days of our lives.

I've always wanted to be here.

I cannot remember a time before I wanted to come to Africa. I loved the Lion King. I spent 2 years planning a tattoo of Africa for my foot (which didn't pan out, but that's another story for another day). Whether at home or camp or school, I always have a small canvas with Isaiah 41:9-10 in my room. Last year I declared an African Studies minor (despite my parents' very convincing speech of "But you'll never get a job with that..."). This is the single longest dream I've had.

It's not the first opportunity I've had to be here. Actually, I've turned down a few.
As I learned more about different people and places, I came to believe that the state of our hearts when we go out into the world is just as important as the work we do and the words we say. With this in mind, I wanted to be very careful about why I came to Africa. Not to save or civilize or teach poor unfortunates things I know because I was fortunate enough to be born in America. I wanted to come to Africa to live, to understand a culture that isn't my own, and if God shows me ways to use the gifts I have, I'll use them, but I wanted my heart to be in the right place. (Please don't misunderstand me--I have such huge respect and gratefulness for missions and humanitarian efforts and NPOs; I just worry that sometimes we go into situations with something other than humility and grace in our hearts.)
That being said, that's what I'm trying to do: live. So while adventuring and exploring and stuffing my face is great fun, the time has come for things to settle and for us to just live here. I started not to even write this because it seems like we're not doing anything exciting, anything "worth" writing about, but it's life and these are the days of it, so here's what it's like to be here...finally.

We're mostly just going to school. We live maybe a quarter mile from campus, so every morning we trek uphill (and I do mean uphill) to this gorgeous school that's a mix between Oxford University and Hogwarts if Hogwarts didn't have such tall towers. We have to go through a tunnel, and every few days, the artwork in the tunnel is a little different, so I'm always looking around through the shadows at the latest graffiti advertising a club or a bar or whatever. We also have to cross a rugby field to get to class, which makes me feel very local because they bleed rugby here like the South bleeds the SEC.

I'm taking 3 classes, which is considered a full workload here, and I'm definitely not complaining. One is a religion class about ethics and human rights, one is a history course on 20th Century South Africa, and the last is about identity and culture in Africa and the misconceptions therein. It's strange, only having 3 classes to worry about, but they're keeping me plenty busy.

When we're not at school, we're cuddled up in our apartment, trying to bask on the back of the couch in the sun. Without heating, it gets pretty cold inside long before it does outside, so I've gotten accustomed to wearing socks and multiple layers of sweatshirts all evening. I've also gotten accustomed to this whole cooking for myself thing. I thought I was really cool at first, then I resented it and missed my mama, but I've come to a peaceful agreement with our stove and refrigerator and leftover containers. I do freak out every time I go to the grocery store; food here is cheaper than in the States but good grief, how does anyone afford to eat? I go through 2 liters of milk every few days. It's becoming a problem in my bank account.

We do homework and eat dinner and watch the news. And, for the first few nights, that was all we had to do. It got a little dull, so took ourselves down to the Main Road and found Rondebosch Video. We are now proud regular renters of motion pictures, and it would seem that the rental people are getting used to our games of "I'll pick 3 and you pick the 1 from those" and even tease us when we only get one movie at a time. We also treat ourselves to cheesecake sometimes, but just because it's really, really good and I'm pretty sure calories don't count in Africa anyway.

And that's our day-to-day. We're still working our way through all the breakfast booths at Old Biscuit Mill (last Saturday Siri and I had some really good hashbrown/eggs benedict thing) and the To Do list on our fridge is getting longer and longer with localy things like Bo Kaap and Kirstenbosch Gardens and Mama Africa. So maybe it's not as exciting as living on a game reserve or in a village or somewhere more "African", but it's life, and maybe I'm biased, but I sort of think it's a pretty good one.