February 28, 2007

It’s the last day in February and our second to last night on the ship before we reach Cape Town. As of right now, we’re 6 hours ahead of EST and we’ll be losing one more hour of sleep tonight. If you can manage to go through the day without napping or laying down, then you’ve got some sort of super power. Everyone on this ship is always napping before studying or napping before class or napping before dinner. The problem with napping is that you don’t sleep as well at night and then you’re so tired in the morning, so you have to nap again. And the cycle continues. I have two tests tomorrow, in Abnormal Psych and African-American literature, so I don’t get any naps today.

I’m so excited to get to South Africa. It’s the most modern African we could go to, but I’ll be staying busy and I’m very excited to see the whole country. We arrive Friday and don’t leave until the following Thursday night. I’ll be taking a safari in Kruger National Park for four days and will also be biking to the wine lands and tasting deliciousness on Saturday. One of our American dollars equals roughly 7 of theirs, so shopping is a must. Apparently there is a phenomenal music store that I have to stop into so I can spend all my money. I have no idea how I’ll be getting anything I buy home to Virginia, but that’s not something I really want to worry about now.

At every port, we pick up a student who is from or represents our next destination. For South Africa, we had a young Indian woman from the University of Cape Town come and talk to our Anthropology class personally, so she could tell us all the things we shouldn’t miss out on, including the huge Jazz Festival that is taking place in Cape Town Friday and Saturday night. I don’t think I’ll be able to go to that, but there are clubs all over the city that we’ll be going to for the nights I’m in Cape Town. They’ve got a big hip-hop culture down there and we listened to some of it last night in pre-port and I can’t wait to buy it and blast it in the Xterra. No one will even know its from Africa.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that we have celebrities on the boat, other than Desmond Tutu. One of our students looks exactly like Russell Crowe. Exactly. I love Mr. Crowe, but I just don’t think that this kid is as cool the Gladiator. One of our teachers, named Rocky, looks very similar to Daniel Craig, the new James Bond, and it’s always fun to see him around the boat. He does magic and he and his wife have a 7-month (I guess 8-month now) old son on the boat named Ryder who actually rocked the Mohawk for a few days. And I figured out that if you say Jay Leno really fast, it sounds like Gyllenhaal. Try it.

Classes are done and I’ve just got time to waste now before we get to South Africa!