Life at UKZN

I was warned ahead of time about the dorms here – no wireless, questionable security, etc. So far (other than the internet issue), life has been great in residence. A 5-minute walk up the (many) steps sure beats the hour commute at home. And there are so many international students in my dorm!

The first week of actual classes was pretty hectic, and no one seems to know quite what is going on. The lecture schedule is pretty crazy here – some classes start at 7:45! So you can imagine that it might be frustrating if you got ready for class at that time on a Monday, and found out your class was cancelled (for the day, or in some cases, the whole semester!). I was lucky – my first class was at a decent hour. I was confused when I arrived to my African psychology class though – our lecturer started with “Welcome to Abnormal Psychology”…huh? Apparently, some classes are divided even further into terms. So, my class won’t begin until the second term this semester. MORE BEACH TIME! And, we needed groceries, which took longer than expected to buy, so I accidentally missed the first lecture of my other class (oops!).

The second day of class was about as successful as the first – the students organized a strike over housing problems (Many students who confirmed housing arrived, only to find out that they had nowhere to stay. Some rooms are housing 7-8 students in them until they sort things out.). The rooms aren’t so big, but they suit my needs well: a bed, a sink, a desk, a wardrobe, and some shelves. Okay, at times, my room smells a little off, but I have adapted and bought an aromatherapy oil burner, so now it just smells like mango or coconut! Well, that’s when it doesn’t smell like propane from the stuff they sprayed in my room to control the cockroach and ant population (which luckily, I haven’t seen any signs of!). They came around at about 10am, and I happened to still be sleeping, so when they knocked, I sleepily opened the door. The guy seemed surprised that I was around, but even more surprised that I was still sleeping. Sleeping in (as in, after 5:30am) seems to be a faux pas. One of my professors was describing his lazy neighbour who smokes pot all day and sleeps in until 9am! So, the pest control guys told me to open my windows and they proceeded to spray around the edges of my room with some toxic chemical, and left. Since I had just woken up, I didn’t have anywhere I could go, so hopefully the chemicals that detract cockroaches (which can survive a nuclear holocaust) haven’t killed too many brain cells!

I have had some other cool visitors in my room though! And this isn’t the time when my mom needs to stop reading the blog – I’m talking about moths, bee-like creatures that don’t buzz, praying mantises and FROGS! Luckily, no monkeys yet – they are really messy when they get in your room. The moths here are gigantic. Like 8-10cms long. That’s what was in my room on one of the first nights and I thought was a bat. And they make noises here. The frog was the coolest – a bit shocking when I grabbed onto the curtain and my hand wrapped around its little body, but fine once I convinced myself that I didn’t just touch a poisonous dart frog. (You know the arrows that have poison on them in Indiana Jones-esque movies? That’s from a dart frog, which I had just seen the day before at Sea World. Yeah.). I didn’t realize that Praying Mantises don’t bite, so I might have ‘accidentally’ squished it in my curtain. What? I get random bug bites all the time, and I have no idea where they are from! The main bug that I’m not a fan of is gnats. Why gnats, you might ask? Well, they’re in my fridge, which doesn’t actually work, we just pretend it does. The freezer works great! Until a couple of weeks ago, we didn’t have a food cupboard, so we kept all of our dishes in there, too. I did get some strange looks when we washed dishes and then put them into the freezer. The main drawback of using the freezer as a cupboard is that you actually have to dry the dishes.

Anyway, back to class. So, I’m only taking two classes right now until my third one starts some time after Easter (no one actually knows when, they just say “after Easter.” It’s strange when you talk to people who you think have somewhere in their job description “know how to do this,” and they have no idea what you’re even asking them. Like, when I wanted to know what the address of the school is so that I can receive mail: the international student support office, which is the location to pick up said mail, could not tell me what the address is. Seriously. I just found out the address from a friend of mine who finally got his mail…just in case anyone wants to send me anything??).

I’m taking criminology, which is a first year course, and literature and journalism, which is a third year course. The bachelor degrees are three years long here, so when I tell people that I’m in my 5th year, they look at me with respect and think that I’m almost done my Master’s, which is quite a change from at home, where people just wonder why I’m so slow!

My first impression of classes is that it’s like high school. They actually take attendance, and if you don’t attend a certain percentage of class, you don’t get your ‘duly performed’ certificate, and can’t write the final. This is a challenge in lecture halls that contain 300 giddy 18-year-olds. That’s another aside: everyone is young here. No one takes time off between high school and college to get a job because jobs are so hard to get. If you found a job, you wouldn’t quit it to go to school, because the aim of school here is to get a job; if you have one, what’s the point in school? So, at 21 people graduate and try to get good jobs, get married and have children. When my friend was doing a survey at a shoe store, she told her age (25), and the lady told her to go back home to Sweden and find a man to marry – she’s getting old!

My favourite class so far is English. We started the semester off discussing a magazine from the 50s that was geared towards the black population: Drum magazine. It was so interesting to learn more about what life was like before and during apartheid. I felt out of place when people were discussing particular uprisings and events, but my professor assured me that just because the other students are from this country doesn’t mean they know any more about what was going on in the 50s here than I do. It would be unfortunate it that were true.

Studying here is an issue. And, I can’t always blame it on my lack of motivation (these grades don’t count towards my GPA, I just get a completion mark): there are no places to study! With the exception of this chilly weekend (it went down to a bone-chilling 23C in my room last night! I was seriously cold and it woke me up. Tomorrow I will buy a duvet.), normally air conditioning is necessary. So, my room isn’t the place to get anything done – the rez can get a little loud anyways. The café only stays open from 9-4, which is shocking. With classes that start so early, I would think that caffeine would be necessary at an earlier hour for those addicts among us. I’m told that the coffee here is gross, so I guess it’s not surprising that you have to look hard to find a coffee shop – it’s not good enough to get addicted to. No Starbucks to get cozy and study at. And the library? You can’t bring bags into it – not even purses! So, that’s a bit of a hassle. It does have a/c though, so when I’m done dripping sweat in the computer lab (they turn the a/c off at the same time as they unblock Facebook every night), I can chill in the library. I’m lucky I haven’t had a research paper yet – people actually use books here to research! Imagine! I have never taken a book out at home; everything is online.

I had my first test on Friday, and it took me back to high school finals. It was only a midterm, but apparently it was a pretty serious one because it was in a different venue: an auditorium filled with desks from an era gone by. It was only 45 minutes long (just like the classes here – it’s amazing! At home, most of my classes are 3 hour lectures. Here, if you’re late, there is really no point in coming at all. Well, except that you have to sign the register!), and it was super easy (had I studied).

Shockingly, I have just completed my 5th week of classes here! Time has gone by so fast. We always seem to be on the go during the week, and the weekends are full of parties and clubs (and sometimes even laundry and homework). I feel like it’s my duty to explore the culture here, which includes going to (CHEAP!) movies, shopping to excess, eating copious amounts of foreign candy (which is sooo good! It’s a good thing there are lots of stairs and hills here!), and going to new clubs every week.

Alcohol deserves a new paragraph. The cider is sweet and tastes like fresh apples, unlike the dry stuff we have at home. The wine is fantastic! I haven’t had any white, just because South Africa is known for its reds, and I now know why. I can’t wait to tour some wineries when I visit the Western Cape. At home I have seen Amarula at liquor stores, but I hadn’t tried it until I got here. Every time we go to a movie (which is every week!) there are commercials for it, which makes us all salivate. It’s made from Marula fruit that, according to the commercial, elephants like to eat only at its supreme ripeness, which is when it is harvested. I’m sure the elephant helps with that part, too. The classic SA shot is Amarula mixed with Springbok, a minty liqueur that is named after the SA soccer team.

The currency here, the rand, is losing its value compared to foreign currency due to some problems in the SA economy. This is very GOOD news for me though! When I arrived, one Canadian dollar could buy 6 rand, and now I can buy 8! So, when I pay 7 ZAR for a cider, I’m a pretty happy lady. Still, I have managed to learn how to barter, if only with the cabs. It’s a lot easier now that I know what everything should actually be costing us. We avoid metered taxis at all costs, unless we want a tour of Durban before we get to our destination. Flat-rate cabs are usually pretty decent, except for the time that we agreed on a decent price and got in, only to find out that it was just some guy’s car, and not a real cabs. Sketchy!

Without a car, we depend on cabs a lot. Luckily we have found a grocery store within walking distance, which is good because food here goes bad really fast, so we have to go to the store every few days to restock. Groceries here are a bit of a hassle, especially with a broken fridge! Also, the stoves work on a rotating basis – they seem to rotate every time we try to use them. What I have found here to survive is Woolworth’s food, which does amazing prepared salads. We also have lots of food stands on campus, and with the large Indian population, vegetarian food is really easy to find. Also, the fruit here is spectacular, it almost makes up for the lame vegetables. They don’t know anything about bakery items though. Perhaps because ovens aren’t the norm, so people don’t know just how easy it is to bake things that are a hundred times better. I miss baking, especially on a cold day like today! I suppose I should be savouring the cold weather though – it should be sweltering for the music festival that I am going to over Easter weekend!

Love to all!