Day 4 - September 2, 2006

This was probably the first night in 4 days in which I had a relatively good night's sleep. Last night it took forever for me to fall asleep. First, it was freezing, and so I was sleeping in my Stanford sweatshirt but only had a thin blanket over me. I kept switching sides, and then around 3 am, I decided to turn on the thermostat. Unfortunately, the thermostat only gave off heat about 6 inches from the heater. Finally, I realized that I was sleeping on top of the covers, so I got up and under the covers, which was much warmer. I managed to fall asleep this way.

I fell asleep for a good stretch and then woke up when I heard banging on the door and realized that my roommates had probably arrived. It was 10 am at that point, and I had gotten at least a good 6 hrs worth of sleep. A bunch of new seminar members were here, so I quickly "showered" - more like splashed water on myself, brushed my teeth and changed my clothes. I met one of my roommates Summer Jackson, and she had a quick shower and change of clothes too. We wanted to go explore the area around us, so we tried to rally some of the other seminar members. Also, apparently one of the other showers was leaking, so we had people come to our place to shower. Finally, me, Summer and Danielle decided to go walk around Rondebosch.

Right outside the street where we live, there was a park and a market/fair set up in the park with different food stalls and vendors. We walked through but didn't buy anything, since it was still pretty early in the seminar. Then, we walked up Campground Road and to a strip mall about 5 min from our place. In the strip mall, there was a halal grocery store - where I grabbed a Cornish pot pie - a pharmacy and a Portuguese fast food place. We then turned on Belmont, which would take us to Main Road - the aptly named main road in Rondebosch. There was a mall, a bunch of smaller boutiques, and several fast food joints. I could tell that the area was geared to University of Cape Town students, since UCT was right behind us up the hill. There were even some fast food chains serving halal food. We stopped at Checkers, a supermarket, to pick up some groceries for breakfast. Then, we walked back to Ivydene.

It was around 3pm, and our third and final roommate in the Dolphin flat moved in, Nora Levinson. We moved all our stuff around and unpacked a little and then tried to find working internet. The outside patio and main hallway had working wireless, so I was able to check and send a lot of email. We then went back to out flat and watched tv, including rugby and wrestling! Around 6pm, we were called into the main meeting room, which was Tabari and Calley's Mountain flat and had the first group meeting of the seminar. Cammie Lee came in at that time too. The only person we were missing was Anacely, who apparently missed her flight from DC. Prof. Joel Samoff handed out copies of the syllabus, and we chatted for a bit.

We decided to have dinner as a group, so we walked to a nearby Italian restaurant Borruso's. The food wasn't that great, but the portions were big. My end of the table had a pretty intense discussion about economics and China, so it stayed interesting. After dinner, we were tired, and so we headed back to our flat. We finally found some internet in the flat, so we all busted out our computers - all of us have Macs - and fooled around for a bit. Nora, who is studying engineering, figured out how to hook the hand shower to the wall, using a wire hanger, so we now had a pretty functional shower. The only thing we are missing - sadly for me - is the shower curtain. Finally, we all got ready for bed, as tomorrow we would be touring the city.