Thursday, May 5, 2011

4 May 2011 (Wednesday) - South Africa, Cape Town

The End

These are the last pictures from South Africa. IHP is officially over, and I'm going to be back on US soil in a little more than 24 hours! This is kind of an anticlimactic ending, but I've had a wonderful, strange, fun, and challenging semester, and I'm glad to be heading home!

See you all soon!!

Pictures: The toilet queue protest put on by the Social Justice Coalition in St George's Cathedral, demanding that the government provide more comprehensive sanitation for people living in Khayelitsha














The march to City Hall to deliver the petition


Climbing Table Mountain . . except that a cloud descended onto us :)














The Old Biscuit Mill, a very crunchy and delicious Saturday morning market


I don't know that my sarcasm came through earlier when I put up a picture of the Bo Kaap, because the Bo Kaap really is beautiful, colorful, and has wonderful views of Table Mountain, and my last picture of it sucked.


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Friday, April 29, 2011

29 April 2011 (Friday) - South Africa, Cape Point

Cape Point, the end of Africa

Drumming on Camps Bay beach














Penguin hunting . . . (We actually went right instead of left :D)
Oh look! There's one!!
And a whole flock of them!

Ostriches in Cape Point National Park, one of my friends was eating an ostrich burger while snapping pictures of these beauties

Cape Point

The end of the continent, with the Atlantic on the right and the Indian on the left












Cliffs . . . yeah . .

Sitting at the end of the world

A rainbow over Long Street

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Wednesday, April 27, 2011

27 April 2011 (Wednesday) South Africa - Cape Town Area

Visit to Robben Island and Khayelitsha

Robben Island is the place where Nelson Mandela spent most of his 27 years in prison. It's just off the coast of Cape Town, but far enough out to sea that it is practically impossible to escape. And Khayelitsha is the second largest informal settlement in the country with a population between 800,000 and one million.

Pictures: The quarry on Robben Island where prisoners cut out limestone

The view of Cape Town from Robben Island

Our tour guide, who was a political prisoner on the island during the 80s

Inside the prison

Visiting the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) in Khayelitsha, and the poster below is for the Toilet Queue protest put on by the Social Justice Coalition (that we went to today, pictures to come), demanding that the government provide adequate sanitation to the people of Khayelitsha

A community garden in Khayelitsha called Abalimi

Stop TB signs that are all over, in buses, buildings, lamp posts . . They used to encourage people to keep their windows closed, exacerbating the problem

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Sunday, April 24, 2011

24 April 2011 (Sunday) South Africa - Cape Town

A deluge

We're under a bit of a deluge of work here at the end of the program, so I haven't really been able to find the time to make any sort of blog entry :(

Cape Town, and South Africa in general have been wonderful though. The weather varies between warm, windy, and rainy, but the scenery is always magnificent. There is also just a lot of recreation in Cape Town, from hikes, bike riding, boating, eating (yes, I consider eating recreation!), surfing, shopping (also recreation), and spotting wildlife. We're all really happy that the program ends here because Cape Town is such a vibrant place, and there is always something, no matter how little time we have, to see or to do.

I'm not sure how many extended posts I'll be able to make in the next two weeks, so I'm going to aim small, and just try to post few pictures to get caught up.

Pictures: Gum boot dancing
traditional African beer making
Zwelethemba (two pictures)
Bo Kaap in Cape Town, which is a the most photogenic part of town, and look what picture I have . . Just goes to show what a jolly photographer I am :)

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Web Assistant's prerogative:  Lizzie also sent this photo (in a personal message), and across both distance and time, I could feel how happy she was when she saw this book stall in Cape Town:
Billions of blue blistering barnacles, Les Aventures de Tintin (et Milou)!

Sunday, April 10, 2011

10 April 2011 (Sunday) South Africa - Zwelethemba Township


Another whoops!! 
 
Sigh, I deleted my post instead of sending it again. There wasn't much to it though, we've been having a tough two weeks work and travel-wise. Also, one of our students and one of our professors left the program this past week (for unrelated reasons). 
 
Right now we're in the middle of our rural visit in a black African township called Zwelethemba. The area around us is absolutely beautiful, with mountains flanking us and a sky that just goes on and on. I've had to wonder here more than anywhere else though, just what sort of impact we're having on the community we're living in as a group of 33 Americans (and one Chinese) who are primarily white. I'm not sure if the group has noticed too much because in many ways South Africa feels like the US, and at this point we're so tired and have gone through so much change we're starting to get complacent and numb to our surroundings. 
 
And so the marathon part of the program begins!   
 
Pictures -- Our final IHP-China banner!
Cape Town from the air
The mountains near Fairhills Farm
Zwelethemba (you can't really see but there are mountains in the background)
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Wednesday, March 23, 2011

23 March 2011 (Wednesday) China - Changsha

Picture series!!
I wanted to do this post as a photo series showing some of the funny and interesting things we've been encountering while in Changsha. So, here goes!

Food!!
A lazy-susan, the centerpiece of all large Chinese meals. This is meal has just started -- there is still space between the platters. The black squares in the foreground are stinky tofu, a popular dish in the area. Mao supposedly once said, "It smells horrible but tastes delicious." One of my friends on the other hand declared, "It smells like feet, and tastes like feet." Personally, I don't think it's half bad.
The necessary utensils.
A chicken, chopped into pieces and served whole in a broth (you can see the head in the upper left corner). The Chinese believe that food should be served whole, so we've ended up with a lot of chicken, ducks, and fish staring at us during meals. Personally, I've stopped asking what meat I'm eating, they usually tell me afterward anyway, and I don't want to have any reservations about trying things (we've had things like pig feet, goat, scorpion and pigeon, or possibly dove, they weren't consistent when answering). No dog yet though, although a friend told me her family has a dried one hanging in the kitchen right now.
From what I was told it says something like "Please do not smoke, it's bad for your health! ^_^" Smoking is a pretty major health problem in China right now, so I really loved this.
Signs
The pharmacy for Chinese herbal medicine at Xiangya Hospital, Changsha.
It's hard to read, but among the more unusual departments at Xiangya, they have a department of preventative medicine and a department of breast surgery.
I wrote in the last post that we had a blatant welcome at the university when we arrived in Changsha, well this banner was what was hanging over the main library at the entrance to the campus.
And this was on the guest house we stayed in the first night . .
This was Xiangya hospital when we visited . .
 And this was the Xianjiahu Community Health Center . .
This was the Changsha Elderly Medical Care Center . .
And this was the Acme furnace factory. These were almost all our site visits, so as you can tell we are probably the most obvious group of foreigners in the city!
Funny Signs
So I love Engrish signs, and a couple they had at the zoo we visited last weekend were just too cute!
It really was quite an electrifying fence! So pretty and spikey.
I should mention, the exhibit behind this sign contains around fifteen crocodiles.
Also called Walking Street. It's basically the main shopping street, but ambulation is encouraged. We also saw a bunch on the highway to a site visit, and my favorite was "Buckley Up!"
This was on Orange Island. The paths were pretty narrow, so I killed a lot of tiny grass that day. I should note, most of the signs written in English have perfectly good, or relatively understandable grammar, it's only occasionally that they go a little awry. :)
Mao
I mentioned earlier that Mao was born near Changsha, and spent a number of important years in the area. Well, this has resulted in an inordinate amount of Mao statues within the immediate vicinity. Here is Mao near Yuelu Mountain (and my host sister is in the bottom right corner :D).
And here is Mao in Shaoshan, his hometown.
But wait! What is this?? It couldn't be . .
Is it really??
It's Mao! This is the 100 ft tall statue of his head on Orange Island. We were told by multiple people that it is an extremely accurate rendering of him from his youth. When I first saw it, my host sister's friend Sophia said exactly what I was thinking, "He was a lot cuter when he was younger." And personally I think it's the hair --  it's especially windswept and 'alive' on the statue. :)
Yuelu Academy
So I included Yuelu Academy in the previous posts as one of the places we visited when we first got to Changsha, but I wanted to end with it here because it is probably my favorite place we've been to since we got here. When you first enter and walk through the courtyards it just feels like the archetypal ancient Chinese building, big doors, swooping roof, next room, more wood, stone, white walls and monotony. Not that I don't love the architecture, I've just seen a lot of it; Japanese buildings are largely styled after the Chinese.
But then as I began walking deeper into the structure . .
And further away from all the other tourists the atmosphere of the building changed . .
And took on a little mystery. Now I wanted to wander from the beaten path, to take that back staircase just to see where it lead.
Oh boy, following the little corridors and stairs took me to a gorgeous back garden surrounded by the open hallways of the building in the classic building-meets-nature style.
While the front of the academy, with the sequential rooms and a symmetrical floor plan epitomized the rigidity of the Confucian classics studied there for centuries, the back of the academy felt more like a home for the free spirit, a place to explore, a place where you were excited to turn the corner and see what surprises awaited there.
Within the back garden there were numerous smaller garden, and spaces set apart and cultivated individually. I wanted to spend hours there climbing up and down just to see if I really saw the world a little differently each time. Every piece of the place called out to me, but we had to rush off because we needed to meet our host families. It was quite a photogenic place, so I will let you peruse the rest of the pictures as you will...













I hope everyone reading this is having a wonderful spring, and is feeling good about themselves, their work, and the future.


Thank you for sticking with me so far, there are only six weeks left!! 

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