Blake Tyra's South Africa Study Abroad Blog: Loving Every Minute

Wednesday, March 11th, 2015

5:00pm South African Standard Time

Weather 73° F Sunny

Things have just been fantastic this past week. I am getting even more involved on campus and continuing to explore all that Port Elizabeth has to offer. A group of students arrived on Thursday from St. Cloud State that are on a spring break trip with the university. I know a handful of the students and two of the faculty were my teachers last semester. It was great to reconnect with them and be a part of their first experiences in South Africa. I am loving every minute of every day here and am looking forward to all that lies ahead these next few months.

Part of my getting involved on campus was joining the chess club. Chess is a big deal here at NMMU. They even have a team that competes against other universities throughout the country. At the first meeting we had an introduction to the club and learned about the different tournaments we are able to participate in. We then played a few games, both of which, I lost. I am not surprised because I haven’t ever had actual coaching. There is a chess coach that is part of the club, so I am looking forward to advancing my ability and developing some more advanced strategies. During the second meeting we played a tournament consisting of 5-minute games with a play timer. The first person to run out of time or get checkmated loses. I have never used a timer, so my first few games took some adjustment to playing quickly, as to not run out of time. I won one game and lost three during the tournament. I won that one game because my opponent ran out of time by a few seconds. It is very difficult to get a checkmate in 5 minutes, so speed-thinking is the name of the game. I think chess club is going to be a fun and unique experience here. My favorite part is that I am the only international student, so I can branch out and make friends with the local students, something I have been having trouble doing so far.

If I didn’t see enough monkeys at Monkeyland…they are all over campus. While walking by the tennis courts last Tuesday, there were monkeys eating out of the trash and running along the court fences while students were playing basketball. I got some good footage below. They are cute, but they sure know how to steal. I am lucky I didn’t have anything tasty in my possession when I walked by them.

On Wednesday I went the NMMU Pep Band concert. This is the first year the university has a band to play for their sporting events and they are the first university in the country to have such a band. It is like the St. Cloud Sports Band I am in, with the exception of marching band uniforms and formations. Their director hopes to develop the band into a marching band like colleges in the United States. Their concert was awesome! They played all modern American music hits and had the audience singing and dancing along in their seats. It was so much fun to hear some upbeat pep band music; it made me miss playing in the band back home. Their final number was "Thriller" by Michael Jackson and they had a guy in the audience get up on stage and dance to the entire song. I think you will enjoy the video bellow.

On Thursday, the St. Cloud State Spring break group arrived. I had just ordered dinner and was walking up to the front desk to pay for it with my credit card when the whole group was spewing through the doors of the hotel. A few of them recognized me and ran over to give me a hug. There was a great energy in the air as we conversed and I could feel their excitement of being in South Africa. They were all eager to find out how my trip was going so far and had lots of questions for me. It was fun to talk with them because they were very interested in everything I said because they would be in the same situations over the next two weeks of their trip. Half of the group is made up of undergraduates just here for the experience, some of which I had taken a South Africa study abroad pre-requisite class with. The other half is made up of graduate students (in the college counseling and advising program) who are here to meet with the counselors and advisers at NMMU and see how things are different here along with traveling the country. There have been some things on their itinerary that they invited us semester students to tag along on, so I am having some fantastic opportunities to explore PE even more this week.

On Saturday, Lily, Kenna, and I took a trip uptown to the Greenacers Mall, the largest shopping center in Port Elizabeth. I was surprised to find that it was very similar to malls in the states. There were hundreds of stores spread out on one seemingly endless level, until it turned into a new sector of the mall called The Bridges, which was two stories full of stores. We stopped in a Christian bookstore and, after talking with the clerk for a bit, she asked if we were saved. Instead of asking if you are Christian they ask if you are saved here. It caught us off guard at first, but then we realized what she was asking. There is always something in my day that throws me off a bit and it is all part of what makes this trip the enriching experience that it is. At the end of The Bridges was a movie theater. There was a mix of older and recent American movies and some South African films I have never heard of. I am planning on going back to see a movie or two there while I am here; I miss going movies with my friends from St. Cloud on the student movie nights.

Sunday was relaxing. A group of us went down to the Sunday market to do some leisurely shopping in the beautiful afternoon sunshine. I had a nice conversation with a couple I met from Canada that was visiting PE for a few days. They enjoyed hearing about my experiences in PE and thought it was great that I would be studying here for the full semester. The market is always filled with unique and beautiful things. There is everything from bongs to hand carved wooden animals sold along the street. There is also a lot of hand-made and painted wooden bowls and hand-crafted jewelry. It is always a different experience at the market because you never know exactly what you are going to find. In the evening, a group of international students from my hotel and I went out to an Ethiopian restaurant downtown. It was a hole-in-the-wall place, but man did they have good food. Ordering was simple for the group, meat or vegetarian. They brought out the food on two big platters for us, each filled with a variety of meats and vegetables with some rolled up pancake-type bread, which was used to grab the food. It was delicious! The meat was tender and perfectly seasoned. One type of meat even tasted like venison, which was amazing. It didn’t take long for us to clean both platters in a matter of 20 minutes. I will definitely be going back.

Monday was a very busy day and I was exhausted by the end of it. Part of the spring break student’s agenda is to attend some classes at NMMU, so Tammy, a classmate of mine from last semester, came with me to my morning Afrikaans class. She enjoyed hearing what Afrikaans sounded like and getting the feel for how classes are at NMMU. After class we had some time to hang out before going to a local museum. While Tammy and I were sitting outside having brunch, Dr. Johnson stopped to join us. Dr. Johnson was our professor last semester for Ethnic Studies, the class that was a pre-requisite for studying in South Africa. He is also in charge of the undergraduates in the spring break group. It was fun to catch up with him and share how my experiences have been here. Dr. Johnson has been to South Africa more times than he can count; he takes a group on spring break every year and visits for many different university events. Plus, he had been in and out of the country on a sabbatical he took (he’s been teaching for a long time). He was a great teacher to help prepare us for studying here and it has definitely paid off thus far.

After talking with Dr. Johnson I went along with some students from the spring break group to the South End Museum. During the Apartheid, the Group Areas Act forced all nonwhites out of the south end of Port Elizabeth. After they left, the government destroyed the majority of the houses and buildings to make way for a new, "white-only" area. The South End Museum is one of the few buildings that was not destroyed and tells the stories of those who lived in the south end before they were forcefully relocated. I was moved as I went through the museum and saw how well the residents had built up their part of the city. There were sports teams, theaters, beautiful houses and an active harbor. All of this was obliterated by the Group Areas Act and displaced all the residents elsewhere in the country. It helped me advance my understanding of the Apartheid and really enabled me to sympathize with those who lived through this horrible time in South African history.

After chess club on Monday evening I met up with some of my German friends and went to the school rugby game. The game was played in the middle of the running track and the bleachers surrounded the entire field. I wasn’t too surprised to find that half of the bleachers were reserved for the beer garden. Since the drinking age is 18 here, the beer garden is pretty much the student section. St. Cloud State bans alcohol on-campus. Here it is allowed and even provided at numerous events on campus and every rugby game.There are even off-campus events that the university sponsors like bar-hopping party buses and other on-campus events like beer pong tournaments where you can win money. It makes for a…let’s say…more exciting college experience compared to St. Cloud to say the least. Anyway, the rugby game was a blast. I, like many of the other international students, am still trying to figure out how the game all works, but when the them scores the crowd goes wild and so do we. We often cheer without understanding what exactly we are cheering for, but it is fun anyway. After the game everyone goes to the Beershack for the after party. I was reading the university newspaper today about how this year there is a debate about which bar has a better after party. Apparently the Beershack moved in this year and took the after party away from Barney’s Tavern down the road. I attached a copy of the newspaper below if you are interested in reading the article and learning more about NMMU.

NMMU Student Newspaper

Today was another action-packed day and I am going to have to write about it in another blog tomorrow. It will take all night to upload the pictures from today, so I will post them tomorrow when I can. I hope you all are enjoying reading my blog. Feel free to comment on my posts. I would love to hear what you think and answer any questions you may have. Enjoy the gorgeous weather you are having in Minnesota!