How everything turns away quite leisurely from the disaster...

It’s been a while since my last update, sorry ;) Though I’ve been rather busy, it’s more a lack of inspiration that’s to blame… and the fact that internet was cut off at my house on July 1st (personal email at work is generally frowned upon… oops).

Anyway, Oxford has been treating me very well. I actually just decided to extend my stay by a week (home on Aug 8)… and of course it started raining exactly 10min after I got off the phone with my British Airways booking agent—-classic.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve perfected the distinctive skill of being the 3rd wheel. This is mostly thanks to Steph and Elliot who I have had the pleasure of staying with on my occasional weekend/overnight excursions to London.



Those excursions were very frequent over the first few weeks, but recently I’ve been staying in Oxford a lot more—not because of the terrorist attacks in London, though those did rather shake me up, considering I was on a bus in London at the time of the attacks (and I would have been on the tube if I hadn’t been lazy and taken a taxi to the bus station… very clear lesson learned here: lazyness is a lifesaver).

But no, despite my luck, it’s more Oxford itself that keeps me here. I just keep meeting loads of interesting people and making new friends every time I go out, which undoubtedly sounds very corny but is also true. Plus, I’ve been on a few dates, though they’ve all been somewhat involuntary. Well not so much involuntary as accidental, think less sleazy-villian-kidnaps-innocent-woman Arnold Schwarzenegger action film, and more badly written overly serendipitous romantic comedy with B-list actors.

Well, in other news, my favourite neighbourhood graffiti was painted over this week. No more shall my daily walks to work be spent pondering whether “strict adherence to any religious dogma is intellectual suicide.” I am now sadly limited to the somewhat less eloquent musings about President Bush… On that tragic note, I leave you.

Euro-tripping

After last week’s pre-MTV interview freak-out, I am currently freaking out because I’m actually going to be on TV tomorrow!! It’s on MTV International but I have no idea what time my segment is airing, meaning I expect all of you in Europe to be watching MTV all day tomorrow… But no worries for those of you in the USA (or you non-satellite TV people in Europe), I’ve got a special Xmas gift in mind ;)

Anyway post-blowing the minds of the MTV producers, I flew off to Amsterdam for the weekend to meet up with Ivan and a friend of his… We had a great, albeit brief, weekend in the original city of sin. We visited the Van Gogh museum, walked along the canals, saw some monuments, wandered interminably through the red light district (thanks for that Ivan), which literally has red lights everywhere, and may or may not have smoked some quality marijuana (I will neither confirm nor deny the previous statement).

Overall it’s a really cool city and, despite the legal drugs and prostitution, it actually felt sort of clean and healthy. Everyone cycles everywhere (Ivan can attest to almost being run over several times), there’s no rubbish on the streets (the canals are another story), the architecture is cute (though some building seem to be gradually falling into the canals), public transport is clean and safe (well not so much for stupid tourists who stand on the tramway tracks), and the city is generally bright and airy. Basically I’m a big fan of Amsterdam and I definitely recommend checking it out…






I got back to the UK on Sunday evening and hopped over to London for a couple of days for a series of lectures/panels on the G8 and on ‘why does Bush care so much about Africa?,’ which was particularly interesting because the title was not meant to be facetious… As you can imagine, some of the Africans in the audience def got a little riled up during the Q&A.

After all the excitement in London (which included a reunion with my friend Casey who I haven’t seen in FIVE years), I’m now back in Oxford sitting at my desk in the office, where I’m clearly getting a lot of work done. I’m basically just killing time before leaving early this afternoon. The office is quite chilled out… classic NGO, highly educated, slightly hippie vibe, where the whole "9 to 5" thing is open to interpretation-- for instance half the office randomly decided to go to Wimbledon on Wednesday afternoon and we’re all going to Shakespeare in the park next week.

So work is cool and the Oxford social life is gradually getting there. I've met some really cool people (yeah I'm talking about you Muthoni) and my housemates are a rather eclectic but very cool bunch… Mandy and Nick, who have been together for a year, just finished university at Oxford Brooks and now have jobs in Oxford until further notice (it’s the kind of place you can get sucked into, think Northampton/Amherst). Beth finished Uni last year and bartends at a very trendy bar near my house. Her French boyfriend Ben, who works at the same bar, basically also lives with us. Then there’s Marius, an Afrikaner from Jo’burg who I think is unfortunately developing a crush on me, and Maria, a Spanish student with severely limited English (luckily Mandy was a Spanish major).

Our house is cute, with a nice garden in the back where Beth and her bf practice flaring (flipping bottles around Tom Cruise style). As previously mentioned, I live in the studenty, quirky, multicultural area of Oxford… Just a little sampling of stores on one block to give you an idea: a Brazilian art gallery, an antiques store, a tattoo parlour, an internet cafe, a discount hardware store, a little hair salon, and an über trendy tapas bar. Plus there are tons of restaurants in the area, and alongside the fastfood places and the more traditional Italian/Asian stuff, there is some more exotic fare: Jamaican, Polish ("the vodka specialists"), Indian vegetarian, a Vietnamese noodle bar, and more Kebab take-aways than are strictly necessary.



Ok all this food talk has suddenly made me realize that I haven’t actually eaten today, besides nibbling on some fair trade nectarines in the office… Off to lunch and then London for the weekend!

Africa via Oxford? Another Eve update

When I left you last I was on my whirlwind Eurotrip, somewhere between Italy and France. The week in Milan was very ‘divertimento.’ It’s a nice city, but one that needs some tweaking, such as air conditioning (NOT optional when the temp. averages 32°C in summer), maps of bus and tram routes (it’s always a bit of an adventure when using public transport in Italy… who knows where you’ll end up!), and functioning ATMs (when one stops working, apparently the entire system shuts down… another example of practical Italian thinking).

Other than that, there are some things that the Italians have just right. #1 on that list is clearly FASHION and SHOPPING (gentlemen, you may skip the next few sentences). Now, all the big designers are in Milan but at the same prices as NYC, so going to Armani/Prada/D&G/Gucci is a waste of time. However, there are tons of nice boutiques that are very reasonably priced by European standards. And yes, I did do some serious damage in the shoe department ;)
Another thing that the Milanese have right is ‘aperitivo’—evening cocktail period where for the price of one drink you have an open buffet with tons of salads, pastas, breads etc It’s a fabulous way for financially constrained students to basically get a free meal (and by financially constrained, I mean broke from shoe shopping).

So in addition to the shopping, eating, drinking, and sightseeing, France and I left scorching Milan for one day and took the train down to the coast. The train ride was an adventure in itself and I think the whole day can truly best be captured through pictures.









Anyway, after Milan, I spent a long weekend in Paris before heading back to NYC for a whole 4 days. A logical stop-over on my way to the UK, don’t you think? Actually I went back home for my sis’ high school graduation (congrats again Anne-France!), which I combined with a week of packing and partying. I had a great send-off party at Luna Park, a very nice outdoor bar in Union Sq park, and later at Cain (yes, I still heart Cain, despite the door bitch).



Anyway I moved to Oxford last weekend. My neighbourhood is pretty, um, interesting… Lots of students, plus soap-dodging hippies who drive old Saabs and walk around bare-foot, East Asian immigrant families who own taxi companies and ten thousand small grocery stores apiece etc. It’s the quirky multi-cultural part of Oxford, which is a nice way of saying that I don’t walk around alone after dark. But it’s all good, I survived Langa ;)

Unfortunately, my grandfather passed away last week, which was obviously very sad and hard to deal with since I’m so far from my family. However I’m quite busy with discovering Oxford and meeting new people that I haven’t been too depressed. Plus I started my internship at Africa Now last week and it’s going really well… The office is small and quite laid-back. We listen to music and the director makes coffee and tea for everyone (you better believe I love this role reversal). Some of the work I’m doing is the classic boring stuff like writing press releases and processing donations (donate online now!), but other things are quite cool like compiling case studies and being interviewed by MTV News.

What?!! Yeah, I’m being interviewed by MTV news because of the work Africa Now is doing for the Make Poverty History campaign (makepovertyhistory.org). For some reason, I’m the only one available and the director thinks that I’ll be great since I’m young (aka MTV audience age) and supposedly articulate and knowledgeable the issues. However, I am clearly FREAKING OUT. The interview is tomorrow afternoon in London!! AHHHH!!
Ok, must chill… *breathe*… Anyway I’ll obviously let you all know when it’s airing, but I think it’s only on MTV Europe.

Well, after my first TV appearance, I’m flying to Amsterdam for the weekend to meet up with some friends which is probably exactly what I need right now, if you know what I mean. Anyway I’m off for now… More info about Oxford, my housemates etc on the next update.

Eternal sunshine, literally

I know it's been a while since my last update, mostly because I've seen most of you since my return from South Africa... plus I doubt any of you want to read on about my day to day life up at school (fascinating as it is). Generally it was a great semester; 'studying abroad' at Amherst College (high school actually), living with boys (3 of 'em!), having a crazy 21-bday partay in NYC (caviar and pink gorillas?), organizing a huge tsunami relief fundraiser, partying hard, and working harder.



Anyway the semester is over and done with (finally) and I've now been on summer vacation for a little over 2 weeks... which doens't seem like much time, but feels like a lot considering what I've been up to. After a week of partying (and sleeping... oh sleeping is good) in NYC, I took off with my friend Rob from Princeton and Mark, one of his friends from GWU, to Reykjavik. I can see you all scratching your heads in bewilderment... indeed, why would someone want to go to Iceland? Well hopefully this little update will convince you.

So the hypothesis that I formulated during my stay is: Icelandic people are crazy. And it was confirmed over and over again... Reykjavik is one of the craziest party cities that I have ever been to--this coming from someone like me. We met a bunch of Icelandic students who were more than happy to show us around to the good bars, buy us ridiculously overpriced drinks and practice their (very good) English. The nightlife starts around 1am--that's just the pregaming. The real partying doesn't get going until around 3am, which of course makes sense since the sun is shining. A lot of places stay open until 7am on Friday and Saturdays because it's the traditional 'runtur', which is basically a city-wide bar crawl. Plus we happened to have landed in Reykjavik during graduation weekend, so the partying was all the more crazy.







In addition to lots of drunken stumbling and making jokes about Vikings (the best Icelandic beer is actually called Viking), we did a bit of the touristy stuff... saw the geysers (2 of only 5 in the whole world), some waterfalls, some volcanos, the mid-atlantic ridge that is slowly pushing Europe and America away from each other. I also went on a 4 hour horse trek around lava fields... Basically your usual tourist sights ;) We also walked around Reykjavik and visited the giant phallic Church and the Icelandic Historical Museum, which had fun activities for kids like dressing up as a Viking (which I did) and reconstructing heathen graves (which I did not).







Plus we saw lots of the sights and other cool stuff during our evening stumbles around town, a nice aspect of the eternal summer sun. One not so nice aspect is that it tends to make sleeping in a hostel with no black-out shades rather tricky. I think Icelandic people just deal with it by getting smashed every night, a tradition which we tried to adhere to as well.

A few last notes about Iceland and Reykjavik:
-it is the most expensive country I have ever visited--$20 for a cocktail in a normal bar (aka NOT a super upscale/trendy place)!! To put things in even sharper perspective: some of the taxis are Porsche Cayennes.
-the mullet is back (or maybe it never left)...and this applies to both men and women.
-a red light is only red if there is an old lady in the middle of the road... and it is never red at night.
-12 degrees celsius is hot weather! Break out the shorts and tee-shirts, and get yourself some ice cream!
-Icelandic rock music is very angry, which I suppose is understandable when you only have 3 hours of sunlight in winter... in addition, Icelandic people are notably sexually active (not to say promiscuous), which is understandable for exactly the same reason.

Well I'll stop boring you all about my little Icelandic journey... besides I've been in Italy since Monday so all of this is ancient history ;) I'm taking Eurorail to Paris this afternoon for a long weekend with friends and family and then back to NYC for 4 days before taking off to the UK for the summer!!

Craving some biltong

Well I presented my Indep. Study Project stuff (again) for a special research symposium at Smith last weekend... Looking over that thing that dominated my life last semester brought back all those great memories, and also the not-so-great ones (um, bedbugs anyone?)...
I have this list of all these South African idiosyncracies that I miss and that I think we all actively need to work on bringing over to the statess... For example, integrating "hectic" into our everyday vocab, calling traffic lights "robots" (because they clearly are), walking around barefoot--everywhere, calling napkins serviettes, and systematically removing all trash cans (or "rubbish bins"). There are obviously some things that we all love about South Africa that will never hit it big here, like putting mayo on everything (including pizza--yummy, *gag*), making cream soda the color of fluorescent nuclear waste, making people pay for plastic bags at the supermarket, and, of course, minibus taxis.
Otherwise life has been pretty decent, particularly the last week since the weather has finally decided to cooperate. Unfortunately, the nicer the weather, the less work gets done... which is tough considering how much work there is at the end of the semester-- ugh.
Anyway, I actually have a pretty cool summer lined up so far. I'm taking a bit of a break after classes end and traveling with some friends to Reykjavik for a week, then visiting a friend who's abroad in Italy for a week... After that I'm interning at this foundation called Africa Now that's based in Oxford, England. They do some pretty cool work and it's a pretty small org (at least on the British end) so I'll hopefully be able to actually do some real work for them. Anyway that lasts abour 6 weeks and then I'm going to Sierra Leone (and possibly Liberia) with a few kids from Amherst because we've started an org and raised some money to build schools for girls. I'm really excited about that trip, though my parents are clearly freaking out about security. It's all good though because we're going under the auspices of UNICEF so we'll have a UN security detail (sounds pretty hardcore, right?)... That takes us to the middle of August and then... I dunno... probably just relaxing :-)
I hope you're all well and that the end of the year isn't too hectic!

Goodbye South Africa

Last weekend was a flurry of goodbyes to Cape Town, shopping, partying, and days on the beach (though not in the water because the Atlantic there is basically the Antarctic Ocean). It was quite difficult to say 'bye to Cape Town, a city I have after 4 months come to consider another home.

On Tuesday morning, after our free weekend, the whole group was bused to Hermanus, a pretty beach town about 2 hours from CT, known for the "best land-based whale watching in the world!" Of course, the whales are not currently around, so we saw jack shit. We did spend a fair amount on time on beach, and actually swimming in water as this was the Indian Ocean.






We also had some pretty corny "de-orientation" sessions about the issues of re-entry etc... Bascially you all should be very sensitive and eager to hear about my experience :-P All is all though it was great to spend the last four days just with our group. On Friday after a nice lunch on a wine farm, we drove to airport and said goodbye to our Academic directors and to the kids who were staying around CT for the holidays.




Anyway, I'll gloss over the 22hrs inside an airplane, which basically consisted of watching many many crappy movies and downing several mini bottles of wine. So after a grand total of about 32hours of traveling, I got back to the USA yesterday morning! And even though I'm slightly traumatized by the bloody cold, I am happy to be home, back up at my country house, with my family, my dog, and our new kitten. I am planning on sequestering myself here for a couple of days to unpack and readjust, but I will definitely be back in the city and ready to party on Monday evening.
Hope to see you all very soon! Happy Holidays,
Kisses,

Eve

Final days eAfrika

Wow the semester has certainly sped by... I can't believe I only have 10 days left in South Africa! However I have been trying to make the most of my time left, which has actually been helped by the fact that my mother is down here visiting. I met up with her in Joburg last Saturday, and we spent the weekend in Zimbabwe. We saw Victoria Falls and did a little safari/touring of Zim. Needless to say that the trip was great. The falls are amazing, particularly the aerial view we got from our helicopter ride(!)

We got back eKapa on Monday evening (I'm staying with her at the hotel), and I spent Tuesday showing her around... A long walk around the city (and some shopping along the way) and a visit to my family in Langa. Yesterday was pretty exciting bc I managed to convince my mom to join me in an activity I've wanted to do for a long time: cage diving with great white sharks. Oh yes, I was in a cage, in the Indian Ocean, with my mother, and great white sharks. Unfortunately, I got horribly sea sick (which never happens to me, but the sea was quite rough where we were anchored) but I just stuck it out. I even puked while I was in the cage :( Anyway it was really cool, and not scary at all. We saw about 8 different great white sharks, varying in size from 2.5-4 meters (juvenile size)... The best view was from the boat, and I only saw two sharks through the murky water while I was in the cage. The sharks were actually quite shy and didn't usually hang around for too long--except for this one huge female who kept sneaking up and stealing the bait. Despite losing about 5 pounds over the side of the boat, it was totally worth it. (Check out shark pics.)


Today is my mother's last day in Cape Town, and also the day that my massive ISP is due. Obviously this trip has been planned for a while so I actually finished the mega-research project last week, a whole week early. Yes, all 65 pages of it. (*pause for applause*) Thank you, thank you. Anyway I'm just finishing up some proof-reading now (clearly) and then I have to print it and get it bound.
So off to finish my work, and then hopefully have some time by the hotel pool before our big celebratory dinner tonight ;)
Love to all... and I guess I'll be seeing a lot of you in about 10 days!

The intrepid, adventurous, shark-diving E.V.E

*yummy* it tastes like oppression

Just a quick note to update and to wish you all a happy turkey day (well, to those of you who are American or in the US at any rate)! It's so weird being out of the country and away from my family on my favorite holiday--especially since I'm usually in charge of Thanksgiving at home!
Anyway, my group decided that we had to have a Thanksgivng, so we had an ex-pat celebration last Sunday. Everyone participated by bringing a dish and yours truly was of course in charge of the turkey/stuffing/gravy/pecan pie. Actually there were 3 turkeys, yes 3, because I was feeding over 25 people. Needless to say that I did actually spend the entire day in kitchen. We had a great dinner though and a really nice evening all together (the pics were added to the website). There was tons of yummy food--enough that I've been surviving on left-overs most of the week. However it was a little surreal because it's summer down here, I mean, we had dessert around the pool.






Actually this whole "eternal summer" thing is messing with me a little bit. I've been wearing capris and tank tops for 6 months now; I am ready for wool sweaters, boots, scarves etc... It's definitely going to be quite a shock to arrive back home in NYC in mid-December and be greeted by snow, ice, and sub-zero wind chills.

Well I'll let you back to your copious meals and inevitable indigestion as I have to get back to work (I spent the whole day visiting corporate-sponsored small business programmes),

Love to all,

Eve

Summer in Cape Town

Molweni everyone,

Yes, it is summer in Cape Town! Warm, sunny, beautiful weather... that I obviously have not yet had the chance to take advantage of because I am in the library most of the day, everyday. No, the program is not all fun, traveling, and hospitalization, there is legit work involved. Actually there's quite a lot now because I'm working on my independant research project. Lectures/ classes are over and now we're free—a relative term in this situation obviously. The focus of my project is corporate social investment programmes (CSI) and their role in nation-building and development (fun fun fun). I've gotten really lucky and managed to get interviews with the directors of CSI programmes of huge companies (like Shell). Next week I'll be visiting some of the projects around Cape Town and then focusing on writing this mother of a paper--40 to 60 pages total.

However, I seem to be one of the few actually taking this seriously. My roomates spend more time chilling at the beach and smoking pot than studying. But that's their decision and, besides the fact that they regularly ravage the contents of the fridge, the living arrangements are going really well. Our flat is so cute; we have a little patio with lots of flowers and a huge tropical hibiscus plant, a sun room, stained glass doors, high ceilings etc...

Plus the neighborhood in Observatory is really nice, with little boutiques, lots of cafés and bars, random second hand shoes stores, organic food markets. Come to think of it, it's actually a lot like Northampton. With less lesbians. And no snow.



Alrighty, I'm cutting the rambling short this time... mainly because I really have to get to work transcribing these interviews.
Kisses,

Eve

diet Africa --low in carbs and political commentary

Helloooo everyone--

Terribly sorry about being slightly incommunicado recently... I know most of you must have been panic-stricken with the thought that I might have relapsed and been re-hospitalized. No such luck I'm afraid. Or maybe you were so absorbed in following the democratic processes in the US that you completely forgot about me. I won't go on some long diatribe (as promised in the subject line) but I would just like to say how weird it was "watching" the election from down here. Also, the fact that Mugabe is my neighbor to the North and that Swaziland still has a divinely appointed absolute monarch definitely puts Bush in perspective. (END POLITICAL RAMBLING HERE)

Well, last week we were in Stellenbosch, a small city in the wine country about an hour away from Cape Town. It's an really pretty city, surrounded by vineyards (yes, we did go on a wine tasting) and it feels a bit more like a big town with tree-lined streets, lots of cute cafés and boutiques.






It almost feels like a New England or even parts of Europe--which was basically the goal, because, fun fact about Stellenbosch: it's considered the intellectual birthplace of apartheid. All the prime ministers and architects of the apartheid went to the university of Stellenbosch. In fact, the legacy of apartheid is very strong there, and the white population (a majority there, duh) has some pretty fun views on South Africa as a new democracy. Most of them are comfortable, middle class farm-owners, and are semi-comparable to people from "Middle America." Well I won't delve into all the fun fun fun ignorant racist bullshit things we heard during our stay, but I will give you a fun fun fun anecdote about the family I stayed with there:
So about 3 months ago, the parents were car-jacked, at gun point, in their driveway. The father was shot and killed, and the mother was also shot but she survived. The bullet is still lodged in her chest, actually in is in her lung, which is why they can't remove it. Their 15-year-old son witnessed the whole thing from inside the house. But, you know, they're "fine with it."
WHAT?!
Yeah, it was pretty intense. And quite irresponsible on the part of my program directors to put me with a family that experienced such violent trauma so recently--as if I'm equipped to manage this situation. Thank god that we were paired for this homestay as well... My friend Becca and I were able to sort of support each other and take turns muttering sympathetic remarks to the family.



Ok so Stellenbosch is finito, and now we're on our last homestay. This time we're staying with Coloured families (that is the appropriate SA term to refer to people of mixed-race) in Cape Town. We just started that homestay last night, and my family is really nice. I'm staying in a nice proper, middle-class, mostly Christian suburb with about half the group, with the other half staying in the city center with middle-class Muslim families (during Ramadan, I know).

As you may have noticed, there are some organizational issues with the program, and yours truly is getting a teensy bit frusterated. Well I'm certainly not the only one, and we all vent to each other and mock our weird and quirky program directors: Shane, a short, middle-aged man from Ireland via Zimbabwe, stutters, loses his reading glasses several times a day, and can't drive us anywhere without making a minimum of 17 U-turns. Zed (see, even the name can be mocked) a lanky, middle-aged man from Zimbabwe plays rugby and comes to class with black eyes, tries to pose as a father-figure, and walks around bare-foot in the office (it's a South African thing). Scariest part? They both hold PhDs.

Well the 'structured' part of the program is almost over, and we'll all be starting our independent research projects next week. So for the remaing 5-6 weeks of the program (times flies, no?) we'll be living in Observatory, a cool, studenty, bohemic-chic area of CT. I found an awesome flat and am living there with 4 friends. We are all so excited to settle in and not be living out of backpacks... you have no idea how draining it is to be shuttled from family to family every few weeks, explaining the program over and over and repeating the same life-story spiel etc.

Anyway, we have afternoons free this week to do preliminary research for our ISP (indep. study projects) so maybe I'll go do that rather than further clogging your precious inboxes,

Love to all,

Eve