BR --> SA

At the moment, I am quite literally dizzy with exhaustion, given my draining transatlantic travels and the incessant, immediate “go, go, go” attitude of our South Africa country coordinator. So, this will be a rather shorter post, but hopefully I cover enough in the next few paragraphs to encompass my current excitement, disappointment, confusion, and longing.

On Monday, I woke up late and lounged around the hotel until lunchtime, at which point I dropped off ten more postcards at the nearby post office (be on the lookout!!!). We gathered for a quick intro session on South Africa and then hopped on a bus to head to the airport.

While it felt ridiculous that we were leaving four whole hours before our plane's departure, we ended up having only twenty minutes to scarf down a quick dinner before boarding. Upon finding our seats, we realized that our program had been interspersed with the professional South African men's soccer team. It was exciting, I suppose, but they kept messing with me when I was trying to read my book, so that wasn't too fun. Our in-flight entertainment system was completely broken on this flight, so we made a bit of a ruckus due to our boredom. We were yelled at multiple times by our flight attendants (and I mean yelled), and at one point they turned on the seatbelt sign due to "turbulence" but I'm pretty sure it was just because they wanted us to stop congregating with one another.

I only got about 2-3 hours of sleep on this "red-eye" and was utterly delirious coming into Johannesburg. Due to South Africa's customs system, we had to go through customs, collect our baggage, re-check our bags, and go through security once again to make our connecting flight to Cape Town. It was a little bit too close for comfort, and I was pretty positive we were going to miss it, but I got another stamp and we got on the plane, so things worked out.

We landed in Cape Town around noon and proceeded to another bus that would take us to a look-out point over the city. While on the ride from the Sao Paulo airport to the city center, I remember being absolutely overjoyed, practically euphoric, at all of the sights and newness. I didn't really feel that this afternoon, and it worried me for a few reasons.

1) I've been looking forward to visiting South Africa for years. It has always been one of my top travel destinations, and I expected to feel some sense of fulfillment upon reaching this country I've dreamed about for so long.

2) It's a new country!!! I love to travel!!! Why am I not stoked out of my mind???!

And perhaps most disconcerting of all,

3) Shouldn't I feel some sense of returning home? According to some DNA tests taken by my family recently, I am almost a quarter West African. I thought that touching down in the continent that served as home to a quarter of my ancestors would feel comforting or revelationary. But I just feel tired and confused and lost. It doesn't seem familiar in the way that New Orleans did when I went there a few years ago, and I sort of expected it would.

BUT, I'm trying to cut myself some slack. So, rebuttals to my three anxieties.

1) I have only been lucid in Cape Town daylight for about two hours. Plus, I've always dreamed of going on a safari or something, not necessarily staying in a city. So, I have to give myself some time to explore and grow to appreciate this other part of South Africa.

2) I'm exhausted. I have been travelling for about fourteen straight hours, and I have been living out of a suitcase for almost three months now. (Actually, including Costa Rica, it'll be three straight months in three days.) This is my last country before home, and as excited as I am to be in this incredible, thought-provoking, wonderful place, it's hard to be ecstatic when in the back of my mind I"m counting down the hours to my flight to JFK. 

3) Perhaps it was foolish of me to even think this in the first place. But I've struggled with my identity so much on this program and in life, and I've felt rejected by people that I consider peers, and perhaps I was just hoping that the land itself would accept me in a way that would mitigate all of the turned backs and disbelieving glares. Maybe I was attempting to misplace a burden on a continent that I instead will have to deal with personally and internally. And maybe it's like going to Toronto when you have Aztec ancestors and expecting to feel connected to the location. I guess I won't really know until I get to know South Africa and until I get the opportunity to travel to West Africa.

So, as I'm dealing with all of this psychological and emotional trauma, our director is chattering away, taking us up to a mountain to go on a short "walk" and listen to a half-hour talk about the city in the windy, dreary weather. We were absolutely not having it, to be honest.

But not to worry!!! We got TWO WHOLE HOURS to rest before our hour-long safety talk and twenty-minute dinner that was--wait for it--Indian food.

I can't even talk about it.

In every other country, we've been given at least a day to recover from jetlag and culture shock, and in some cases, three days go by before our first class. But not here. We have NINE HOURS of class tomorrow before moving into our first homestay. 

I feel like I'm gonna vomit. No, actually. I'm so tired that it's turned into nausea and I think I may pass out. Hopefully I don't roll off my top bunk...

Anyway. I'm looking forward to getting to know the city, and I'm hoping that my feelings of disappointment and lethargy are simply symptoms of my insane need to get to sleep.

If I go to sleep at this minute, Ill get about nine hours--so, I'm gonna conk out. 

Good night friends.

With love, from South Africa,

Aubs

PS--I will have extremely limited WiFi here most likely, so posts may have to come in weekly clumps of three to four posts!!

Orientation

The past thirty-six hours have been an exhausting, exhilarating, educational whirlwind fraught with introductions, introspection, and inspiration.

I started my last morning of winter break with a trek into Times Square to watch the movie The Big Short. The movie was on the 7th floor of the theater, and by the time I flopped into my chair, I was like-

If you haven't seen the movie yet, I highly recommend it. It tells the narrative of the financial and mortgage crises through numerous perspectives in a really accessible way. By the end, I was actually kind of teary-eyed.

hi, 84-year-old's at a 10 AM movie showing, don't mind me

The film's message about the participation in and facilitation of the corruption and greed that spurred the crisis forced me to evaluate my own priorities and goals. I re-realized that to abstain from performing "bad" is not nearly adequate; one must work towards the positive good in order to improve the world and make one's life meaningful. It reaffirmed my dedication to law and to certain government careers in an effort to make the world a better place--so basically, the perfect way to prime myself for a four-month-long program focused on justice, equality, and development.

By the time I returned to my hostel, numerous other students had started to move in, and I was able to meet my three awesome roommates

My program officially began today, and I think I'm about to keel over from exhaustion. We were then directed to take a walk to our initial meeting place which was a "short" mile-long walk.

when somebody calls a mile "short"

But the time actually did fly by, as I chatted with the other participants on the program. 

We did short introductions once arriving at our space with fun facts. Instead of my go-to YouTube celebdom or my game show victory, I settled on the fact that I own four dogs. Pretty sure I'll be known as "crazy dog lady" for the rest of the trip. (Probably only reaffirmed this assumption when I complimented a lady on her dogs on the way to eat/asked to pet more dogs on the way home).

The orientation was quite a few hours long and was pretty overwhelming, but the beautiful view of the New York skyline definitely helped to assuage our exhaustion.

woah.

We were alerted that our community dinner for the night would include some incredible food--Thai to be exact. 

when u hate Thai food

But, in an effort to begin my trip with openmindedness and adventurousness, I decided to embrace the Thai. And guess what--I kind of even liked it! WOW. So, good beginning.

We woke up pretty early this morning in order to make it to our classroom space in Manhattan on time. Although my roommate and I got slightly lost on the subway, we still managed to be the first people to the classroom at the Centre for Social Innovation. I actually learned about CSI in Boston, in which there is another CSI. CSI can be conceptualized as an office building space in a way--but one that incredibly flexible and centered on creativity and collaboration. With its open floor plan, gigantic glass windows, and flexible seating arrangements, the space really promotes innovation. It's a super cool environment!

To give you an idea of its style--here's a machine they have in their lobby!

Anyway, we started off the morning with more "getting-to-know-you" activities and intros. I chugged three cups of coffee to fight off my exhaustion until an awesome city exercise in which we explored a couple of street blocks in small groups in order to experiment with ethnography and observation. I actually had the awesome opportunity of similar activity this past semester in a class that greatly prepared me for this program. Hence, I felt quite comfortable doing this kind of city field observation! 

I made sure to stop in at a liquor store on the block for a chance at 1.3 billion dollars--

--even though I'm the unluckiest person on the planet when it comes to weird chance things like lotteries and raffles. 

After a quick lunch, there were a few more hours of rules and warnings and information overload. However, we did get the opportunity to come up with some goals for ourselves, and I'll share two of my own personal goals with you right now.

My first goal is to live every moment on this trip with intention. In action, in words, in thoughts, I plan on approaching my life with intention and with dedication to making this opportunity one that I am proud of, invested in, and immersed in. 

My second goal is active joy, which I'll explain. I've always been a proponent of the fact that happiness and contentedness are extremely different from joy. I find happiness and contentedness to be quite transient and fleeting, while joy is much deeper, much more personal, and much more difficult. Joy is a deep-seated awe of, rejoicing in, and celebration of one's own life. It is a recognition of opportunity, of blessings, and of one's own strength and worth. I think it's possible to be sad in a moment or for a day while retaining joy, just as it is possible to be fleetingly happy with one's immediate surroundings or momentary experiences while remaining truly unjoyful.

I've actually been thoughtfully pursuing joy for the past eight or so months--pretty much since my arrival in Israel. I've found that being joyful tends to make me more playful, more child-like, more passionate, more confident, and more satisfied with who I am as an individual. Being joyful makes me appreciate my friends, family, and loved ones so much more deeply while rejecting the individuals that tend to sap at my joy--as well as allowing me to develop the ability to discern between the latter and former groups. 

However, joyfulness requires a great deal of investment and intention, in my opinion. It takes thoughtful commitment to maintaining joy and to creating both physical and mental states in which one can remain joyful. Therefore, my goal on this trip is to actively and passionately and whole-heartedly pursue joy, even in settings and environments that seems hopeless or angering or depressing. I will recognize that my sadness and frustration are emotions that I can and will have while clutching to and protecting my inner joy. 

As you may imagine, all of this mental activity required quite a bit of energy, so I felt almost completely justified in eating straight-up pizza dough at dinner with heaps of ricotta cheese--YUM. The delicious Italian restaurant completely filled me, and I'm feeling a bit like this right now.

I have one reading to do before I hit the sack and try to rest enough to deal with another eight-hour day tomorrow. Even though I already miss home, I'm doing my best to get excited for the AMAZING opportunities and activities I have ahead of me!!!!!

With love--and lots of joy--

Aubrey