Monday (Feb 2) – Thursday (Feb 5) 2009
We started orientation this week. We got ID badges and people took funny pictures. We then had a funny photo contest and recorded it on Talkie. I was one of the first people who went and did not make a funny face – but I am sure there will be plenty more funny face photos opportunities to come. Much of the information we received at the first orientation session is irrelevant to us, since we are not directly enrolled in the University but at least we got to interact with the other international students for a bit.

On Tuesday Amina and I took our laundry to the Laundromat. It is custom to drop off your laundry and come back and pick it up the next day. It was only 35 Rand, which is about $3.50. We are so spoiled here. We have someone to do our laundry, the maid cleans and makes our bed every day and she even does the dishes! We burnt rice the other day so I did my best to help her out by scraping it out. Her name is Zuik and she is such a sweetheart - she plans to show us pictures of her baby and of the girls who stayed here last year!
On Wednesday we took a trip to GreenAcres shopping center. It was very much like an American mall. We did some grocery shopping and I finally got a beach towel! I also got a notebook – the paper here is longer then in the US though (A4). I got some colored paper and glitterglue to make valentines and other crafts as well. I also had my first Hello Kitty sighting! It was at Woolworth’s (a department store) and I took a picture with the model (this creepy girl) and her HK backpack!
That night we had a power outage. The power was out the whole night and into the morning. It was only in part of the city so some people still went out. It was late enough that I just colored and went to bed. Although the power was out we still had running water so we could still shower and flush the toilet which was amazing!
On Thursday we had a tour of the city. It was really interesting to get a brief history of Port Elizabeth, but I had trouble hearing everything because we were in large group. We went to the Red Location Museum located in the township. I felt awkward at times in the township – on our big double decker bus. We were just entering into their area and starring at them and there little houses. But what surprised me was that they all loved to wave at us. Everyone we drove past waved excitedly. The tiny little government houses seemed to stretch on forever. There were some kids who were playing outside the museum and lots of people took pictures and played with the kids. I was also surprised by the number of people on the busy road who were standing in the middle trying to sell things to people in cars as they were stopped at the stop lights.
We ate lunch at GreenAcres. I had taken my own lunch but I had a caramel dipped ice cream come for dessert! It was so good! I also got some postcards and envelopes! So if you write to me I can write you back! And Nelson Mandela is on the postage stamp! After lunch we made a trip to the post office. I was buying stamps for a few different people and itwas a very slow process. It was confusing because I didn’t know how much stamps were to the US and didn’t know how to explain I wanted postcard and envelope stamps but we finally got both kinds of stamps.