drove into Chicago yesterday to meet up with wishingonsatellite girl for dinner.

kept expecting pedestrians to suddenly dart into the highway, in dark clothing, at night. no such luck. south africa is hard to shake.

i love you modest mouse.

i love me my pnr.

been back in the country for 3 days and i've just been sleeping, eating and devouring my books. i just finished the Trylle trilogy by Amanda Hocking and it was amazing.

The Trylle trilogy is a young adult paranormal romance. about trolls.

I've read books about vampires, werewolves, faeries, elves, witches, valkyries, aliens, ghosts, immortals, etc etc. But, even to me, a coming of age story about a young teenage troll seems kinda ridiculous. And yet, 18 hours later with a smile on my face, I have to admit, this was one incredible story about trolls.

Meet Wendy Everly, a 17 year old girl whose never felt like she's quite fit in and incidentally whose own mother tried to kill her when she was 6. At the latest of her long string of schools from which she's been suspended/expelled, Wendy meets Finn Holmes, a tracker whose come to bring Wendy back to her true home and destiny. **insert epic music**

I really enjoyed this series. Amanda Hocking has a way of building not only an extremely detailed and believable world, but also filling it with characters with an incredible amount of depth that keep believably surprising me. From the very beginning, I felt like I could completely relate to Wendy, from when she meets Finn for the first time, to being thrown into a world with completely new rules and even more unbelievable expectations, from heartbreak, to finding love unexpectedly, from despair and then to ultimately triumphing in the end.

I never wanted the series to end. But it did. And if there was one thing that slightly marred the overall very satisfying experience, it was the HEA. I really do love my happily ever after's. But, this one was a little too happy, even for me. Wendy's whole journey was filled with conflicts and tough decisions, and even if she deserved all the happiness she got in the end, everything concluded a little too tidily. Okay, I admit it, it's because I have a soft spot for Finn. But also, since I respect how Amanda Hocking brought real life into paranormal fantasy, I will begrudgingly admit that Wendy made the right choice.

In any case, because I loved Trylle so much, I can't wait to read more of Amanda Hocking's works.

when it's sleep vs food,

sleep will always win.

i only survived south africa on the goodwill of friends. thank god for friends.

it is as you say it is.

yesterday, we went to robben island, an island prison through the early 1990's for political activists including Nelson Mandela. It was a powerful experience. We had a bus tour tour and an ex-prisoner took us through the prison sharing his experiences and even showing us Nelson Mandela's ex cell.

i'd heard about apartheid in the past but only read up on it right before coming to South Africa. it was shocking to learn how the whites, which at their peak were around 20% of the population but are now only 9% of the population, oppressed 91% of the population. but, i wanted to know more.

i pulled the bus driver/tour guide aside to ask some questions after the tour. it did not start well. his first response was a joking protest since he'd already given us numerous opportunities for questions on the bus.

so i decided to ask him a hell of a question. "Since you were probably a young teenager when apartheid ended in 1994 (tour guide: 'how young do you think i am??'), what was your experience like during that time?"

i got a blank stare. alright, my question was too heavy. so i tried to regroup. "I mean, was it kinda like what we had in the US where blacks and whites were considered separate but equal until 1967? Did you also have segregated schools but were essentially worse off?"

another stare. but finally, he answered.

/o_o/ it is as you say it is. /o_o/

i'm not really sure how you can respond to that. a pat on the back for being so introspective and empathetic? or a kick in the ass for being so blunt that the other party can't even give you a coherent response in return? all i could do was forge ahead. i reviewed how the states still haven't corrected the the socioeconomic disparities between black Americans and white Americans even decades after our segregation laws were repealed. i asked if South Africans were also trying affirmative action like we do in the states.

the conversation ended abruptly and shortly. the tour guide had to make a phone call. but i did, at least, learn that (start negative inflection) some white South Africans (stop negative inflection) consider affirmative action a reverse apartheid.

robben island was intense. it reminded me a lot about the struggles we had in the states and how we still struggle. but i was ultimately disappointed. my sense of hope for South Africa's future after the ex-prisoner guide ended his tour with mention of reconciliation and friendships with the ex-guards was extinguished. history repeats. human nature is an unfortunate constant. and without drastic change, it looks like South Africa's set up for less than satisfactory states of equality, just like we have in the states.

if it looks like shit, and if it smells like shit, it's probably... shit.

i'm really loving our little gold VW 2000 chico. it may be small and without interior lights, power steering, power window rolling, remote locking or even a car alarm, but it starts up every day and hasn't stranded us yet.

we even used it last week to move wishingonsatellites girl's luggage to her container in Container City, aka temporary community of aluminum studio pods on the very periphery of campus for abandoned students without housing due to dorm remodeling. there were a few items to carry in and i grabbed a water bottle and a rolling luggage.

i'm not sure why wishingonsatellite's girl picked up the water bottle after we got into her container. maybe it was a really hot day. maybe she just wanted to put it away. but when she picked it up, it was smeared with brown mud.

i'm not sure why wishingonsatellite's girl decided to smell the mud either. but i'm glad she did. and her reaction was immediate, negative and unmistakable.

panicked, i looked down. yup, shit on my shirt. luckily wishingonsatellites girl had soap and an extra t shirt. but where the hell did the smelly nastiness come from?

turns out there's shit in the boot. also known as dog crap in our trunk. on inspection, there were unmistakable dark brown stains in the trunk carpet. we really don't know how it got there. we can only speculate that it hopefully involved just dogs and transport.

yesterday we visited the car dealer and they offered to have it "valeted"/cleaned for us the next day. and today it smells just like new. unfortunately, there's still shit stains in our boot. but at least we know it's clean crap instead of crap crap now.

i think i'm burning through my clutch.

so, in South Africa, and apparently the rest of the world outside of the US, everyone drives manual. we found out that renting an automatic is actually 3x more expensive than stick shift the first week we got to cape town. so manual it was.

we rented our little circa 1980's volkswagen chico car at a very reasonable price with the assurance that we could trade it in for an automatic if the manual proved to be too much for me since wishingonsatellite girl didn't have a license yet. i tried learning once 5 years ago from my cousin during study abroad. it probably lasted a full 15 minutes. but it was more than nothing.

luckily, one of my suite mates was a Toronto Canadian who was willing to teach me how to drive stick shift. We'd met him and his roommate the day before at orientation. One was going into ortho, the other into plastics. not that that's probably equivalent to AOA and intimidating in any way.

anyway, the orthopod Canadian was a great teacher. i didn't even stall once. i might have even gotten into second gear that day. confidence was inspired.

the next day i tried to drive to a supermarket. i don't know what i was smoking. all the starts and stops, the randomly road darting pedestrians and the cars that cut into your lane at 80 mph out of nowhere make local driving in South Africa. difficult.

but even before that, i stalled two times before i got to the campus gates. the third time the car sputtered menacingly and squatted stubbornly unresponsive, i was actually at the gate with a line of honking cars behind me. i'm ashamed to say it, but i panicked. and i begged mountain skipping German girl who was with us to take over. she was already at my door when i turned to get out. i kid. marginally.

we made it safely and back to the supermarket. but my self confidence was shot. mountain skipping girl offered to give me some tips afterwards and we drove for a bit together. then i went off on my own and just kept practicing.

the rest is kinda a blur. on Day 3, i got into Cape Town via the highway and managed to parallel park on a down slope. on Day 4, we got all the way to Stellenbosch amidst winding mountain roads. and now, i feel like i've been driving a manual my whole life.

but then today, on Day 8, on a really steep incline, i used my parking brake and clutch to help me get into first from a complete stop, and i definitely peeled out and inhaled the scent of burning car deposit. i know via the internet that one of the fastest way to ruin a clutch is to abuse it when going into first on a bad incline. and you can tell when your clutch is feeling more "spongy." and with my n of 1, i'm kinda certain that my clutch is feeling more spongy. or maybe i'm just getting better at using the clutch?

here's to hoping it's the latter.

cape town is surreally beautiful in scenery but the personal experience is still jarring.

there's the majestic landscape with magnificent/craggy mountains and lush green fields of vineyards in the Stellenbosch wine country. there's the obvious whites vs coloreds vs blacks even 16 years post apartheid. there's the experience of feeling like i'm back in the states with beautiful malls and tourist traps but at the next moment encountering the dirty unofficial parking black attendant who lives in a shanty town down the road asking you for money while you're trying to desperately get back into your car hoping you won't get robbed on the street.

we've done a lot here already. learned to how to drive stick shift/watched an accident in front of us in slow motion/went wine tasting/attempted to hike a mountain in flip flops and bad shoes/successfully hiked up that damn mountain with the right shoes/met some cute Nickelback like band members at a concert/had afternoon tea at a really nice hotel/went grocery shopping at a Navy Pier like monstrosity full of touristy stores and restaurants.

we've also met the Canadian boys and the Belgium girls and a whole host of other peoples. i think i'll call our little group of wishingonsatellite girl and spicy chick the American girls.

just fyi, i'm in cape town!! just got here 11 days ago :)