a real grown-up

I paid rent for the first time ever! I feel like a real grown-up. Sort of. Maybe. A little. I don't think I've really wrapped my head around the fact that for the first time since I was five, I won't be going back to school in September. I got a job waitressing at another restaurant where I make a lot more money and I quit the other restaurant. This new place is called the Rat and Parrot but everyone just calls it the Rat. It's a bar as well as a restaurant and it's popular with the students. I like working there, except that it's 2 stories so I have to run up and down the stairs a lot! Anna, Aimee, and I got to see our friend Myrna a few weeks ago. She is from Holland and she was studying here with us when we were here studying abroad. She came back to visit Grahamstown since she was living in Cape Town for six months doing an internship. She's gone back to Holland now, but it was nice to see her again.

our last lunch with Myrna at the Rat - Anna, Aimee, Myrna, Me

It's interesting how we get our drinking water here. In the Western Cape, in places like Cape Town, the tap water is fine to drink, but here in the Eastern Cape it's not advisable to drink it. It's not horrible, but it's not great. So we drive a few minutes outside of town where there is a fresh spring! Anyone can go and fill up. And the water tastes so much better. A very stereotypical 'African' experience, I'd say. We also have to pause the washing machine if someone's doing laundry and we want to take a shower or use the sink. Makes you appreciate the bountiful water supply in the States, doesn't it?

getting water

Also, doing laundry is a bit of a mission because they don't have dryers here, only washers. We hang all our clothes out on a line with clothespins. It makes me feel very domestic, like a housewife from the 1940s or something. Waiting a day for clothes to dry is definitely testing my patience, but I'm getting used to it. Also being dependent on the weather - we can't do laundry if it's raining. Definitely a whole new way of life over here.