Some Cooking Tips

Hello again. Another Monday come and gone. And again I had no class. Well actually, I thought I had no class and it turns out I missed a 45 min session of Ayesha (our program head) going around to everyone, asking them what internship they were at and whether or not they liked it. So I guess I can live with missing it. It was totally unintentional though! So anyways, my Monday involved not going to class. Instead I went out to a nearby coffee shop near campus with Teresa and Sasha and Lesedie (a Witsie who hung out with us at Wits rural) and tried to get my reading done for my classes this week. Then we went clothes shopping unsuccessfully (unsuccessful for me because I couldn't figure out the sizing system and didn't want to keep holding up Teresa and Sasha so after trying on three different sizes of one shirt didn't bother getting new sizes for anything else). I want to get a few long-sleeved shirts that are more casual. I way over-packed in terms of business-appropriate clothing and under-packed in terms of normal winter clothing. The problem is that I am very used to wearing t-shirts in the winter, because everywhere you go it's heated. Except central heating is not a big thing here. So even if it's not that cold outside, it can get really cold inside. Hence the need for more long-sleeved shirts. Anyways, after two shops we gave up and went grocery shopping instead. I bought fresh baked bread (less than a dollar! I love shopping here) and have finally mastered the bread-slicing machine. It was a proud moment.

We had an Italian night last night and I was in charge of making the sauce. It actually went really well surprisingly enough. Especially considering that I wasn't exactly following a recipe. I had a rough idea of ingredients I would need and a little bit of a game-plan in terms of how to cook things, but mainly I was playing it by ear. Anyways, long story short, the sauce turned out well and so today I bought more ingredients I could use in sauce, because it was actually kind of fun and I would like to do it again. If you want my fail-safe recipe that I used last night, here it is:

-put some weird tomato and onion combination (found in a can) in a pot with oil and add in some finely chopped carrots and some of your own onion
-heat that for a bit
-cut up some peeled tomatoes (you can peel them easily by putting them in boiling water first. thanks mom for the tip) and scrape them haphazardly with a knife to get out some of the seeds
-put those into the pot
-add in an undetermined amount of garlic
-add in more of that tomato and onion mix
-smash some of the tomatoes somewhat effectively with a spoon
-stir that around and then while it's heating go on your computer and waste time on facebook
-get up when you remember the directions told you to put in basil
-put in some basil, skimp a little
-add some premade pasta sauce, but not too much because it smells a little weird when compared to the sauce you're making
-add in some carrots because you have some more leftover
-let that simmer (or whatever it does on a hotplate that kind of has a shaky control of heat) for an hour or so while you watch Freaks and Geeks over the shared itunes network of the international house
-add in some more garlic and a tiny bit of cheese
-taste it to make sure you didn't accidentally stir in rat poison during the chaos
-throw away the rat poison, why on earth do you keep that around when you haven't seen any rats? especially near food. come on now
-pour the sauce into a nice serving bowl, or whatever bowl is on hand
-take the premade sauce with you in case you're the only one who likes the sauce you made

hooray, you did it! congratulations

next time you should also add (but were too lazy to go shopping last time for):
-a little bit of tomato paste
-rosemary
-parsley

Happy cooking to one and all

"None of us has much time"

I watched a movie (Synecdoche, New York) with a couple of people tonight and this quote really spoke to the mild recluse in me who sometimes needs life to come to me. I've posted it on a wall in my room to try to steer me away from that tendency, especially while I'm in South Africa.

And they say there is no fate, but there is: it's what you create. And even though the world goes on for eons and eons, you are only here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time is spent being dead or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain, wasting years, for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right.

Ok, the quote in context doesn't exactly speak to what I mentioned above, but I think you can interpret it that way if you want to. So... I'm going to try to go out and do something outside my comfort zone this week, and I encourage you to do the same. What time is better than the here and now? Riddle me that.

Pictures! (take 2)

Picture from last week when we had the brai outside of the International House























Day 1 of internships, waiting to meet our mentors













Teresa, Sasha and me outside of the student center









Ameet and me one of the first nights hanging out in Sasha's room for a friend's 21st.













The whole group who went to Wits Rural (picture right before we got on the bus to go back to Joburg)











More pictures from the rural homestay. We helped with chores in the morning.











Oh, and we helped at night too. This is me sort of helping to make pap. I don't know if I actually helped though. I didn't really know what I was doing.










My group playing games we would later play with the orphan at the school before our homestay. This game is called jump river bank. It took us an embarrassing amount of time to figure out the game. Though the kids did fine with it.






Ok, I stole the above pictures from other people's facebook photo albums. My camera is hiding from me currently, so I'm relying on other people for pictures at least for the moment.

Hi Ho

I just got back from my second official day at my internship. I realize I didn't write about my first day, but since I did just about the same thing both days, I don't think it will be a problem. I've actually been finding it really interesting. Since Probono is a clearing house (meaning it takes in cases and then gives them out to high-power law firms) it has a ton of different cases to look through. And apparently a similarly-minded law firm called the Johannesburg Legal Center recently closed its offices and Probono inherited all their cases. So what I've been doing is going through a lot of these files, reading up on the cases so that I understand them, summarize the main points for myself, note what Probono workers have already done with the case, figure out whether or not the case should be closed (only happens if we haven't been getting responses from the client) or what else should be done. And apparently eventually I'll be calling people up to continue working on the cases. I'd better work on my phone persona. I tend to talk too fast and all that.

One of the more interesting cases I discovered was one for this guy who was hired by a security company as a guard. He was told that he was required to supply his own gun, however he was robbed on shift and the thief took his gun. The company suspended him until he could replace his gun, and he called back the next day only to be told that he had been replaced. And his replacement did not own his own gun. So the case was meant to get this man back pay owed to him because he was wrongly fired. However, the sheriff's department in the area was contacted to deliver the fee notice to the company and went to the company at 8:30 in the morning, even though they were told that the offices didn't open until 9:30. They then went back that night at 7:30 and (surprisingly enough) the office was again not open. The law center was then charged for the services of the sheriff's office, even though they went against recommendation. The office refused to pay the fees and then sheriff refused to try again. That's where the case was left. Unfortunately so many of these cases have been ongoing for like four or five years by this point. Anyways, the cases are interesting to read about, though the notes Shanon (the person I'm working on this for) has written about these cases are so illegible. I feel horrible each time I go up to her to ask her to translate her handwriting. Her handwriting rival's my dad's, which is saying a lot, I'm telling you.

Rehearsals for the musical piece I'm in are a lot of fun. Pretty unstructured, especially with the sort of student-run theater I'm used to, but it's definitely a different experience for me, which I enjoy. You can't grow if you're only doing the same thing every time. The piece is mainly this big group song, however it was 'composed' and written by the student informally directing it. I say 'composed' because he only has a rough melodic line in his head, and nothing written down. So during rehearsal we've mainly been trying to figure out an actual melody for it. I'm even singing lead vocals for one part of it (probably a reward for being the only person who has showed up to every rehearsal, or being the only girl there yesterday) which I'm not totally comfortable with yet because it involves a lot of improving and unstructured repetition that also needs to flow with the constantly changing background vocals. It's just not a type of singing I'm personally used to, and thus am not quite as confident with it as the rest of the guys involved in singing the song. I'm hoping it will get easier, and it definitely is helping me grasp harmonies quicker because there is no written music and there isn't even someone telling me when to sing harmony or sing melody, so I've been kind of doing it when I feel like it fits. Which doesn't always work, but I think I'm sort of getting better.

Academics (oh right, school. the reason I'm here) are going pretty well. Classes here are a lot more lecture-based than Vassar's, but we were warned about that like five million times before the program started officially, so I haven't minded. My lecturers have been pretty good. I still love my state sovereignty class the most. Natalie, our lecturer, said that next year it will be a semester-long instead of a half-semester course. I wish it was semester-long this year. My media studies class was interesting this week in the fact that she mainly focused on the logistics of media studies, which I appreciated never having taken a media studies class before. However she didn't even mention the readings, which was weird. Especially since she decided to let us out about an hour early. But come on, who in the their right mind wants to sit through a three-hour lecture in the afternoon, let alone teach one? I didn't mind. The core course (human rights, perspectives through law I think is what it's called) has a good lecturer as well, though it has the most minimal class participation. The class is also like 60-70 people (well, on a good day. I don't think we've ever had everybody in class), so minimal participation makes sense.

Our program is hosting a movie night tonight, which I'm heading to in about twenty minutes. It was advertised as a way to get our minds off of our homesickness, but I personally haven't been needing a distraction. I can't speak for everyone of course, but I don't get homesick very easily. And if I was homesick I don't know if this event would really cure me. Because it was also advertised as a movie followed by a discussion. Like another class. Can I get an oh God, why more school during our free time? I hope there's free food.

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.

Drinking with Lawyers

So I attended my first fancy function thing. Yes, that's what all the people working for the very intimidating law firm were calling it. It was very interesting. I was by far the youngest person there, but that was fine. There were people in their mid-twenties there too, so it wasn't just a bunch of old people. This was the first time I've been in South Africa and white people have been in the majority. It's too bad that wealth is still segregated so much along race lines. Not to say there was only white people there, but they were in the majority. Interestingly enough however, I noticed more women than men. Most likely because the function was for the establishment of pro-bono work at this particular law firm, and it seems (in my experience here) that women are more likely to get involved in more charity-based work than men. Don't ask me why, that's just what I've noticed.

So, we get there and for awhile I just shadow my mentor (Erica) and introduce myself to all these high-powered lawyer people who's names I quickly forget. As a lowly intern I'm sure they weren't even really listening when I introduced myself. They did have quite tasty finger-food type stuff that people kept offering me. One was a little chicken potpie thing. Very yummy. And then I met some people who were apparently in close contact with my organization. They work with litigation around abused children. There are only three people in their entire organization. So small. Anyways, they're all very nice and I got to talking with one of them for most of the night. I don't remember her name unfortunately. I also met another person from probono (Sharon. Yes! Remembered a name) who I really enjoyed talking to. She's worked with the UN before she came to work at probono. They kept encouraging me to go up and get more wine, since it was being paid for by the law firm and all. I was actually trying to decide between white wine and diet coke (coke lite here) and I think the bartender person thought I wanted to mix them and he asked if I wanted to do that and I thought he was suggesting it so I was like 'sure why not.' It didn't taste bad, but I don't think I would combine the two again. Just a bartending tip, both drinks are better by themselves.

They had a couple of speakers at the function, including a new head justice for the Supreme Court of Appeal, Edwin Cameron. Apparently he has been living with HIV for the last twenty years. I didn't know that when he was giving his speech of course, my mentor told me later. He wrote a book about living with HIV that she said she would let me borrow. He didn't say anything groundbreaking, but he emphasized the need for the law to be working with the people. A speaker before him pointed out that apartheid was so horrendous not because of the deaths that were brought on by it, since there were other countries where the death counts were much higher, but because people used the law to justify their behavior. He made the point that the law should be used to aid people who may not have a strong political voice, stressing the importance of their pro bono work. Which makes sense of course seeing as the function was for the official launch of a new pro bono department (I think that's what it was at least, I may have heard incorrectly).

But anyways, I am really excited about getting to know my coworkers and helping out at the organization, though I'm sure this is the only fancy function I will attend while I'm here. It was a nice first experience of one because I wasn't very concerned about networking (seeing as it is my first day working at the organization and I don't know much about, well, anything), but I did get the chance to at least say hi to a lot of interesting people. I found out exactly why they were interesting on the car ride back to Wits when Erica (my mentor) told me about the people she was talking to. For the most part I felt too unimportant to try to truly engage anyone in conversation. I only talked a lot with the other girl because she was telling me how she often feels uncomfortable mingling. We bonded over that.

When I got back to campus around 9ish I found out that the rest of the Americans (and by the rest I mean like two or three of them) were really worried about me because I disappeared for like the entire day and they couldn't contact me because I still don't have a working cell phone. I'm getting one tomorrow though, which I am really excited about. I feel so disconnected from everyone without one. I often feel like I should be socializing or something, but can't reach anyone. I don't know what I would do if I didn't have internet.

Two posts in one day. How excessive.

Oh wait, for some reason my posts came up on separate days. How odd. I posted the one for Wednesday on Thursday around 6 or something, and this one at around 12:30ish Friday morning. Yes, you care. I know you care.

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.