This post is meant to be fun, so enjoy!

South African slang (and some words we don’t have in English)! I chose the terms that seem to be the most common, and most of them are Afrikaans words:

Bakkie: truck

Biltong: dried meat, similar to jerky (they love it here, especially when watching rugby)

Boerewors: spicy sausage (meaning farmer-sausage in Afrikaans I think)

Bru: bro, kinda the equivalent of dude

Braai: (pronounced bry)barbeque

Howzit: How is it going, or what’s up?

Izzit: short for “Is that so?” and used in a similar way as “Really?” or “oh?”

Jersey: shirt/sweatshirt/top

Jol: (pronounced jawl) to party/have fun

Lekker/lekka: nice. Apparently this is a bit old fashioned and now “rad” is coming back in

Just now: sometime in the next couple hours

Now now: right now/this very moment

Robot: traffic light

Shebeen (or shab for short): unlicensed bars in townships

Tekkies/takkies: sneakers

Yebo: “yes” in Zulu

Other terms also used: vibe, keen (as in “are you keen on the beach vibe?”) cheers (for goodbye)

Other things/musings:

What is Amasi? It seems like milk, but it is more tan colored. Odd.

People that live in townships have strong accents if they can even speak English at all. Very hard to understand sometimes.

You would think that at least one person in a house of 20 would remember to take out the trash on Fridays. Apparently not.

There are seagulls here, and of course they are everywhere.

Table mountain is not as flat on top as it looks from down below, and it takes a lot of legwork to get up there. A LOT, but worth it!

The South African National Gallery is a little boring.

The South African Museum is fun if you like to look at models of fish and taxidermied animals, which I do it turns out!

So far, there is no good Mexican food in South Africa. I really miss it yumm.

I got a haircut in Golden Acre mall by the train/taxi station in the city center for 150R, and it looks pretty good. The lady gave me a ton of bangs (or fringe) so they are constantly in my face, and the left and right sides of my hair are different lengths (but you can’t really tell). Looks fine though, no complaints.

I climbed up Table Mountain from Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens via Skeleton Gorge, went to M(something) Peak and the cable car station (the cable car is shut down right now and has been for a month for maintenance), and then down Platteclip Gorge. The height of the mountain is about 3,500 ft., and we walked a total of about 6 km. I went up with a group of about 12 people, but we split up into a fast and a slow group, and I was in the slow group.

Minibuses (taxis) are fun, as long as you aren't afraid to get close to strangers and

Pictures yay! Here are some pictures of my last couple of weeks.

Obama Haircuts! The sign reads: "Looking neat is our target. Change your look yes we can. "

South African National Gallery with some nice wispy clouds in the sky

Inside the South African Musuem. To the right of this picture was a little booth that made whale noises. That was fun.

Some cool dead birds

Springbok! I think this was intentionally posed to look like the rugby team's logo/emblem.

This poor guy is now extinct. It was pretty creepy because the hall where this was kept was pretty dark, and in order to see this specimen you had to press a button to turn on a light. The light took a while to flicker on, and then the 2 week old preserved animal was illuminated. When I walked away the light was still on, but turned off with a click that really startled me.

My dino buddy. His name is Cleo.

2 Germans, 2 Norewegiens and I made up the slow group. Here we are going up Skeleton Gorge. This was the fun part, but before this was endless stairs.

View from the top of Skeleton Gorge

Back side of Table Mountain looking towards False Bay (Indian Ocean) to the South

Me on top of Macleod's Beacon, the highest point on the mountain

The flat part

Gasp! Amazing, amazing, amazing. And very windy and steep, but amazing. The sun is also very intense and glaring in case you failed to notice on your own here.

Looking towards the 12 Apostles (a formation in the mountain range) and Camp's Bay and assorted beaches (Atlantic Ocean)

A dassie, a big rodent animal that hangs out on the mountain, staring at you and eating your food. Kind of cute, but with ugly teeth

This is just a cool picture of some red-winged starlings (I like birds ok? geez)

Making our way down Platteklip Gorge

An indigenous plant to the Western Cape, a protea. Fynbos plants (which this plant is a part) form part of the Cape Floral Kingdom, which is the smallest and richest per area unit of the world's six floral kingdoms. 2200 species can be found on Table Mountian alone, so if anyone is into botany, you should come here.

Boom what a view

This is part of the Michaelis Collection that contains a lot of 17th Century Dutch paintings. I had to go to see this for my class, and it turned out to be pretty cool for a free thing.

Sunset view from my balcony

12 Apostles from the ground, with Clifton Beach on the foreground. Clifton Beach is actually 4 small pockets of beach, as you can kind of see here. Beach 1 is for surfers, Beach 2 is for couples, Beach 3 is for gay people, and Beach 4 is for everyone. These aren't really followed in actuality I don't think, but charming nontheless.

Seagulls came and tried to eat our food. The sand looks like it is made mostly of quartz becuase it is mostly white, with little black pieces.

Another bird picture I know, but this one is just cool. And don't expect it to be the last bird picture either.

At sunset. I like this picture.

And this one.

For the cat lovers, here is our house cat asleep. Adorable! It does not have one official name. I, and several others, just call it "Cat," another girl calls it "Tinkerbell," and the other name it was sort-of given is "Valium" or "Val." The gender of the cat is still debatable as well.