Security Breach or Another Window Story

Well it was bound to happen, in Florence it was a girl sleep walking her way out a third floor window, in St. Petersburg it was Jarrod having been overserved out a third story window, and nearly a month into my third semester abroad I once again have a window story. Thankfully not my own. In one of the houses
down the street full of Americans, a girl awoke during the night to find a robber trying to escape from her second floor window. Amazingly, instead of running screaming out the door as i think i would have, she actually got up and pushed the man out the window onto the ground. Needless to say it has caused quite a flustering of the Americans, nothing much was taken, just one guys camera, cellphone and some money- he had left his room unlocked and had fallen asleep on the couch downstairs. The robber apparently was fine, just landed in the grass dusted himself off and left. What i find to be the most interesting about all this is our own reaction when we went to there house a few days later, we couldn't believe how little security there was!! we kept saying things like "look how little razor wire there is" or "well of course they should never have left a window open at night that didn't have bars on it, even if it was the second floor!!" We've become like security junkies, the other day i found myself really admiring someones house for it's over the top razor-wiring, "just imagine how safe you would be in there!".

Another discovery i'm making here, quite slowly is that this country may not be quite as liberal as i believed. I have met quite a few coloured or black South Africans who a) did not vote for Nelson Mandela b) continue to not vote for the ANC c) really miss aparthied. all of which i find strange, now granted this country has become poorer since 1994, but I find it hard to believe that many black South Africans wouldn't vote for Mandela, but i guess that is just a preconcieved notion i brought here. There is also still a very big racial divide here, many of our orientation leaders talked about the fact that for the most part the only whites that hang out with the black Africans are international students. "everyone else, yes we go to class with them and go to discussions with them, maybe even the sports clubs, but besides that we don't hang out together, that's why we love the international students, they don't care, they want to meet everyone." I thought that was nice.

Saturday I tried to climb table mountain again (I like to hike, and boy is this a hike) however although the forecast was for 80 calm and clear in cape town, that in no way means that table mountain will follow those guidelines. The mountain was angry that day!! We got about 3/4 of the way up in approximately 110 km/hour winds and stinging rain before it became clear that the girl who i was climbing with was likely to be blown right off the mountain, or at least into the barbed wire guard rails (it was blowing me around pretty badly as well, we had to get shelter behind rocks). so we turned back vowing to go again this saturday.

Besides that not too much has been going on, I go to school, friday we are hoping to go to a rugby match and watch the Cape Town team play, the Stormers, then saturday we are renting out our local bar (and by renting out i mean he's just letting us have a room to our selves) for one of our roomates 21st birthday party, and we are going to braai- which is the SA version of barbequeing, except with all sorts of meats i've never heard of, but the salads are exactly the same, Gary the bartender was very pleased to offer us a variety of them "okay my wife will make 3 salads, a spaghetti salad, a bean salad and a green salad" something i took for being so American turns out is also very popular here.
Here's another food highlight for you, we've been introduced to the Chip Roll, what could that possibly be you ask?? how about french fies in a bun... nope thats it, just fries in a bun, sometimes if you're lucky they'll put some sort of sauce on it, but mostly it is just a chip sandwich. It's certainly not very atkins friendly, but it is rather popular. e