Getting settled in...

Hello cyber world,

Sorry for the long delay in my blogging, I have just gotten over food poisoning (or so I believe it was) and I am still feeling kindof woozy.  I was in bed all day Sunday with a bucket by my side... it was miserable.  Hopefully I will be all better this next week.  We started classes officially yesterday.  I am taking Afrikaans, Southern Africa to 1900, African Dance, and African Traditional religions.  Consequently, they all have "Africa" in the title and therefore the classes are mostly made up of Americans, but that's okay.  I'd like to think of my classes as tackling the culture I am immersed in by all angles.  I really love my Afrikaans professor, he is a character and randomly drills people in the middle of his lectures (which aren't really lectures... he's teaching us conversation which is great-- no endless verb conjugations for me!).  My Southern African history professor is your typical monotone lecturer-- I will make sure I don't sit too close to him in class because I am seriously scared that I will fall asleep. I haven't had my dance class yet, I was supposed to today but my stomach was still churning so I figured I'd take a nap instead. 

UCT is gorgeous (see pictures above) but its main flaw is organization and efficiency.  Lets start with signing up for classes.  We all pre-registered for classes we were interested in before we arrived here-- and we get here and realize that most of the ones we were interested in are a.) not available for the semester we want b.) has been cancelled for the semester or c.) doesn't exist anymore.  So basically, pre-registration is a waste of time and the real registration process starts a few days before we start class.  Ok, first- we have to look up classes we want in the school's course catalogue-- easy enough, right? Well, it would be except the catalogues are hot commodities and are available only if you know someone who knows a professor in some department who knows the secretary of another department who could "maybe" get it for you.  So basically we hear that the house down the street has one and we all run over and are huddled around this small book until we figure out what classes we want.  There is no such thing as signing up on the internet (at home its "click this, click that, you're done") Secondly, the times for the classes are only listed for a select few of them, so you don't know if the ones you are interested in are at a good time or if they overlap, etc.  So you have to wait until the registration process to find that out-- another hardship.  There is ONE line for the humanities department registration.  You stand in it for 5 hours with a sheet of paper waiting to see one of the few registration leaders who will type your name into a computer and declare you're registered.  Luckily, none of my classes overlapped so I had a relatively smooth registration.  Another issue, however, is the one of the pre-approval process in which you have to receive a signature of the department's secretary (after you spend 45 minutes hunting her down) if the class you are registered for is not a 100-level.  And when you finally find her she tells you that you need a copy of your transcript to obtain the sacred signature (I was not told this).  

But all is said and done and signed, and I am thankful for the internet and being able to register for classes virtually.

My next challenge: signing up for the equestrian club... a process I would imagine could go a lot like: Okay, you need to walk down to the athletics building which is on (insert completely unknown roadname here), go up to the 3rd floor (which is actually the 4th because they label the basements as "1"), find the secretary's office (wandering down a series of hallways with no labels), enter the office and plead for a signature only to find out the person you need is unavailable and you must come back the next day between 10:23 and 10:54, carrying a document that you don't have and don't know where to get. 

Knowing UCT, I reallyyyy would not be surprised if this were the process.