Monday, Monday

My one class today (the internship class I've been... raving about) was canceled. Which was nice because I wanted to get a lot of my work for the week done today. Which I sort of did. There's still more to do of course. I hung out with Sasha and Teresa (two of my fellow Americans) at a cafe on campus reading all about international human rights laws. I also met with a fellow international student today named Gift who studies in the drama department and is putting together a music/theatrical piece for a month-long exhibition called Make Art/Stop Aids. He wanted to put together an international cast and asked me a week or so ago if I wanted to be in it (he had heard from the other Americans that I was musical). I'm really excited to be part of the arts just a little bit while I'm here. I sometimes get antsy without my art outlet.

Our performance will most likely be the second week of August, so we're planning on having three rehearsals a week. There's been a problem with schedules, so I haven't met the whole cast, but we did get to sit around tonight and riff on a song that he composed. We had a very talented acoustic guitarist with us, so it was really fun. I wish I could still play guitar, it's such a beautiful instrument. I'm excited about the project though, it feels like the theater for change thing I did with Heifer back like four or five years ago (wow that's a long time), where there was a leader who had a vision, but the performance only came about through the collaboration of everyone involved. And I personally love conveying messages through music and performance. There's talk of getting me to play the saxophone during it, which would be interesting seeing as I didn't bring mine. I don't know if anyone would actually be willing to lend me theirs. We'll see.

This weekend was nice. I met another American staying in the international house whose home institution is Tisch (NYU). He cooked with us on Saturday night. We had Mexican night and we all made different dishes (I made quesadillas-is that spelled right?) though I was severely limited by my lack of grated mozzarella. I have some fresh mozzarella I found at the larger supermarket we went to at the mall, but it doesn't melt the same way. It's ok, they were still really good. And we also had tacos and nachos (though we improvised a bit because they don't seem to have plain corn chips here). We're planning on having an Italian night sometime this week.

We also had a brai yesterday. It's basically their word for barbecue here, though you can buy meat pre-marinated with special brai sauce. Our chef was a guy named Ameet who actually graduated last year, but bunks here because his house is too far away from his job. He's my unofficial next door neighbor. The international house has a brai grill you can take out, so I'm sure we'll do it again in the near future. It takes awhile to cook everything, but it's definitely worth it.

Tomorrow is my official first day at my internship. I couldn't figure out transportation for last week. Unfortunately I still don't have a handle on how transportation will work for tomorrow. It's definitely too far for me to walk, but I don't want to pay for a taxi to and from Wits a couple of times a week. Elanza, the internship coordinator here, is trying to figure it out for me. I'm excited slash nervous because my mentor told me that she was planning on having me look through case files for the first couple of weeks. And since I know nothing about law, I'm hoping I won't be too over my head. If I don't understand it I know I can tell her and she'll find something else for me to do, but I want to be as useful as possible. Who knows, maybe it's much easier than it sounds.