Wintering in South Africa and the sort of end to the semester

I’m taking the time to write a bit of an update while waiting in the computer lab for my Zulu tutorial (my last one!). I have just an hour between my Zulu lecture and my Zulu tut so it’s fairly pointless to walk down the stairs, sit at my desk, and walk back up the stairs- have I mentioned that there are 156 stairs between my room and main campus? That’s a lot.
I only have the rest of today of classes and tomorrow and then classes are officially over at UKZN. I can’t believe it. I don’t know how we got here so fast! While generally classes being over makes me kind of sad because that means everything here is coming to an end, I really can’t take much more of Zulu so I’m happy that it’s ending. I have Zulu 6 different times a week- 4 classes, 1 tut, and 1 language lab, then I have to do 15 minutes of practice in the lab every week. Ugh. It is getting so tiring to keep up with the fast pace at which we move. However, I came here knowing nothing of Zulu and now I can read, write, and speak a pretty decent amount of it. As part of our Zulu exam, we have to do an oral of 35 sentences, using all the different constructions we’ve learned. While this is going to be really hard and I wish we didn’t have to do it, the cool thing is that I actually can do that. I can write a whole page of Zulu, talking about myself.
African music and dance ensemble has been winding down since our performance. The performance was two weeks ago and it was really fun. I managed to get over the fact that the costume was just a black sports bra and a wrap skirt after our two dress rehearsals and lots of support from my friends. When I came out on stage I saw that 6 of my friends were all sitting in the audience in a row so that gave me a nice boost. One of them video taped it for me so that everyone at home can see me, the only white girl in the class, hold her own with the Zulu girls and their African rhythms. I’m really going to miss that class and the friends in it that I have made, especially towards the end of the class. It seems like at the end of the semester I’ve started to make more friends outside our group of international students, which is nice, but it takes a while to get to know people…and then I go home just when I’m starting to. The choreographer continues to insist upon teaching us a new dance, even though the semester is over, and it’s a pretty cool one, I wish we had got to include it in the performance.
Weekends lately here I’ve been on campus, experiencing really more of what it is like to be a local student here, rather than traveling all around like the internationals do. I’ve become a fan of watching soap operas in the tv lounge and coming to the lan to go online. I’ve also gotten to see some awesome things right on campus- two really cool dance performances and a jazz show that I didn’t even know we had here until now. I’ve gotten to do a few more “Durban” things like visiting Victoria Street market and the Workshop market. I’ve also spent a lot of time at one of our favorite places- UShaka, going to the shops or eating dinner. There has been lots of dinner out lately as we are getting frustrated with studying on campus all weekend and need to get out.
Speaking of getting out, this week I’m taking the opportunity to travel at the beginning of the one whole week they give us off to study (compared to the single study day that AU gives us, this is pretty luxurious). On Thursday I’m going with two friends, Myrthe and Sarah, to the Drakensburg mountains. This is an enormous mountain range that is in South Africa and Lesotho (one of the tiny countries that is completely surrounded by South Africa). We are taking a shuttle bus there around noon and will get there in the afternoon to get settled and hopefully explore the mountains that are pretty much in the backyard of the backpacker we’re staying in. The next two days we’ll be doing the tours that the backpacker organizes so that we can do and see everything we want to in the short amount of time we have there. We’ll be travelling up the Sani Pass, a windy mountain road, and into Lesotho to see what the mountain villages are like there. There is also a stop at the highest pub in Southern Africa! The second tour day will be to the primitive rock art in some of the mountain caves. I’m really looking forward to the trip. It’s really starting to get cold here (my tolerance for cold is so far gone!) and it’s supposed to be really cold in the mountains so I’ll have to bring all the layers I have. I think it might be warmer at home now, or more likely in DC, which is so strange to think of. Winter in Africa….Anyways, I’ll have to write more after the trip.
Once we’re back in Durban on Sunday, I’ll have to study for my Zulu oral, then my three other exams. I have exams, very spread out, on May 29, June 5, and June 11. Then, although I am still finalizing all of the travel parts, I am going to Port Elizabeth on June 13 to volunteer at the Amakhala game reserve for two weeks. After all this, I should be returning to the US on June 30 or July 1. Things feel like they are coming to and end, but I still have over a month.