Dorm

So we are all living in the international house, or the I-House.  In single rooms, with our own bathrooms and a kitchen area. It's awesome. I've never actually had my own bathroom before, or a kitchen. Well by kitchen I mean a mini fridge, a microwave and a hot plate.

So my dorm is kind of outside. Like the building has a front entrance with key code to get in and a security guard, but then the hallways are all open. I'm on the top floor, but those on the bottom have doors that open up into a grassy area.

My room top floor door that's slightly open and has yellow words on it and the yellow circle around it. So then you open the door and get this. 

Kitchen area is on the right, bathroom on the left and straight through is my desk and bed.

 

And then my more living area. The bed is fine. My heater is broken so it can get a little cold at night.  Other then that it's fine, plus the desk is super long so I can spread out which is really nice. And the desk is by my bed which is great. 

Plus I have some shelving over my bed which is cool, and a little light which is awesome.  I want to try and get some wall decoration for above my bed though cause it is a little boring. And then I have a closet which has a couple shelves on one side and room for hangers on the other.

And that's my room.

Konka Camps

Shortly after arriving we went off to Konka camps for some bonding and team building. We got to meet the Wits students in the program which was awesome.

One the way to camp we stopped for lunch at this outdoor market place. Naturally there was a KFC.

Here is the part of the market.

And some of the view.

Those photos were taken on the top of a ferris wheel of course.

Then we got to camp and had to do these random team building activities which were a ridiculous amount of versions of simon says, sticking a playing card between our nose and lip and passing it around in a circle and other various awkward things. But hanging out during free time, meal time and night time was actually a lot of fun and a great way to meet and get to know everyone.

July 18 was Mandela Day so we all went to a school and played with the little kids. We brought paint you could draw on your body with and they had so much fun. By the time we left all the kids and all of us were just covered in drawings.

Konka Camps was beautiful, although it was hard to get a picture that captured it.

One afternoon I went on a game drive and saw giraffes from really far away that were hidden in the trees.

These things

and a zebra that refused to lift its head.

There was also a pair of adorable dogs running around. They liked to play catch with rocks and sticks.

Then there were some obstacle courses and a zip line. One was like walk across a rope holding on to another and run across a log. The other was much crazier. We had to climb through a cement tube and get over logs above your head, which meant being thrown over by the guys, and oh yeah swing on a rope and jump into a giant mud puddle. By the end we were so gross and dirty. I couldn't get a photo of that because I was covered in mud and dirt but here is the part of the zip line that we left from. 

Then we left Konka Camps and went back to Wits to a crazy amount a paperwork to register for classes and get our health insurance and lots of other stuff.

Hi

Greetings from South Africa!!

I didn't have internet otherwise I would have done this earlier but I will try to catch up. So we were at Bard for two days of orientation and then we got up at for a  5am bus to starting our 30 HOURS of traveling. Yeah, that was rough.  It was 20 hours of planes, 4 of buses and 6 of airports. But I watched a bunch of movies on the plane. And tried to sleep, Emirates made the plane lights go out and did this fake star thing on the ceiling during the night which was kind of cool. We had a layover in Dubai after 12 hours of flying.

The airport was round.

This is just some of the carry on luggage.  Ridiculous I know, when we got there there wasn't enough storage room under the bus for all of our stuff.

 

And then we went on the next flight to Johannesburg and got there around 430 in the afternoon.  I knew it was winter but forgot that that meant things like getting dark earlier so by the time we got to campus an hour later it was dark out.  There they fed us dinner and sent us to our rooms to get some much needed sleep. 

Classes

So, I have a list of classes I am registered for, so I should end up being in them. They are:

The core class (all semester)
The internship class (all semester)
State Sovereignty and Human rights (all semester)
Media and Human rights (Block 3)
Culture and human rights (block 4)

Blocks are like quarters and only 2 credit classes, while the rest are 4 credit. I don't get my internship until I get there though so who knows what that will be.

Packing