast. I am excited to get in the water with more marine life and have another experience of a lifetime. Our last planned activity is a monkey park. We have heard really good things about it. It sounds like a fun time and should provide some excellent pictures for my blog. There are other things we still could do, such as explore some cool hiking trails and go to a cheetah park. It is looking to be a fantastic weekend that I am very excited for. I am ready to continue making the most out of my time here and soak up all the beauty, adventure and relaxation that South Africa has to offer.

Erin on the beach boardwalk

Erin waling along the beach

Kayela, Blake and Erin

Have you seeen my bone?

Turtle outside my patio door

Soccer fields from afar

Sick

Saturday, February 21st, 2015

1:00pm South African Standard Time

Weather 70° F Partly Cloudy

Hello everyone,

This past week has been very uneventful. Why you ask? Well I have had a bad cough, muscle aches, fatigue and a slight fever since Sunday. I went to the doctor on Thursday and found out that I have a mild case of bronchitis. The doctor gave me some antibiotics and said I should be better in a few days. I hope so. I am constantly coughing and have no energy to do anything.

Over the past week I have just been chilling in my room trying to make the most of it. I have only left the hotel to go to class and the doctor. I have however got caught up on all my American TV shows and am starting to watch any movie from 2014 that looks decent.  My friends have been very supportive and come to visit me often. I don’t want to get them sick, so I don’t spend too much time with them, but it is nice to have some human interaction in my day. Being an only child, I am used to this alone time, and it has actually been nice to just relax and unwind from this nonstop adventure I have been having since I arrived.

My mom will be coming to visit me over Easter break (my spring break) and we have been planning a trip around South Africa. I’m really looking forward to seeing other parts of the beautiful country and its numerous wild life reserves. Other than that there is nothing exciting to report. I wish everybody the best back home. I miss you all!

Blake

Adjustments

Wednesday, February 18th, 2015

2:00pm South African Standard Time

Weather 81° F Sunny

I am loving South Africa. I have made many adjustments over this past week and I am loving each day’s new adventure. I have had to adjust to everything from planning out my 3 meals a day all by myself to knowing that pedestrians don’t have the right of way. It is no doubt a different world here. Some things better some things not so much. Regardless, I am having a blast and living each day to its fullest.

I am in my second week of classes and they are going well. My classes here have had a very slow start with little to no work, assignments or even material to study. I know there are a lot of factors to consider and it could just be the particular classes I am taking. Regardless, classes here start much slower and less intensive then classes at St. Cloud State and even high school. The assessment method is quite different as well. The common grading method at St. Cloud State is a continuous assessment throughout the semester with a final exam at the end that cumulatively make up the grade. Here it is primarily 2-4 tests during the semester and class attendance that makes up my class mark. If my class mark is above 50% I am eligible to take the final exam where I must score about 50% to pass the class. If I have a class mark of bellow 50% I would not be eligible to take the final exam and in turn automatically fail the course. It is a system that I am going to need some time to get used to, but I have no doubt I will manage. It will be interesting to see if it is more challenging to put all my effort into a few tests versus multiple assignments, projects and papers.

A requirement of being an international exchange student at NMMU is to take a community service learning course. Last Wednesday the other international students and I were given an orientation on a dozen different projects that we could select to be our weekly service project. They ranged from working with kids in the poverty ridden mission villages outside of town to packing food for students that can’t afford meals to even working with penguins at a local marine bird rehabilitation facility. I chose to volunteer at the Summerstrand Cheshire Home for disabled adults. The home provides a permanent residence and care for 54 disabled adults and 90% of which rely on a wheelchair for their mobility. The home also provides day care for families who need a member watched during the day while they are at work. A small group and I will be volunteering at the home on Mondays for 2 hours every week. I am looking forward to this opportunity to give back to the community while I am here.

In the back yard of our hotel lies the Humewood Links Golf Club, one of the most challenging links golf courses in the world and one of the top 10 golf courses in South Africa. On Friday, Gabe and I got on the best clothes we had, and went to play a round. They have a very reasonable student rate, $10 for 9 holes and $12 for 18 holes and have clubs available for us to use. The course is beautiful to play on. Each hole has an ocean view making it seem like we were in paradise the whole round. It was wonderful to relax and just purely enjoy ourselves for an afternoon in the beautiful outdoors. Since Gabe and I both don’t have class on Wednesday’s, we are making that our golfing day when we can.

Erin just asked if I wanted to go to the beach on this lovely day. How can I say no? 80° and Sunny…no-brainer.  

Beautiful Morning Run

Flat tire on the cab

Cribbage with Lily

The Boardwalk Casino & Hotel in Port Elizabeth

The Boardwalk Casino

Fish in the Boardwalk pond

Blake and Titus

Blake and Adrian

Skyping my friends back home...I miss you guys!

"The Crawl" on campus

Starting Classes

Tuesday, February 10th, 2015

6:00pm South African Standard Time

Weather 80°F Sunny

Port Elizabeth is so beautiful! The weather has been in the 70’s and sunny for the past few days and I am loving it. I do not miss the Minnesota ice box one bit. A group of us get up every morning to go running at 6am. It is in the 60’s by then as we run along the beach watching the sun continue to rise. There is nothing like fresh ocean air in the morning before class.

Friday night at the Beer Shack was an experience. Although crowed, I still managed to have a good time and try some unique and tasty craft beers. At one point later in the evening someone dropped a beer glass and a friend of mine was wearing sandals right by where it fell. I felt the bottom of her foot right away and felt that a piece of glass that was stuck in it. Another friend and I helped her outside as she held on to our shoulders. Once outside, I was able to remove the glass from her foot with the help of my iPhone as a flashlight. The bouncer got me some band aids because there is a good amount of blood from the glass and her pinky toe that had a nice cut as well. I got her bandaged up and she was good to go for the rest of the night. Moral of the story…wear shoes to a bar.

This weekend was very relaxing. Saturday was McKenna’s birthday, so we had a Braai at the hotel. A Braai is what South Africans call a community BBQ. Everyone brings their own meat and we all sit around grilling and socializing. It was great fun. Our hotel even has a special patio with a grill for us to use that overlooks the ocean. Another reason why I am enjoying South Africa’s beauty. Later in the evening the power went off, so we had to continue grilling under our phone flashlight apps while we observed an entirely black city. Our hotel has an excellent generator that kicks on after a few minutes, so we are lucky not to be too inconvenienced during a power outage. The power company calls the outages “load shedding” because the power grid is being overworked. Since we got here there has been an outage almost every day, and even the locals are beginning to become annoyed at the frequency.

On Sunday a group of us went to the Sunday market along Kings Beach. It is a flea-type market where the locals come to sell their wares and souvenirs. I was very impressed by the quality of the handcrafted items neatly lined up on blankets along a half-mile stretch of sidewalk. After making our passes through the market, we walked the beach back. It was a beautiful sunny day in the 80’s. We got to see some awesome para-surfers riding the waves on the ocean. It looks like so much fun, but I know they were making it look easy.

Monday was the first day of classes at NMMU. I am taking courses in Microeconomics, Afrikaans, Computing, and Communication Studies. With the exception of Afrikaans, my courses are in large lecture halls and have well over 200 students in each class. It is such a different environment compared to SCSU, but I am excited to experience a very lecture based method of teaching. All of my professors are great. They all love teaching and have fun doing it. Even in the lecture halls packed with students, the professors are able to speak with energy and excitement. It is evident that they are enjoying themselves when they teach. I am still learning much of their humor though. Many times the teacher will say something and the local students in the class with respond with laughter as us international students wonder what was so funny. Sometimes it’s the deep English accent that throws me of, sometimes it’s a cultural difference, and sometimes it just goes right over my head. Regardless, the teachers all know how to make the local students laugh and I enjoy the energy it provides in the classroom.

Since all of my lectures have just been an introduction to the course, I have no studying to do…yet. This has led to very productive activities like going to the beach, shopping, dining at ocean restaurants, sunbathing, swimming in the pool, and other very labor and mind intensive work. NOT. After class it is the best thing in the world to walk out from my patio and jump in the pool to cool off. Then we sit in the pool chairs and sun bathe while drinking cool drinks until we are hot, jump in the pool and repeat all afternoon. We are living the life right now. It will change as our classes start their actual lectures, but we are enjoying every minute of it while we can.

Hugs,
Blake

Gabe loving his Irish Coffee

View from the Something Good Resturant

Ted grillin at the Braai

Gabe, Erin, Tamarah, Lily, Angela and Blake at the Braai

Sunday Market

Walking along the beach

6am run (early bird surfers in background)

Lecture halls

Computing class

Orientation Week Continued

Friday, February 6th, 2015

12:00pm South African Standard Time

Weather: 75°F Sunny

What an action packed last few days of orientation. I feel like a tourist more than a student most of the time because the university is working to immerse us in the culture and become familiar with the area. I know that will begin to change next week as classes begin, but the international office encourages us to travel around the country as much as we can on the weekends and breaks. I am looking so forward to spending the months ahead getting to know South Africa even more.

On Tuesday of orientation we had breakout sessions on many different topics. In the Safety & Security session we learned not only to watch out for crime on campus, but there are were wild monkeys and poisonous snakes on campus too. I have seen the monkeys and they said they won’t bother you as long as you keep out of their space. Interesting enough, they have been known to steal food from student’s hands and even a few cell phones…I wonder who they are trying to call??? There are only two types of snakes that we need to watch out for and it is not common for students to get bit, but they are apparently out there. Such a different world here, but I am loving every minute of it so far.

Another one of the breakout sessions was on homesickness and loneliness. The school physiologist that led the session helped us understand the different phases we will all be going through at different times. The first is the honeymoon phase, followed by culture shock and ending with a form of acculturalization. I went through those phases to a mild extent last semester, but I am preparing for them to be at a much deeper level here for me and my friends as we fade from the honeymoon phase into real culture shock. Of course everyday thus far I have had instances of culture shock, but they typically don’t stick because I am still adjusting to the new environment. Little by little I am easing into the local routine, but I am still caught off guard by many local customs each today. Just today we had our second power outage. The first one I was in the hotel and the backup generators turned on within a few minutes and restored full power until the outage passed. Today I was at the local mall when it went out. All that I wanted to do was mail some letters, but they needed their registers to do so. Luckily I only had to wait around 30 minutes for the power to come back, but it was an experience that we rarely have in the US.

The last part of Tuesday’s orientation was a drumming session for us international students. We were each given a drum to play a call and response game along with dancing. It was a blast having the opportunity to make some noise and celebrate African culture. The video bellow was a great shot of the dancing that we did after playing the drums.

On Wednesday we had a campus tour followed by a city tour in taxicabs. It was 85 and sunny the entire day, so we were exhausted by the end. On the campus tour, I really got how big the university is. They have upwards of 20,000 students, so they are bigger than SCSU by about 4,000 or so. The city tour helped me become more oriented with where everything was in perspective. I found out that the place that Titus and I got lost on Monday was only a few blocks down from a well visited Nelson Mandela Memorial park. We ate lunch at a local pizza and winery. They had quite the special, 2 large gourmet pizzas for 100 rand ($10). It is fun to try new things here, epically when they are very reasonable.

On Thursday we visited the Missionvale Campus for a lecture on Nelson Mandela.  The campus was a 30 minute bus ride out of the city and built right in the middle of the worst poverty I have ever seen. There were people living in huts, malnourished children on the streets, no apparent running water and trash everywhere. There was so much trash surrounding the neighborhood that it looked like a landfill at first. I am sickened by the fact that people are living in those conditions in a country that is becoming more and more prosperous each year, yet still can’t raise their people from the depths of poverty. The campus however was beautiful. It appeared much newer then the main campus where I am taking my classes. The lecture halls even had air conditioning. Although a shock, I am glad that students in the poverty ridden parts of town have access to a higher education and I know there are programs that work to send students to the university that cannot afford it themselves. Still, there is much to be done to improve the quality of life for many parts of South Africa.

Last night I went with a group of us that are staying at the hotel, went to a local tavern. When we got out of the taxi we saw Chantel, a South African exchange student who had visited St. Cloud State last semester. She had visited our pre-requisite class for studying in South Africa numerous times to talk to us about South Africa, so we were stunned to actually see her out of the blue while we were here. We all got her number and she said she would try to meet up with us tonight while we are at our orientation week party at the Beer Shack in PE. The university is providing bus service to and from the beer shack, live music, dinner and two drinks for everyone, so it should be a good time.

Best wishes to you all,

Blake

South Campus

Blake & Titus

Selfie Scavenger Hunt 

Drumming

Blake and Austin

Austin, Angela and Blake

Blake, Tamarah and Erin

Blake, Tamarah and Gabe

Blake and Natalie

Blake and Titus

Trying to find shade...

Our taxi tour group

Lunch on the tour

Blake, Titus and Gabe all matching for dinner

Panorama from the Missionvale Campus

Tipsy milkshake and burger at Something Good 

 Afternoon at the Beach

Lily, Blake, Erin, Gabe and Tamarah

Blake and Erin

Tonight's Party