Blurry Times in Durban

I went to Durban with a group of people on Thursday. We stayed in a hostel for the night, and came back Friday afternoon. Here is me at about 11am on Thursday, stoked about seeing the Indian Ocean for the first time:

Here is me about six hours later, also at the Durban beach:

I know neither of them are great pictures, but perhaps you can notice some differences between the two? Difference 1: I'm all wet, and have changed from jeans to boardshorts. We went to a water park just off the beach, and also swam in the ocean a lot. Difference 2: Where it was once sunny and clear, it's overcast. It started raining heavily, just all of a sudden, and then stopped about five minutes later. It was weird. No warning at all. Difference 3: I no longer have glasses on. This is the embarrassing part. When I was in the water park, I was going on water slides, and my glasses fell off at the bottom of one of them. Luckily, one of the guys working there was able to find them and fish them out. But did I use this as a warning to take them off before going in the ocean? No. So now my glasses are enjoying the Indian Ocean. I hope they have a good time. Luckily I brought a spare pair, and some contacts, so I can see now. But the rest of that day and the day after were very blurry. Here is another picture of some of the buildings there, from the beach, when it was still sunny:

Other than the beach and the water park, we walked around a market, and went to a mosque(sp?), where we sat in for part of a prayer. It was interesting. We also had some good Indian food, and walked around the Science Museum and the Art Museum in the city hall. We didn't have enough time to thoroughly do either, but Durban is only about an hour away from Pietermaritzburg, so we'll have lots of chances to go back. While we were there, I also saw these cool trees with some weird fruit:

They're probably not edible, they were just by the side of the street.

Last weekend, the program took us to the PheZulu Safari Park. When we got to the park, the Zulu people did some cultural dances for us, and did a small performance showing how a traditional Zulu man would propose to and marry a traditional Zulu woman. Then they showed us a traditional chief’s hut, and a traditional kitchen hut. Here's a picture of some of the huts:
And this is the Valley of a Thousand Hills, where the park is located:

It was really pretty. After the Zulu culture show, we went to the crocodile feeding exhibit that was also part of the park. The crocs (which were Nile Crocodiles) just looked like statues when we first saw them, and there were so many of them. Then they started throwing meat into the enclosure, and they started going after it. Sometimes you could hear the powerful force of their bite. There was also one tortoise, and a lot of snakes, including a puff adder, night adder, a couple kinds of cobras, an African Rock Python, green mamba, black mamba, boomslang, and a bunch of others. Our guide took out one of the pythons and let us pet it. This gives you an idea of how big the crocs were (this is right after they started throwing food in):

After that, we went to lunch at this nice Afrikaner restaurant called The Pot and Kettle. I would have enjoyed it much more if it wasn’t horribly hot. They sat us outside because we were such a big group, and my seat was in the sun. We filled up four tables, and I think just at my table of six we must have ordered like 30 drinks, because we were so hot. There was a really nice view of the valley though. There was a sign posted on a tree that said “Please do not feed the monkeys”, but sadly I didn’t see any monkeys. This was the view from where were sitting:

Today we went on a tour of Pietermaritzburg, and saw the city center, as well as a township outside of Pietermaritzburg called Mpophomeni, a community center that used to be a prison where Gandhi was held, and Howick Falls, where there was a really cool, huge waterfall. Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera, but other people took pictures, and one even took a picture of me in front of the falls, so I'll get those. Tomorrow I'm going to Tala Game Ranch, in the Eston district near Pietermaritzburg. They have giraffe, rhino, buffalo, zebra, hippo, and a variety of antelope and birds, but sadly no carnivores. So that should be cool. (And hopefully I'll remember to bring my camera!)

In the meantime I hope this satisfies your need for pictures for a while. My classes start on Monday.

Yay! I'm alive!

Hello everyone! Howzit? Sorry it took me so long to write on here! I've been figuring out the internet and everything. I'm in an internet cafe right now and I only have about 8 minutes left so I'll have to make this quick.

South Africa's great! It's really beautiful and everyone is really friendly. Sometimes I have to stop for a minute and think OMG I'M IN SOUTH AFRICA because it's a lot like the US, except that everyone has an accent. So far I've only seen the campus and the shopping stuff really close by. My dorm is nice, even though it's a bit of a walk to campus. I have my own sink. (What decadence!)

So far, the coolest thing has been seeing new common birds and insects. I'll have to take some pictures when I get a chance. I wish I could identify the birds. One of my friends here had a gecko come into her room, and I had told her that I'm into herpetology, so she called me over to see it. It was so cool! So far no interesting spiders. (Sorry Dad!)

My registration was yesterday, but I'm only registered for two classes (Animal Health and Community Ecology) so far because I need to get a couple other classes approved. I'm hoping to get into an Introductory Zulu class and a KwaZulu-Natal history class. It seems like a lot of the international students are also taking Zulu, so it's good that I won't be the only non-South African in the class.

I miss everyone so much. xoxoxoxo Eva