After using up all the possible complimentary Internet as possible, my group of people went to Mr. Price, a clothing store, to search for a shirt that says “Africa, Not For Sissies” that Werner was wearing a couple weeks ago. In the process of looking for that shirt, I found easily the most awesome shirt ever: it’s a tiger with sunglasses over its eyes and a bandana on its neck. I took a picture of it (since it was only in XXL which isn’t exactly my size), which I hope to upload to Dropbox whenever/if I ever figure that out. Awkward situation one: I’m looking at this super awesome shirt, and the guy next to me seems real inquisitive. I see out of my peripherals that he has a few shirts over his arm, very much in the manner that workers do, so I automatically start asking him (at least twice) if they have this shirt in a smaller size. The three other people I’m with start bursting with laughter and start walking away. I leave the guy because he kept saying “I don’t know”, thinking either he’s a pretty crappy employee or that’s a rare shirt. Turns out, the guy didn’t even work there, and I was just asking some random customer if the store he was shopping at had this shirt in a different size somewhere else. Whoops.
Before lunch, someone else and I went to this grocery store to pick some stuff up. Between the two of us, we had a total of five items; but there are so many god damn people in that store, the “express” lane took about thirty minutes. It pretty much looked like any grocery store would at home like the day before Thanksgiving or Christmas, just times two. Such unorganized chaos. Anyways, after being cut in line a few different times, we finally made it near the register. As we turned a little corner, some drunk dude cut us while we were both turned around. He and the lady behind us then proceeded to argue (I think?) in Xhosa about him cutting us, creating awkward situation number two. He kept motioning towards us (and me in particular since I was right next to him) and trying to do these weird handshakes and laughing at me. It was super awkward because they’re badgering back and forth in Xhosa (which everyone but us in this place understands), while every one of the eleven trillion people in the express lane listens and chuckles at our expense (I think?). I had never been happier to get out of a grocery store before, and didn’t even care that the unhappy girl behind the register gave me an unnecessarily large fistful of coins.
After reconvening with some other people in the group, we got some really good ice-cream and hung out. One of our vans has been crapping out lately, so we earlier learned we’d be at the mall for a couple hours later while a mechanic fixed it. About thirty minutes before we had to meet up again, a group of four of us was approached by some drunk (I think?) guy who was eons nicer than the previous drunk guy I encountered. He told us about how he was a soldier many years ago and how much he loves his country. Something else he said that was pretty interesting was that he loved America and Obama in particular because he’s fighting for Africa. Though it was one of only a few good things he did as president, I’m curious if this guy knows George Bush actually started a pretty impressive fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa, or if he just assumes since Obama’s black he’s fighting for all blacks or something. It seems pretty counter-intuitive to the whole racial equality thing they want/Mandela preached; oddly enough his museum was closed that day. Towards the end of this little conversation (which he didn’t seem to want to end, maybe because he “love[s] white people”), he put his arms around me and one other guy (the other two had got away somehow) and drew us in really close. This is when I was like “Ok this is where I get stabbed or something and he demands money, what an odd way to go out.” Thankfully racist me was wrong, and this guy just said how much God loves us and how grateful he is or something like that. Keep in mind during this whole conversation, people were walking by making no attempt to hide their laughter at him and/or us. I realized after he walked away that that was one of those seemingly-insignificant yet randomly impactful moments that you just don’t forget very easily (the experience not the conversation, I’ve clearly forgot that already). Awkward moment number four came when the twelve of us were all together again waiting for Neil to show up with the vans so we could gtf outta there. We were all sitting down on the ground since standing started hurting about an hour before. All of a sudden, some drunk dude (this one I’m sure of) that I called (behind his back) the David Ortiz beggar (because of his resemblance to the baseball player) plops down next to me and starts asking for money. I politely told him I spent it all, which he wasn’t too thrilled with. Thankfully Neil chose that opportunity to show up, so I got up and got out of that situation pretty quickly. Afterwards, though, David Ortiz stuck around with us (super awkward), and once we started walking away he gave his goodbyes to us for whatever reason, which consisted of (for me) playfully punching me in the chest like we’ve been friends for years. At that point I was like get me the freak out of this city, which thankfully occurred.
That night we ate another awesome dinner, then celebrated Hailey’s actual birthday with cake, cupcakes, and some complementary wine and champagne. It was just a really fun night with some darts, pool, and more free shots from Ken. Sunday morning they have breakfast a little later here, so we were able to sleep in a little bit later usual. We spent our morning class just talking about everything we saw the previous day, and during the afternoon one we just talked about the paper we wrote as a group. Pretty easy. We all went to bed relatively early because we had to get up early the next morning to visit the schools.
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