Oh the Weather Outside is...

Ok, I just felt the cold. I've been walking around in t-shirts while everyone native to Joburg has been bundled up with scarves and hats, mainly because it isn't cold out. It's like 50-65 degrees outside (roughly) which is nice weather. However we went to a play last night and I stupidly wore a skirt with flip-flops and I am surprised my feet stayed on my body. This is going off of the assumption of course that once your feet get too cold they simply detach from your legs. I'm sure that's a correct fact. I'm not used to the lower room temperature that larger buildings have. So throughout the play I was trying to send warm thoughts to my feet, with very little success.

I really enjoyed the play though. It told the history of South Africa, somewhat from a Dutch perspective interestingly enough, through dramatizations of famous political figures (like Nelson Mandela) and performance of traditional African songs. I wish I recognized more of them because I really liked them. The only song I recognized was Amazing Grace (haha obviously I recognized that) which they sang near the end. While I've been in South Africa for about two weeks now, this was the first experience where I truly felt submerged in the culture. The combination of the dramatic retelling of South African history along with the reactions from the large audience was an experience I hadn't really had yet.

I've had my state sovereignty class (it takes place on Wed and Thurs) which I am really excited about. Not only is the lecturer very clear and leads discussions well, but the topic is one that really interests me. The class seems to be building on international politics, which I took last year and was the reason I decided to be a political science major. On the other hand though, the internship course lecture (which we had again today) has not improved and in fact our lecturer was getting such little response from us (not our fault, the questions she was asking were either too touchy-feely or too obvious) that she actually left halfway through on claims of feeling ill. Which meant we got to leave class early, so I guess that was nice. I do feel bad though. She's the administrator for Bard and is leaving tomorrow to go back to the States. I hope our next lecturer will be a little more intellectually-stimulating.

The other aspect of the internship class however (the internship part) I'm really excited about. I met my mentor today over a luncheon and she seems really cool. The projects that I may be working on really interest me as well. Mainly what the organization does is take in cases and refer them to different lawyers or facilitators who want to do pro bono work. The cases can be anything from family court cases, to working with HIV-positive people and recent migrants who are often discrimintaed against. And often large law firms require lawyers who work for them to commit to a minimum number of hours of pro bono work. So anyways, I'm working there with one other students from Wits and I went by the office with her today (the other students had a lecture) and she invited me along to a function tonight. I'm actually not positive what it's for, except I know that it's in the nicer part of the city. I hope I won't be too over my head. I'm sure she'll explain things to me, she's been very good about that. I'm actually at her house right now on her computer as she gets ready and looks after her son who has chicken-pox.

Classes are done for the week and all I have tomorrow is work at my internship site. I'm not positive how I'm getting there though since it's not quite walking distance. I guess I'll hail a cab or something.